Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Going to give this one shot. Looks nice in the box. It will be a Operation Corporate jet but haven't quite decided if it will be an all over dark sea grey or the lighter barley grey one.

 

I've got the Eduard Big Ed set, which isn't actually that big, only have 1 exterior and 1 interior PE set along with a mask. I also have a Pavla Resin set and model master probe set.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-01.jpg

 

I first applied the unpainted PE, then following the kit instructions painted the parts (FS36375). 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-02.jpg

 

It was then I figured out the colour callouts in the instructions are not to be trusted (actually I was pretty suspicious to begin with). I think the cockpit is supposed to be Dark Admiralty Grey but I always like to lighten cockpit colours so I choose something that looked similar to the images I have of the cockpit, Mr Color 337 (FS35237) Grayish Blue.

 

I was never much of a fan of coloured PE for cockpit side consoles as it seems a little flat. I do like it for instrument panels though

However I'm warming to it especially for small dark cockpits like British jets of the 1970's. It actually looks quite good in this cockpit even more so when the cockpit is actually fitted to the fuselage. 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-03.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

Bloody Oath, Calum! :cheers: I'm following with delight.

Today I was comparing the fuselage on this kit to that of the Airfix FRS.1 and the Monogram AV-8A. No way I could compare them to the Tamiya FRS.1, which I also have in the stash. Enough Harriers. The only thing which is interchangeable among them all is the windshield!

Cheers, C! :wave:

 

Henka.

 

PS: What's in the Big Ed set? 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Henka

 

The Big ED set has a exterior PE  fret, 2 interior PE frets and mask set. It's quite small for the "big Ed' and quite reasonably priced (IIRC 13 euros) . I see me using about 90% of it. Details are on eduards site .

 

Fit of the cockpit tub to the side fuselage is pretty good although I did deepen the recesses in fuselage halves with a couple of swipe with the chisel.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-04.jpg

 

Fitment of the engine intake piece required a little more work. The left side fitted well with the piece butting up nicely against the fuselage half.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-05.jpg

 

But on the right I spent a bit of time adjusting things to fit. I shaved down the 2 lugs with the intake locating holes a bit and got a better fit , but still not as good as the left.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-06.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-07.jpg

 

I found that with some pressure things would line up., The trick is how to maintain that pressure when the glue dries and what glue to use to hold it. In the end I used a liberal amount 5 min epoxy on the right side in the area behind the cockpit  and on the side of the nose gear bay. I clamped it and left it to dry for a few hours

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-08.jpg

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

I have this kit cued up and ready to go as well...I think it'll be my next build, still haven't committed.

 

Do you know of an aftermarket ejection seat for the Sea Harrier?

Edited by 82Whitey51
Link to post
Share on other sites
14 hours ago, 82Whitey51 said:

I have this kit cued up and ready to go as well...I think it'll be my next build, still haven't committed.

 

Do you know of an aftermarket ejection seat for the Sea Harrier?

 

What, like the resin Pavla seat in the first picture of the thread :P

Link to post
Share on other sites

Before I glued up the fuselage halves I'd adjusted the rear gear bay and airbrake bay to fit. . Once I was happy with the fit I finished gluing the 2 halves together. I used MEK as normal and then flooed a layer of CA on the inside.....Unfortunately a bit escaped and glued my finger to the tail.... Doh!!! 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-09.jpg

 

After fixing that up I slid the gear/airbrake bay into place and glued it in place.

I then added the mechanisms for the exhausts/ air ducts. You can add the rear one quite easily but the front one required breaking to fit. Fortunately I found I'd made another stuff up (AE) and assembled it the wrong way. So breaking the piece that joins the 2 from air duct supports allowed me to correct this.This isn't how the instructions have you do it but I was considering not bothering with the mechanism at all and just gluing the supports in place at a particular angle.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-10.jpg

 

Fit of the airbrake area to the fuselage is pretty good. For some reason thow I thought the rear part sat a little proud of the rest of the fuselage... 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-11.jpg

 

It doesn't so a little but of sanding was need to correct the profile

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-12.jpg
 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Onto the intakes Fit here is was OK, although in trying to improve things I got a bit carried away with the sanding stick, sanding the wrong surfaces and ended up with a large gap on the upper join between the intake and fuselage. This was easily solved by an application of perfect plastic putty.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-13.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-14.jpg

 

The nose piece seems minutely larger in diameter to the fuselage but could have been due my work in removing the seem. I also deepened the panel lines in the his area as they were a little shallow.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-15.jpg

 

The sharp eyed among you will have noticed the missing window in the lower forward fuselage... This got contaminated with CA glue so I removed it. 'll replace it with some clear glue at the end of the build

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-16.jpg

 

So far the kit has gone together well, however a bit of time has been spent dry fitting most parts, and adjusting  to get a better (and sometimes worse) fit

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-17.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-18.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

Next steps..

 

There was a gap between the fin on underside of the aircraft and the fuselage which I filled with some water based perfect plastic putty.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-19.jpg

 

One area that was poorly done was the raised detail for the panel (I assume some sort of antenna (doppler?) ) under the nose. On one fuselage half it was present but on the other it seemed it was only represented by panel lines. 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-20.jpg

 

I had a quick look online and from the few images I saw it seemed like it should be raised on both sides. So I sanded the area flush than using thin strips of ally tape restored the raised detail so it it loosely resembles what I think should be there. This was then given a coat of Mr surfacer to smooth out the bumps and sanded 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-21.jpg

 

Fit of the wing was OK after some adjusting however I did end up with a gap of nearly 1mm on the front edge on the left hand side - again this may have been due to me being a little to heavy handed with the sanding stick. I filled the gap with some scrap styrene and a little filler.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-22.jpg

 

The area of black filler on the left rear of the wing is there to restore the profile of the fuselage to match the wing.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-23.jpg
 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Gun pods are on, fit here is good but they are lacking in quite a bit of detail (as I've since found out after seeing Pappy's build ). 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-24.jpg

 

I got a bit carried away spot priming and ended up painting the whole model. The Mr Color Extra Dark sea grey from the bottle was way to dark. So after a few more lighter coats I ended up with something that looks OK to me.I then reapplied some darker and light splotches to try and break up the monotone... I find single colour paint jobs can be difficult to get so they don't look toylike.   

 

I was worried about he panel lines filling with paint after the multiple coats but Mr Color does shrink down nicely... I still wish however I'd held my impatience in check and finalised the colour first... that said dark paint always seems to look different once it's dried. 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-26.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-27.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-28.jpg

 

I now need to spend some time adding a bit of detail to the gun pods, the PE to the racks and tidying up a few seams/flaws.

 

AS for what aircraft I'm doing.. still haven't decided :D ... guess I should really think about that soon,

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

As usual, after a few weeks away from the bench,  it took a while to get back into it. Whilst on my holiday I'd been following Pappy's build online which showed me a few things I'd overlooked. So I spent some time fixing some of those.

First off it's was fitting the wingtip position lights (thanks Jonners at BM) . Fit of these was fairly good. I used this new glue to secure these. You may have seen it on TV, you apply the glue and it doesn't set until you shine a UV light on it, at that point it dries clear and hard. I can see a few uses for this in the hobby.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-29.jpg

 

As I hadn't cut out the APU vent on the top of the wing I painted it black to try and give an impression of depth.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-31.jpg

 

I have a master model pitot probe/AOA set. I drilled a hole for the AOA probe and installed it . I then cut of the kit probe (which is pretty nice in itself) and drilled out the housing to take the metal probe. I then deepened the recess on the kit a bit to fit it in. AS we know (thanks again Jonners) The kit piece has a squared of end, rather then flaring smoothly into the fuselage so I used magi sculpt epoxy to sculpt this part. I applied some more from the Eduard PE set and painted the rear cockpit.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-33.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-32.jpg

 

Next was to drill the holes in the gun pods (thanks Pappy/Jonners). I photocopied some 1/48 plans, cut out the gun pods shapes and overlayed this over the model. next I used a needle to mark the centres for the drill. not perfect but good enough.

The Eduard PE set gives you pieces for the 4 wing stations. I'm fitting the centreline as well, but it will have no store fitted. I chose to use a piece of PE on there (It's not quite the same but close enough) and the 2 outboard stations. The  2 inboard stations will have tanks on them and these will cover most of the underside of the rack whereas the outers will have LAU 7s so there will be more to see on those

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-34.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-30.jpg

 

I've gone the cliche option and chosen XA 457 (highest scoring aircraft) , so I've tried to get a light demarcation where the Hermes maintainers painted the EDSG over the white. It looked ok whilst the paint was wet but now it's pretty hard to see

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-35.jpg 

Edited by a4s4eva
Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

I'd been putting off the seat for ages..because of the amount of PE belts.... I really dislike the PE belts but the only resin seats I had was a Pavla one and it was far to large.. Eventually I had to bite the bullet. I left of 2 small belts (I know Bruce)  that sat on the seat pan, but as far as I was concerned it was busy enough.

 A bit of a wash and dry brush, along with decals from the kit decal sheet (which BTW aren't mentioned in the instructions), along with a bit of swearing,  and I was happy with the final result.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-36.jpg

The seat sits on a  plastic plinth on the cockoit floor, there is a recess in under the bottom of the seat pan. After sitting this in the aircraft it sat , to my eyes anyway, to high.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-37.jpg

 

So I carved the plinth off

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-38.jpg

 

Now it can sit a lot lower and I can adjust height so it looks right (to me )

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-39.jpg

 

Sitting in the aircraft it looks OK ..

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-40.jpg

 

Decided to sart doing a bit of detail painting prior to the wash going on. I used Vallejo Acrylics for everything except for wing tip position lights

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-41.jpg

 

On the images of this aircraft I've seen shortly after it got back from the Falklands, you can see where they over-painted the white Sqn tail art and Royal Navy legend. I photo copied the decals for the tail art, roughly cut it out and used it as a mask for a darker shade of grey,

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-42.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-43.jpg

Edited by a4s4eva
Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 4 weeks later...

Been a while since I updated this but I have been plodding along slowly. I have lost a bit of interest in this build however.

 

Gloss coat was firstly Testors Gloss Lacquer... As usual it didn't seem to dry properly taking a day or so to really go off. And it still  wasn't that glossy. So I went to the good stuff -  GaiaNotes Lacquer... And then it was shiny. And 10 mins later I could handle it...... Now to buy some more 

 

Decals are from the kit. They were the best kit decals I've ever used... bar none. The big decals settled into the fine detail without the use of any setting solutions and even the little stencils when down without issues... And if I wanted re-position the decal a day later I could , just by re-wetting.   I'd forgotten what a pleasure Cartograph decals are to work with. I think you can build pretty much any Sea harrier from this sheet.


Sea-Harrier-FRS-44.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-45.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-46.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-47.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

Ok this is a great build log. I just recently picked up this kit so your in progress work will come in handy. I had intended to put it away for a bit but I think I will start it after seeing yours.

 

Thanks for sharing. Moist appreciated.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Finally got some work done on the smaller bits. Everything is from the kit.

 

I did add some detail to the nose wheel as it's quite prominent.  

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-48.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-49.jpg

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-50.jpg

 

Sidewinders are from the kit. They are really nice after the seam lines are cleaned up. The Covers are from Dr Pepper. I did alter the upper part of the sidewinder rails to make them look more like what I remember them looking like. 

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-51.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Nearly done. Just have to paint the pilot and find and re-attach the air vane on the nose. I did intend to fit a ladder but forget to procure one, and am not going to pay $20 for one :D 

 

I'm also considering flat coating the base, it's quite shiny. I'd be interested in opinions on whether this would improve the looks.

 

Sea-Harrier-FRS-56.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites
11 minutes ago, Silenoz said:

It can improve, but you van also go for a rainy setting. Isn't scratching a ladder an opportunity

I could scratch a ladder but to be honest I've had enough of this one and just want to move onto the next build. I'm struggling to find enough enthusiasm to paint the pilot

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...