Hi All,
Here is a new work in progress. This is Kinetic's 1/48 Sea Harrier FRS.1. I'll be building it as XZ451 which Nigel "Sharkey" Ward used to shoot down the Pucara represented by the model I built last year. (Photos HERE.) Ward is a very interesting character, and if you have any interest in jet combat his account of his involvement in the Falklands / Malvinas conflict should be at the top of your reading list. He's outspoken, opinionated and pulls no punches. (I'd read a later edition with introductions that give important context to some of opinions and seemingly arrogant self belief.)

Sea Harrier is perhaps my favourite combat aircraft, ever since I was a boy glued to the reports trickling back from the South Atlantic in 1982 - the first war I was old enough to understand, and the first with such immediacy of coverage on TV news (including the occasional 'live' satellite link! How things have progressed.) It's a remarkably capable aircraft, perhaps unequalled in close in combat (in the '80s at least), and it's achievements against overwhelming numbers speak volumes.

Box shot.


And the exquisite torture that is Kinetic's landscape instruction booklet.



I've got Eduard's interior and exterior etched metal set, a new pitot from Master, Pavla's Martin Baker Mk.10 and Armory's replacement wheels.

First up is to enhance the APU intake and exhaust on engine cover. After cutting out the exhaust and fitting the Eduard surrounding frame work I had to fashion the exhaust itself. The easiest way was to wrap wine bottle foil around a former of the right size. Hooray for coffee stirrers, plastic strip and superglue!


In place. It needs blanking inside and some tidying up. It's also over scale a little but I had to make it to match Eduard's part.


I've started the cockpit and some shots of that will follow once the paint is dry.

Thanks for looking!
Gareth

I look forward to seeing more! A Sea Harrier is on my list.

Me too !

Can't wait to see more!!

Awesome!

Hi All,
Thanks for your interest. Here's a little progress, with the APU intake cut out, boxed off and Eduard's grill fitted.






I have a good long break over Christmas so some more progress to come soon.

Enjoy the holidays everyone!

The images are blocked from public viewing, goon.

For me as well, but they were not earlier.

Weird, checked settings in Google Photos and it appears correct, but the two newer photos don't show when I look in another browser. Thanks for letting me know, I'll see what I can do.

EDIT - reposted the links, appears to work. Everybody else seeing them?

Still no photos goon.

Just reposted all the links. Opened page in Firefox without signing in and opened this thread without signing in to SimHQ. Photos showing for me. (The later two had dropped off again.)

Using chrome and can see the grill.

Visible now.

Thanks for confirming. No idea what happened there. None of my older threads were affected.

Here are the gun pods. I've drilled out the missing vents, added some other exhausts and placed some aluminium tube in the front to represent the barrels.It's nothing major but I do think adding lots of little things like this adds up to more than the sum of it's parts.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Hi All,
Lots of shed time while I've been off work, but most of ti has been spent on reorganising the bench space. Sarah bought me this modular system from HobbyZone.pl for Christmas and it was a full day's work just to assemble them. Then I had to wait for the two monitor wall mounts to arrive before I could clear the desk and get them in place. Still, all done now.




Along the way I've also got the cockpit installed. This is Eduard's ready painted etched set. I can't decide if sets like this are cheating, or just a short cut. It looks good though.




I've got the fuselage together, and this proved way more 'fun' than a modern mainstream kit should. The intakes are particularly poor, just look at that gap where the insert flows back from the cockpit area! It's the same on the other side. There's not much details around that area so should be easy enough to fill and make good.



More soon, happy new year everyone!

There are not enough swear words in my vast library drawn from over 20 years of military service for me to have made that instrument panel.

Crazy good work!

Great work and really sweet working area!

I love the man-shed!! Great work as always!!

Cheers gang. Some more work done.

The radome doesn't fit properly, it's a little bigger in diameter than the part of the nose it fits.





It's simple to fix. I sanded the fuselage back to increase the diameter of the front, and made a simple butt joint of the radome. I also deepened the detail on the radome. It's rather faint, as a side effect of the moulding process.




I've filled those two big gaps too. I like to use plastic card for gaps like this. It won't shrink and sands back very neatly, very easily. You can also see the F95 reconnaissance camera in the nose. I should have added more detail to this, but it'll do.



Thanks for looking in again.