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Monogram 1/48
AV-8B Harrier, Black Box cockpit
set, Eduard photoetch
set.
I've always been a fan of the Harrier, I have seen them at several air shows and
they always wow the crowd. And it's funny, the Harrier always seem to be
everyone's wives or girlfriends "favorite plane", and this is true in
my case as well. So with my wife's blessings, I set out to try and make a
decent looking Harrier.
I first started with research, and I found Lance Braman's excellent article on
improving the Monogram Harrier over at Hyperscale. That, plus the
Aeroguide 16, some excellent photos in the ARC
Walkarounds, and several issues
of Combat Aircraft got me on my way.
As in most cases, I started with the cockpit. I decided to use the new
Black Box resin replacement. I'm sure most of you have seen my rumblings
about this set on the discussion board, but in the end it looks very nice and
I'm happy I used it. Let's just say it was a true test of my skills and
leave it at that. The explosive cord on the top of canopy is from the
photoetch set, and I fixed it in place with Future. The front console was
scratchbuilt, as the resin piece was way too small. I started with the kit
coaming, sanded off all the detail, and used a mix of photoetch and tiny pieces
of styrene. The end result, while maybe not completely accurate, looked
good to me.
One thing Monogram got wrong were the intake doors, they were molded backwards.
I pitched the kit part and simply made new doors out of sheet styrene and glued
them in the correct position. I also was not happy with the intakes, there
is a huge step just inside the opening. I decided to scratchbuild the
intakes so they would be smooth all the way back to the fan. I used sheet
styrene to form them, and liquid white out to smooth the seams, and plenty of
sanding. If I were to do it over, I would use milliput and the kit parts instead of the way I did it.
The kit itself had plenty of fit problems, and took lots of filler and sanding.
I have to be the worst in the world at scribing, so I took great pains not to
sand off any of the raised detail. The pitot tubes on the kit are horribly
misaligned, so the one on the starboard side had to have the locating hole
filled and the part relocated. The same went for the formation light strips, so all that raised detail was sanded off on the entire
kit, and then the decal strips were applied in the correct positions. All
antennas were removed from the kit and replaced with either a photoetch part or
styrene. Due to the terrible fit of the pylons, they were glued in place
and all gaps were filled prior to painting. I usually do it the other way
around. The drop tanks were removed from the inner pylon first.
Another huge problem with the kit is the landing gear, the center wheels will
not touch the ground if you follow Monograms instructions. I took Lance's
advice from his article and left the gear "floating" in the fuselage,
so they could be pulled down and glued in the correct position later. Even
doing that, they still wouldn't quite touch the ground, so some careful sanding
on the outrigger wheels had to be done. I also separated
the outrigger gear from the kit parts, so the fairings could be installed and
blended in. After all this, the model was given a coat of primer in all
the areas I had to rework.
After some final clean up, the model was preshaded along the panel lines, and
the initial coats of paint were applied.
I wanted to use the 3-tone grey paint scheme and low vis decals. No
markings exist for this kit in low vis, so all decals came from the parts box.
I added a splash of color to the tail as some Harries have, though it does not
represent any certain squadron. It was more to keep my wife happy, I'm
sure you married guys have heard "Why is everything grey, build something
with color!" Weathering was done mostly with the airbrush, and some
pastel work. Harriers seem to get very dirty in service, but I tried not to overdo it. The anti-collision light was sanded off and a clear
replacement was used, painted with Tamiya clear red. The tiny light at the
very tail end of the aircraft was also replaced with a clear piece.
The front landing gear was relocated in a slightly turned position, and the gear
door was removed and replaced with sheet styrene and stretched sprue arms.
The landing light was cut off, and again a clear replacement was used, first
painted chrome silver on the outside, then covered in white. It looks much
better than the kit part.
Weapons came from the Hasegawa weapons set. Fuel vents, fire extinguishers
and other vents were drilled out. I may be leaving out a few things, but I'll
let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
Kelly
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