1/48 Kinetic Sea Harrier FRS.1

[Gary West]

Looks like your still winning

[Calum]

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 ). 

 

 

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. 

 

 

 

 

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  ... guess I should really think about that soon,

[Skyhunter66]

Enjoying this build and wishing I hadn't sold my kit!

[corsaircorp]

Hello Calum,

Very nice job on this SHAR and thank for the tips.

I was about to start mine last week, but I've started a bit too much these times.

Now, it will be a little bit harder to let my SHAR in the attic.

Thank for all, it is a pleasure to see the same kit made by 2 champions simultaneously.

So thank to Jonners too.

Sincerely.

Corsaircorp

[Col.]

Nice paint-job Calum. Although you may not have liked the initial dark tone it looks to have given you a great base for weathering and highlights. Nice work.

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

Nice going Calum - couple of things - check the fit of those wing lights before you do any more painting - mine we are bit of a jiggle to get in and need a bit of filled round them.

Personally I always fine that Tamiya and Gunze acrylics change colour a little as they thoroughly harden off after a few days, so i always leave mine to see what "develops"!

 

bestests

 

Jonners

 

 

 

[Martian]

1 hour ago, Jon Kunac-Tabinor said:

Personally I always fine that Tamiya and Gunze acrylics change colour a little as they thoroughly harden off after a few days, so i always leave mine to see what "develops"!

Good point Jonners, it will give you time to make up your mind to decide which aircraft you are going to finish the build as Callum. I must say that she is looking rather smart now that paint has been applied.

 

Martian

[Calum]

12 hours ago, Jon Kunac-Tabinor said:

Nice going Calum - couple of things - check the fit of those wing lights before you do any more painting - mine we are bit of a jiggle to get in and need a bit of filled round them.

Personally I always fine that Tamiya and Gunze acrylics change colour a little as they thoroughly harden off after a few days, so i always leave mine to see what "develops"!

 

bestests

 

Jonners

 

 

 

Thanks Jonners. will add that to the list of things to check/do.

 

[Pappy]

3 hours ago, Calum said:

Thanks Jonners. will add that to the list of things to check/do.

 

 

G'day Calum,

 

Perhaps it is just the pics but shouldn't there be some locating holes for the aileron hinges on the trailing edge of the wing? The hinges have two locating pins, one corresponds to the aileron itself, the other to the wing. Maybe I just can't see them but you may want to check before you get too far ahead. I have just looked at my kit and the FRS.1 wing has these holes flashed over.

 

The FA.2 wing has them open, I think Kinetic have goofed (again)

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

[Calum]

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) . 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, and it dries clear and hard. I can see a few uses for this in the hobby.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

[PlaStix]

Looking very impressive so far! 

Kind regards,

Stix

[Bell209]

Looking good, Calum!

[Martian]

Looking forward to the transfers going on Callum!

 

Martian

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

Hi Calum - looking very nice!!  I've tried for the subtle lower EDSG overpainting too - so I'll be intrigued to see how yours looks when it's finished! It's  funny how you've gone for a lighter tone of EDSG, whereas I've gone for a darker one - so that will be interesting to see too ( I'm not convinced by my one - but at present with its gloss coat on for decalling it's very dark - so it may lighten up when the final flatter top coat is applied)

 

Seems we are both doing XV457!  if you haven't seen this page:

It's well worth a shufti as there are copious notes on 457.  

 

BTW - are the wing pylons fitted permanently yet? I only mention it because the underwing roundels will go right through the outer ones....

But the kit decals are an absolute joy to work with - they go down really well, are thin and respond to Microl set / sol really well.  I'm decalling at present and its been a cinch.

 

cheers

 

Jonners (glad the nose probe heads up was of use too)

[woody37]

Just caught up with this Calum, we are blessed with some great looking Shars in the WIP section at the moment

[Navy Bird]

1 hour ago, woody37 said:

Just caught up with this Calum, we are blessed with some great looking Shars in the WIP section at the moment

 

+1

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Calum]

11 hours ago, Jon Kunac-Tabinor said:

Hi Calum - looking very nice!!  I've tried for the subtle lower EDSG overpainting too - so I'll be intrigued to see how yours looks when it's finished! It's  funny how you've gone for a lighter tone of EDSG, whereas I've gone for a darker one - so that will be interesting to see too ( I'm not convinced by my one - but at present with its gloss coat on for decalling it's very dark - so it may lighten up when the final flatter top coat is applied)

 

Seems we are both doing XV457!  if you haven't seen this page:

It's well worth a shufti as there are copious notes on 457.  

 

BTW - are the wing pylons fitted permanently yet? I only mention it because the underwing roundels will go right through the outer ones....

But the kit decals are an absolute joy to work with - they go down really well, are thin and respond to Microl set / sol really well.  I'm decalling at present and its been a cinch.

 

cheers

 

Jonners (glad the nose probe heads up was of use too)

Hi Jonners

 

Thanks for the link to that page, I'll check it out. I have glued the pylons so I'm up for cutting the decals I guess

 

As for the colours, I went light because I figure with the weathering it will darken it up a bit. I also didn't like how dark the Mr Color EDSG was out of the bottle.  I find single colour dark finishes quite difficult to match to photos... I think the shade depicted in photos is often a lot lighter that what it would be if seen with your eyes (if that makes sense) . Also I think smaller objects look odarler in dark colours than large ones painted the same colour (again hope that makes sense).

 

Is you build anywhere online, I haven't seen it on here.

 

 

 

 

finis

[Calum]

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.

 

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.

 

 

So I carved the plinth off

 

 

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

 

 

Sitting in the aircraft it looks OK ..

 

 

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

 

 

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,

 

 

Edited January 28, 2017 by Calum

[Christer A]

Top job sir!

 

[Martian]

I would dry fit the seat and canopy just to check the one does not foul the other. If not then you will be close to having the set at the correct height.

 

Martian

[Calum]

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.

 

 

 

[eng]

Looks stunning so far, very nice work indeed.

 

Eng

[Martian]

This is looking great, you can't lose interest now!

 

Martian

[snapper_city]

Great build. I've got to get me one of these some day. 

[Navy Bird]

Coming into the home stretch now - she's looking really good.

 

Cheers,

Bill