WolvoWill

I have never before used Johnson's Klear floor polish for modelling, but it seems to be something of a wonder product and so I'm preparing to give it a go. Firstly, I'm presuming this is the stuff to buy? http://www.scjohnson.co.uk/products/brand.asp?idb=4 Secondly, is this stuff okay to brush paint over enamels and decals? Does it need diluting/thinning at all? I have a Tornado F3 thats almost complete but it really needs a glossy black spine for the colour scheme to look correct. Looking at how shiny Gary's Harrier T4 turned out with a brush painted klear final coat(s), it seems to be the stuff for the job, but I'd hate to start painting it on and have it peel the paint or decals Many thanks

Nice! Wouldn't mind seeing the full set - am planning on modding some flightpath or airfix GBU's to 'enhanced' status for use on a Tornado GR4 but haven't yet been able to find detailed enough pictures of the cable conduit on the sides. You mention snail mail? Do you mean that or email? If the latter, wdl4@aber.ac.uk if you'd be so kind! Many thanks

Don't suppose you have any pics of the Harriers carrying Paveway IIIs do you? Photos seem few and far between but its a mean looking loadout (fuel tanks carried outboard and two 2000lb'ers on the inner pylons). Not sure if they can carry Sidewinders with that setup though. Any photos of Enhanced Paveway IIs would be gratefully received as well

Must mean the Viggen, which airfix did in 1/48. The only 1/48 Gripens are Italeri's offering. Should Swedish neutrality rule out its presence from a Cold War section of the forum though?

Hmmm, and there was me thinking you were a Tomcat and Hornet only kinda guy! But glad to hear your thinking of covering the Tornados - the vast range of desert storm noseart seems to have been strangely neglected, with even the bigger British companies such as Xtradecal and Model Alliance ignoring them thus far. I'd definitely be interested in any such sheet with artwork that covers 'new' previously un-decalled jets from Granby - Awesome Annie and Nikki would be me subjects of choice, closely followed by Emma, Cherry Lips and Donna Ewin.

Sad to see them go - the Jag was always a bit of a childhood favourite for me, and some of my first models were Jags - 1/72 Airfix Gr1 in 54 squadron marks, then in 1/48 I think the airfix Jag was my second ever kit in that scale.... Saying that, I am surprised they lasted so long - yes the GR3 upgrade meant it was quite good, but poor hot/high performance limited potential deployments (Kandahar was no go) and politics probably meant it wouldn't get sent anywhere in anger unless the brown stuff really hit the fan (being such an old airframe that was being replaced sending it into combat and seeing it do a good job might raise some questions). I expect its status as a single seat aircraft helped keep it around for that little bit longer, as something of a 'waiting room' aircraft to keep single seat trained pilots flying until single seat Typhoons came on stream in sufficient numbers. What next for the flying canopers though? Typhoons?

The situation with regards to the cannon you mention never actually happened though...somebody in the MoD had a sudden unexpected bout of common sense and the Typhoons are equipped with the guns, and, with the planned Afghan deployment next year, will probably become part of regular training sorties sooner rather than later. As for buying the F-22, no chance, its too expensive and the American's wouldn't export it to anyone . SU-37 is a nice airshow performer, buts its rather less agile with a decent fuel and weapons load, and I'd question how good its avionics are (a hotch potch of Russian, Israeli and French systems) compared to the latest western fighters. Rafale and Gripen would've been other options, but the Gripen will end up being a less capable aircraft than the Typhoon, and politics virtually ruled out the Rafale from the get-go....

Never quite got that myself - thought 'Rhino' was the name they gave the F-4 Phantom, so to apply it to another 'new' aircraft so soon makes no sense? Whats so wrong with the name Super Hornet anyway?

We should have a sticky for explaining paint schemes for most modern British subjects, can knock up a few photos of the different schemes if you want as well...don't see why we should restrict it to the Eurofighter, when theres Tornados, Harriers, Jags, and Hawks out there too!

The Italeri Tornado F3 is pretty easy to get hold of, for a price! Usually on Ebay UK they go for £20+, far above their original price (I remember them being £7.99!), what with it being an out of production kit of a popular British subject, and effectively the 'only game in town' because the Airfix Tornado's are so terrible. Its worth looking for the kit on ebay with a worlwide search i.e. showing items from international sellers. The kit was sold in the US and Canada, and wasn't immensely popular (the yanks like their F-16s more than Tornados!), and so when they do come up they tend to sell quite cheaply. The last one I bought came to about £22 and that was including shipping from the US, probably slightly cheaper than the average price for Ebay UK auctions and they seem to pop up just as frequently abroad as the do on ebay here. The Airfix 'EF3' kit is a good donor for any Tornado project, coming with the ASRAAMs and BOL rails you'll need to model a current spec (CSP upgrade) F3, currect chaff dispensers (Italeri ones are too flat), a great decal sheet with 11sqn markings (assuming its in register, its very usable and comprehensive), ALARM missiles and rails (good for the spares box even if you don't use them) and the larger 'Hindenburger' fuel tanks. One problem with the F3 - the Neomega Tornado cockpit will fit the kit fine, but its rear instrument panel is correct only for a GR1, not an F3. As for the Airfix Jag, I haven't seen the ESCI kit but I do expect its better. Fit is okay and detail not bad - panel lines are a bit wide perhaps, and the cockpit needs sprucing up, but its accurate and can be made into a great model.

Hehe . Are you ex-RAF yourself Gary, seems so judging by the banter? And I seem to recall mention of 33sqn and Puma's sometime back. Am interested in joining myself...got a filter interview at the AFCO in a week and a bit, ooh err

The RN units will perform the same tasks as their RAF counterparts, as Joint Force Harrier - all squadrons with the Harrier except 20 (the OCU) can be sent aboard a carrier or rotated through ground deployments such as that in Kandahar, so theres no difference in role between the notionally Navy squadrons or the RAF ones. The RAF and Navy have played silly buggers slightly with regards to 801 squadron, from a comment I read in AFM a while back. When the SHARs were retired and it was announced the FAA's squadrons were to fly RAF jets in the transition to the GR7, the Navy wanted to keep the identities of their squadrons intact, what with their Falklands heritage and all that, whilst the RAF didn't want to give away its Harriers completely to the Royal Navy, so despite all the talk of 'jointness' there was still tension between those in the RAF who saw chance to gain monopoly over fast jets, and those in the Navy who'd fight tooth and nail to keep the FAA squadrons alive, knowing full well they might get two new carriers and saw chance to gain control of a brand spanking new fleet of aircraft with it as well if there were still naval squadrons around! Anyway, with the SHAR retirement and the transition of old SHAR crews to the GR7 the RAF formed the 'Naval Strike Wing', which was to encompass 800 and 801 squadrons, and calling it that was enough to pacify the senior service as to maintaining its identity, but when it came to organisation, not enough qualified weapons instructors were posted to the 801 NAS section of the wing for it to be considered and designated a full squadron by RAF standards. So it seems that the RAF have quietly got rid of 801's identity, by absorbing it into a wing and then not giving it a full complement of staff to be considered a squadron in its own right....

Wow, nice sheet, haven't seen that anywhere before! Am gonna have to try and track that down - the latest Italeri boxing of the kit includes markings for Gulf Killer and Helen (the jet I wanted to model), but the noseart is very simplistically printed compared to that and doesn't look worn enough.

Like that T8 Gary, very sharp - how did you paint it? I've always used Halfords car paints to do a gloss black finish (on my Hawk) since I lack an airbrush and brush painting gloss anything never works too well, but I find the paint always end up too thick. I've just splurged some cash on the Alitaliane T10 conversion, since the parts 'look' cleaner than the Heritage set. Have a load of Model Alliance decals on the way too, so just need to decide who's twin stick to model - have enough decals and serials to manage 1, 4, 20 ® or 800 NAS

I know they've done more than one AV8-B boxing with the big LERX, but it would be nice to have an RAF boxing that had it too - makes building a late model RAF bird fair simpler. The only way to get the part at the moment is to buy the AV8-B Plus Kit and scavenge the big LERX for your GR7/9, but it leaves you with a kit you can't complete then . Don't tell Hasegawa I'd do that though, whatever you do! I did notice that Heritage Aviations 1/48 Harrier T10 conversion seems to come with a resin 100% LERX, and I emailed them earlier asking if they'd make it available separately. However I've since discovered that the twin stick Harriers are all 65% LERX, so I think my eyes deceived me when I was looking at their photos earlier

Nice! Love the Jolly Rogers scheme, as popular a modelling subject as it is and perhaps overdone on the Tomcat, it looks really sharp on the Super Hornet How did you do the ablative coatings on the bombs?

Its damn complicated, but it has been done, and even a conversion to a T10 is possible - the Harrier SIG proudly displays 1/24 models of both a GR7 and a T10 on its stand (saw them at Telford some years back), amongst the most impressive models I've ever seen frankly! You need a new forward fuselage and raised cockpit with 'bubble' canopy, lengthened tail with reshaped surfaces, different exhausts, new (extra) weapons pylons, different landing gear, then theres all the details, lumps 'n bumps. Its a Harrier, sure, but so much is new that to make a GR3 into a GR5, 7 or 9 (never mind the two seaters) would require an incredibly expansive and difficult amount of scratch building! Not to put you off, cos the results when done well are fabolus, but christ does it take lot of work. One for the advanced modeller and then some, in my view

And one from the 'stan... Any good? They will start using Sniper instead of TIALD sometime this year mind you!

LERX = Leading Edge Root Extension! Basically its to do with the shape of the front of the wing at the very top where it meets the fuselage. Depending on factors that I'm not sure about, but roughly relating to whether the Harrier was an early GR5 airframe that was converted to GR7 and then maybe GR9 (small LERX, 65% area, built with this smaller area part of the wing for reasons unknown) or a later new build one (big LERX, 100% of the area originally called for when the airframe was designed). I've seen photos which seem to suggest airframes that were originally built with the small LERX now have the large one though, and there isn't any easy way of telling what any particular aircraft has what shaped LERX - some GR7s have the big one, some small, and the same goes for GR9s! All GR5s and 5As were small LERX, but then some seem to have been retro-fitted...most confusing! Anyway, the easiest way to see the differences is from above (have just knocked these up in Paint): Deciding whether a particular airframe is fitted with a small or big LERX from pictures taken on the ground can be tricky - the big LERX looks more curved from the side, but its a hard call to make with some photos, and its best to make a comparison to check.

Just wondering whether any of you had built a Harrier T10 using the Heritage Aviation or ALITALIANE conversions? Which is the better offering, and what problems did you encounter? I've just a Hasegawa GR7 kit on ebay and, having already built a GR7, want to tackle the two seat one as a bit of a challenge. Would be intrigued to see any comments on the other twin seat Harriers as well - T4/8 and similar! The VAAC Harrier based on that is another subject I'd like to model - interesting colour scheme and quite an imporant jet historically....

I hope they stick around, purely because I like the markings - give them a full compliment of aircraft and make them a front line air defence squadron. Get rid of 25 squadron when they retire their F3s (nothing against 25 other than they carry the most boring markings in the whole RAF at the moment) and stand up 17 (F) as a replacement I do realise though that 'cool markings' aren't enough to cause squadrons to be kept, and it depends a lot on service politics and who's in charge at the time...a shame the way the RAF is shrinking, what with all the disbandments of historic squadrons we've seen over the last few years that look set to continue.

http://www.hannants.co.uk/search/?FULL=HA09764 Just listed on the Hannants site. Is it too much to hope for a Brit Harrier with the 100% LERX included in the box, and also a TIALD pod with associated pylon? Or will it be just as I expect - the original GR7 kit with a new decal sheet)?

Have not heard of this decal sheet before - what schemes does it offer, apart from this one?

One question - where did you get the decals for this jet?

Nice build! Weathering on the tail looks good. What do you mean about correcting the nose though? I've never considered the Italeri kit to look wrong myself.