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G'day people, I have been sitting on this kit waiting for some extra bits to arrive. The itch to start got the better of me so scalpel in hand I took the plunge. There are lots of reviews around so if you want to find out what is in the box, the internets are at your disposal. Interestingly, two sets of wings are provided. One wing is for the previously released Sea Harrier FA.2 boxing. The only difference that I could find is that the FA.2 wing has the second vortex generator (from the inboard end) deleted FA.2 FRS.1 To ensure that I did not accidentally attach the incorrect wing, the FA.2 wing parts and FA.2 instrument panel were placed in a separate bag and went to the 'spares' box. I also decided that the APU exhaust was too shallow as depicted in the kit so I cut out the moulded mesh area and reshaped according to references. A few more parts were added to dress up the area Looking at the cockpit, the console details look adequate and I preferred the moulded detail to the coloured PE overlays. Apart from a dodgy colour match, the PE overlays look too flat. The aft cockpit bulkhead detail is busy but seems very spurious. I sanded this detail off and decided to start from scratch. The cockpit sidewalls on the Sea Harrier (SHAR) are quite busy, however the fuselage halves are completely bereft of any details. I now assembled the ejection seat halves, leaving off the seat cushion and back pad as there is a nasty seam running through the seat pan and parachute head box that is best dealt with whilst this part is not fitted. I brushed on some thick sprue glue and left it to set. The seat seems to feature two handles, one on each side of the seat bucket. The one on the right seems correct, but left side one looks like a duplicate. The left side of the seat lacks the Personal equipment Connector (PEC) assembly There is a Pavla resin MB.10 seat as an alternative, but it is much larger in height that the kit supplied seat. The kit seat fits on a raised plinth. This gives the impression that the seat is not resting on the floor, which is entirely correct. In order to fit the Pavla seat, the builder would need to remove the plinth and the seat would sit on the floor which would be incorrect. As it stands, the kit seat has some very nice and delicate details, with the addition of some basic details and PE belts I do not think a resin seat would be an improvement, especially if it is dimensionally innaccurate. This was also the time that some more PE details could be added, mainly associated with the u/c bays. The aft cockpit bulkhead doubles as the front of the nose gear bay. The main gear bay and speed brake well was assembled and some PE details installed In order to install the small brass box into the corner, there is some raised detail in the form of a horizontal bar that needs to be partially removed. Removing this would be a LOT easier if done before the bay is assembled! I now turned to the nose gear bay proper. Curiously, Kinetic have moulded a semi-circular recess in the rear halves. This is a feature of the outside halves but the interior section should have flat walls that meet in a horizontal 'V' at the back. The builder could just ignore this feature as it is deep inside the nose gear bay and not easily seen but I could not let it go. I scraped off the extant detail and glued in some sprue sections using CA, Some heavy sanding ensued and when the dust finally cleared, I was left with this blank canvas cheers, Pappy

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