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The British Aerospace Sea Harrier is a naval short take-off and vertical landing/vertical take-off and landing jet fighter, reconnaissance and attack aircraft; the second member of the Harrier Jump Jet family developed. It first entered service with the Royal Navy in April 1980 as the Sea Harrier FRS1 and became informally known as the "Shar". Unusual in an era in which most naval and land-based air superiority fighters were large and supersonic, the principal role of the subsonic Sea Harrier was to provide air defence of Royal Navy aircraft carriers. The Sea Harrier served in the Falklands War, both of the Gulf Wars, and the Balkans conflicts; on all occasions it mainly operated from aircraft carriers positioned within the conflict zone. Its usage in the Falklands War was its most high profile and important success, where it was the only fixed-wing fighter available to protect the British Task Force. The Sea Harriers shot down 20 enemy aircraft during the conflict with one lost to enemy ground fire. They were also used to launch ground attacks in the same manner as the Harriers operated by the Royal Air Force. I have the Dogfight Double version of the kit - looks a nice kit, similar to the latest GR3/GR7/9 releases by Airfix, looks to be a newer tool? Will be built out of the box, although I do have some extra decals (Modeldecals sets 65 and 66) to build any SHAR from the Falklands....it may be prudent to to the aircraft pictured if I am going to build the skyhawk too at some stage. Funny thing, Pilot seems to be WW2 vintage! I shall use the skyhawk pilot in this case. Looking forward to building both Britain's last fight and last Bomber, the Buccaneer....also in Fleet Air Arm markings!

Good morning! Today the sun was shining, so a good opportunity to take a few pictures of my Sea Harrier. It's the well-known kit from Italeri/esci, even built with the kit decals. Some parts are from Pavla, like the cockpit, intake with open doors and the exhausts. Colours were white and EDSG from gunze, the Sea Eagles are from a Hasegawa kit. Thanks for attention! Alex

Hi all Here's my first completed build of 2016, the Kinetic Sea Harrier FRS.1 The Aircraft XZ451 first flew on 25th May 1979 and was the first Sea Harrier delivered to the Royal Navy on 18th June 1979. Joining 700A NAS and coded 100 it first went to sea for trials aboard HMS Hermes on 24th October 1979. It went on to join 899 NAS and then into 801 NAS on 4th April 1982 coded 801. XZ451 is credited with 3 'kills' and one damaged during the Falklands war 1st May 1982 Lt-Cdr 'Sharky' Ward damaged a Mentor 1st May 1982 Lt Curtis shot down a Canberra with Sidewinder 21st May 1982 Lt-Car 'Sharky' Ward shot down a Pucara with cannon fire and a C-130 with Sidewinder and cannon fire. After the war XZ451 went on to serve stints on both 800 and 801 NAS and it's while on 801on the 1st December 1989 been flown by Lt M Auckland off the coast of Sardinia the aircraft suffered control restrictions and had to be abandoned, the pilot ejecting safely. The Model This kit is the new 1/48 Kinetic kit of the Sea Harrier FRS.1 which also gives you the option to build an FRS.51 of the Indian Navy. Some of you may remember i built the FA.2 last year and had nothing but problems with it and i was very critical of it, well this time after learning what the major problem was with the FA.2 i had no problems at all, in fact i finished it in 16 days flat. Built as XZ451 as she appeared while serving on 801NAS in 1983 it's OOB apart from the addition of a resin Martin Baker Mk.10 seat by Neomega. I've added a couple of pics at the end of it with my Kinetic FA.2 and my ever expanding collection of 48th Harriers Lastly I'd like to dedicate this build to my good friend Steve Hague who sadly passed away on 21st May last year. Steve was Harrier mad and a member of the Harrier SIG and very active in the aircraft preservation world, which is how we met. We had many a hour of laughs and hard work including rebuilding Harrier GR.3 XV748 at Elvington. Miss ya mate. Right enough waffle here's the pics. So there we have it guys, comments welcomed ScottC

Afternoon Guys, Today I have my attempt at Kinetics FA2, brush painted with Humbrol Acrylics as I was too impatient to wait for my airbrush to arrive. It was completed before Christmas, however I came back from the rig last week to find my Girlfriend had very kindly "tidied up" which resulted in all my started and completed kits being chucked into an empty picnic basket, so today has been spent sticking weapons and under carriage back on. Pete

Hello everyone! My first post to Britmodeller! This build was supposed to be part of a group build for the Indian Navy Day on December 4th. Unfortunately, with limited time available to devote to modeling, I never made the deadline. The build is now tottering towards completion a touch before three months, nevertheless, I thought I could share some of my milestones here. I decided to go with the italeri kit over the Airfix along with the Eduard PE set. My reasoning being that with a bubble canopy, a lot of detail in the cockpit could stand out. The Italeri Kit has finer detailing in the panel lines as well as the landing gear (especially the outriggers) over the Airfix kit. However, the Airfix kit offers the option to keep the aux air intake flaps half open (powered down) or fully closed, along with marginally detailed wheel wells for the nose and main landing gear. I also picked up the Model Alliance BAE Sea Harrier Pt. 1 Decal set http://www.hyperscale.com/2007/reviews/decals/ma48153decalrevielp_1.htm This will be my scheme of choice. The weathering patterns are expecially exciting to work towards! <Airliners.net picture removed due to copyright infringement. Please only post links to their site> I usually rivet the aircraft I model, but not being able to find diagrams online, along with a deadline to work towards, I decided to skip the step. Reference pictures also didn't throw up any obvious airframe rivets. So, as with most builds, the first stop would be the cockpit shop....

Hi folks, I'm currently beginning the 1/48 Airfix Sea Harrier FRS 1 which is a solid base kit but seriously lacking in detail. I've already purchased cockpit goodies and some PE from Eduard but wondered if anyone has experience of the best purchases for after market air intakes, undercarriage, ordnance etc to help make it sing. If anyone has any advice or guidance it would be extremely appreciated Many thanks Kris

Something different for me from my usual helicopter. getting the bench ready for the Sea king GB The decals looked alright when I applied them and when the Matt went on there was some silvering but as they say "Hay ho" The carpet monster has been well hungry with this and there a a few bit eg the Ariel s behind the canopy that have gone west Normal 5 ft looking distance It doesn't seem long ago that I was sitting down the lane at Yeovilton and putting the camera down because it was just a sea harrier or a Canberra or a hunter (sobs into hanky) Rodders

This last week has seen the decommissioning of the last of the RN's Invincible Class carriers, as HMS ILLUSTRIOUS paid off at Portsmouth on Thursday. To mark this departure of the last remaining ship that I have served on, I have delved deep into the kit and decal stash to build this ESCI Sea Harrier FRS.1 representing an aircraft of 800 Sqn during the time that I was aboard. This particular aircraft came to a premature end on 1st December 1984 after a bird strike caused an in-flight engine fire and led the Pilot, Lt Collier to eject. I was on the bridge of ILLUSTRIOUS at the time acting as a trainee Officer of The Watch as the incident unfolded, firstly with a pan call, the ship going to emergency stations ready for an emergency landing, then a mayday and report from another aircraft that he had ejected, all in the space of a few minutes. Fortunately Lt Collier was OK, although he suffered some injuries to an eye during the ejection, but the aircraft returned to the ground via a number of remote farm buildings near Fort William that burned most spectacularly, despite the rapid despatch of a number of Sea King Mk4s loaded up with as many fire extinguishers as could be found. Prior to its demise, XZ458 had seen a busy career with no less than 45 combat sorties during the Falklands war with 809 and 801 Squadrons in INVINCIBLE, then back to the Falklands post war with ILLUSTRIOUS and 809 Sqn. ESCI’s Harrier kits first appeared in the early 1980s and were widely hailed as setting a new standard of finesse and accuracy for 1/72 kits. Now, over 30 years later they have been re-issued many times over the years by ERTL, Revell, Airfix, Tamiya and finally Italeri and in my opinion, they still represent the very best Harrier kits available in this scale. They are not without fault though and I have undertaken some simple corrections to this kit, using scratch built parts, bits from other kits and aftermarket accessories to correct the very poor ejector seat (using a Pavla resin replacement), underwing tanks (replacements from the Sword T.4N kit), boarding ladder (from the Hasegawa kit), as well as a scratch built plug for the after canopy and paper RBF tags. Unfortunately my resin replacement intakes with open doors suffered an accident and had to be abandoned. The kit generally goes together without problems and certainly needs no filler. However, in every example of this kit I have built, the port intakes have been a poor fit, and this one was no exception. The two parts of the canopy will only fit together if you position the first part very accurately and getting all the wheels to touch the ground at once is almost impossible. I also replaced the vulnerable nose pitot probe with a steel pin for strength. This 1990s ERTL issue is also moulded in a strangely soft and bendy plastic, which made cutting and tidying up some of the smaller parts much easier than usual. Decals are not the ones supplied in the box (those have been used on one of my other SHAR builds), but a combination of a Modeldecal set and some other spares in order to represent this particular aircraft. FredT

Hi Everyone, This afternoon I picked up a Tamiya 1/48 scale Royal Navy Sea Harrier FRS.1 from my local Hobbycraft for £11.04 after using a 15% off voucher I got for registering one of my e-mail addresses with the hobbycraft club. Now a short while ago, bentwaters81tfw quoted my post and said that I have been robbed by the shop. I would just like to know if I should be taking this kit back i.e. are there problems with the kit ? If anyone can advise why bentwaters81tfw has said that I would like to know (I have posted on the thread asking him, but he is offline). I will take it back on Bank Holiday Monday if I need to take it back. I have also put a post on this thread and would like your opinions. Thanks as always. Rick

Well this has crept up on me. I have no sooner finished the MiG-21 builds and I find that it is time to start this one. I will be sharing my build time with the Tomcat STGB, so I hope that I will be able to complete it on time. Anyway this is my entry for this group build, a move up in scale for this one and I may add some after market bits too, we'll see how it goes.

Hi all, Despite a self-imposed 'F-14 only builds for 2014', I couldn't pass up the chance to build a Harrier! So I'm in with this one (in between a couple of Tomcats, obviously) Will be mostly OOB but might swap the Sidewinders out (as they look like the earlier ones). Does anyone know if the decals in this kit are accurate for a Falklands-era Sea Harrier? Thanks for looking and good luck with your builds! Dermot

The Harrier Project – 20/20 Vision My last act of self-aggrandisement on BM – a final pointer to my completed Harrier Project for those of you who want to see it. I counted them all up and I counted them all down. Here’s the collection … … and more photos for those that way inclined via this link. So it’s goodbye from them. And it’s goodbye from me. Happy Modelling folks!

The Last of the Last (of the Last?) Sea Harrier FA2, ZH813 / 006L, 800 Naval Air Squadron, November 2005 This 1/48th scale Airfix Sea Harrier FA.2 marks the 75% completion point of my Harrier Project - 15 down, 5 to go, before I have to start on phase 2 in order to keep the addiction going. The subject chosen was ZH813, operating as 006L of 801 Naval Air Squadron when deployed on HMS Illustrious in November 2005. As far as I am aware, but I've been known to be wrong many times before, ZH813 was the last Sea Harrier, in fact the last Harrier, to be delivered from the UK production lines into service, even including second generation Harriers. This makes her the last Sea Harrier and the last Harrier (new builds, not including refurbishments and upgrades). Perhaps you could even add "of the last" again, as she may be the last all-British fighter we ever make? Certainly Jamie Hunter thought so when he titled his book "Sea Harrier - The Last All-British Fighter" (Ian Allan 2005). I think ZH813's maiden flight was 12 December 1988 and she was delivered on 18 January 1989. She was withdrawn from service in March 2006 and later ended up at the School of Flight Deck Operations (SFDO) at Culdrose as DD13. A pretty short flying career considering the money invested, but we will not go there in order not to raise the blood pressure. So, is there anything novel and exciting to say about this Sea Harrier build, other than it's the less commonly seen FA.2 variant due to rarity of supply of the kit? Well, not really, aside from demonstrating that modellers like me really could do with a modern version (coming, yipee) in order to make something look more like the real thing. For the record here's what I did... ... I replaced the kit seat with a resin ejection seat from Pavla. Likewise, I used dropped intake doors resin intakes and nozzles from Pavla. Heritage Aviation supplied the 190 gallon tanks (these were poor quality resin - lots of air bubbles, I should have sent them back) and a pair of resin CBLS obtained from a fellow modeller. The dummy 1000lber on the centre line, the pylon and the strakes were from a Tamiya GR1/AV-8A kit which is being robbed for spares. As ever, I used Nick Greenall's indispensable Harrier SIG modelling guides as a base for my efforts, trying to do as much as my skills allow or I think is worth doing. What I didn't do is create a front undercarriage bay nor move the front compressor blades forward, nor add the detailing inside the CBLS as this is all hidden or not noticed by the majority. I omitted the MDC on the canopy after multiple attempts to try and do something without a decal. (What we need is someone to do MDC decals for 1st generation Harriers in 1/48th scale). Whilst I choose real life examples to imitate, I don't try to replicate, as if you need telling. In particular here, she probably looks a bit more weathered than in real life at that stage and the decals are a shade too pink, though the kit ones are probably a shade too red. In the end, I decided to go with pretty in pink (Sorry Nick). I'm sure she will mellow with age. Decals were predominantly from the Harrier SIG's "Sea Harrier End of Era" sheet with a few kit ones used as and where necessary. Weathering is my usual mix of Tamiya powders, zip brushable pens and pencils. I coated with the new Humbrol Clear pre and post decal application. Humbrol matt varnish spray can was used to seal the weathering and a coat of Vallejo matt varnish brushed on as a final finish. This is how she turned out ... Comments welcome as ever. You can see a few more shots of this model and all the others by clicking on the "My Harrier Project Models" link in my signature. Next on the production line will be an AV-8B II NA.

Went on a tour of RNAS Culdrose today (guess where I'm on holiday!) - it was great to be able to see behind the scenes at a live Naval Air Station, even if we were mostly confined to the coach. Although August is their quiet time, there was a fair amount of flying going on: Merlin Mk1 Sea King Mk7 Sea King SAR Mk5 King Air Avenger We saw into most hangers including one full of shiny black Hawk T1s! All lined up with engineers fiddling with stuff. Saw plenty of Sea Kings being serviced as well. Was nice to see a handful of retired Sea Harriers that they use for aircraft deck handling practice - they fire them up & taxi around as well as having the guys push & pull them with tractors. Tour guide was very knowledgable and we also had a more detailed tour of the base fire station including the kids having a go with the hoses on the tenders - one's remote controlled via a joystick in the cab and the other's a bl**dy great jet on the roof! Am staying between Truro & Falmouth and we see the grey & red SAR Sea Kings overhead a lot - one buzzed by overhead at breakfast time (my camera was inside unfortunately!) and I've just heard one now overhead (pitch black though). Haven't downloaded my photos from today yet but if I get any decent ones I'll post them. £30 for a family ticket - worth it IMO. For more info see http://www.fleetairarm.com/culdrose-air-station.aspx Cheers, Andrew p.s. can't believe they're privatising SAR soon :-(

Sea Harrier FRS.1 Etch Detail Sets for Italeri Kit 1:72 Eduard The Italeri Sea Harrier is a tool first produced in 1983 under the ESCI name, but it still stands strong next to its rivals some 30 years on and gets favourable reviews from the modelling community. Eduard have released this set, however I suspect you can use most of the parts in an alternative kit if you have one of those in the stash already. As per usual, there is the full set on offer and a cheaper alternative known as the Zoom range. Set 73457 If you’re familiar with these sets, then you’ll know the format. Typically, with the full set you get a cockpit enhancement and usually, undercarriage and other external improvements too. Included in this set are the following: Seat belts, ejector handles, seat back pad (coloured Self Adhesive etch) Main panel, side panels including throttles, rudder pedals, HUD (coloured S.A etch) Rear cockpit, canopy frame, canopy detonation chord, windscreen wiper Replacement u/c doors, airbrake panel Exhaust blast plates Various exterior panels, antennas and tie down loops Boarding ladder Weapon mounting points on the pylons As normal with etch sets, there are some fine parts that will take some skill to handle and fix in place. Fitting the canopy denotnation chord will need to careful gluing, perhaps Kleer may be the best option. That said, apart from this rather delicate operation, the remaining parts are relatively straight forwards in assembly Set SS457 Just containing the pre-painted self adhesive fret as pictured above, you get most of the cockpit enhancements that are in the above set including the following: Seat belts, ejector handles, seat back pad (coloured Self Adhesive etch) Main panel, side panels including throttles, rudder pedals, HUD (coloured S.A etch) Rear cockpit, canopy frame, canopy detonation chord, windscreen wiper Conclusion For Harrier fans these are great packs. Obviously budget plays a part in your selection, but the larger pack with boarding ladder and many external improvements is the must have to produce a great little diorama. In fact I’ve got slightly distracted planning what mine will look like !! Review sample courtesy of

In hindsight..... I don't think a Sea Harrier FRS1 was such a good choice for a third build since my 30 year modelling 'holiday'. Why? Because too many people around here know too much about them! So building one of these as a test of new to me materials and techniques possibly wasn't such a good idea. So.. You are all going to have to forgive me for using a little artistic licence when I built and painted this. Mostly based on and inspired by this aircraft ( http://www.abpic.co.uk/popup.php?q=1055311 ) on its return to the U.K. after the Falklands conflict (I was in my early teens at the time). I have taken some liberties based on my lack of experience and just tried to get a presentable model, rather than a totally accurate presentation... Could be too much of the 'what ifs' about me. So please excuse the lack of tilted tail plane, the port side tank I should have weathered differently, the lack of 'distressed' sidewinder rail and a hundred and one other little 'errors'. So.... This was built from a second hand Esci kit that sadly had suffered somewhat in its slightly squished box and some of the main parts were somewhat warped. Cue careful bending back into shape in a bowl of hot water. I should have taken that as a warning because THIS build fought me every inch of the way with many little things going wrong. Trying resin parts AND some limited brass all at the same time was almost taking on too much. A bit of a challenge for this inexperienced soul I say, but I had to have those gorgeous Pavla gun pods, nozzles and intakes, as well as give brass a try with a little Airwaves set. I also had a bunch of decals from back in 1982, and a part used Modeldecal sheet that would allow me to create this aircraft without buying any other aftermarket sheets. Sadly, the Esci kit stencil set was pretty awful and didn't respond to Microsol at all. With no decent stencils I decided to replace the whole lot with the excellent Extradecal Falklands Anniversary sheet. Oh, and finished off with the Master pitot and angle of attack tube. I'm totally sold on these, they're great! The brass not so much. So here it is. I'm sort of pleased with it, it's a million miles away from my Matchbox rendition when I was in school, but.. My next model is going to be an out of the box build me thinks... Maybe practice my NMF and weathering a bit and not bother with all those bells and whistles... This time. And before I let you get on and look at my images... One last thing. I will eventually stop banging on about how I haven't done this for 30 years since I left school but I want everyone to know where I'm coming from and... well... erm... be more kind. SeaHarrier03 by IrritableRabbit, on Flickr SeaHarrier01 by IrritableRabbit, on Flickr SeaHarrier04 by IrritableRabbit, on Flickr SeaHarrier05 by IrritableRabbit, on Flickr SeaHarrier06 by IrritableRabbit, on Flickr SeaHarrier07 by IrritableRabbit, on Flickr

Hi everyone Despite having the Modellers datafile, the excellent stuff from Nick Greenhall et all from the SIG site and other piccies from t'internet I can't seem to find any drawings (ideally to 1/48) of the 30mm Aden pods so I can more acurrately detial them on my Airfix SHAR. I have done the obvious (drilled out muzzle, rounded ends, sanded off blisters to replace, drilled cooling holes) but would like just a bit more detail. Thanks in advance

Hi, I'm near to end a Sea Harrier, using the ESDG overall scheme (Falklands), and I want to use Tamiya paints. Some conversions tables, like the IPMS Stockholm table indicates XF-63 or XF-24. Which of them match better with ESDG ? Comparing to Humbrol 123, I think it's XF-24. It's correct ? Thanks, Gustavo

Hi, I'm building an Airfix SHAR FRS.1, 1/48 scale, and want to open the nose and make the Ferranti Blue Fox radar from scratch, but it's too much dificultly to find pictures of this radar and the open nose position. For example, i don't know if nose opens for a side or up... Searching in Google, i found some pictures, but i'm not right if they represent correctly the radar used on FRS1. These are some pictures i found (and i think are not the radar i want ): If someone knows about it and has some link or picture to share, i really appreciate. I'm searching in the forum, but not find any topic yet. Thanks !

Sea Harrier FRS51 - IN623 / 23, 300 Sqdn, Indian Navy, circa 2012 The latest model (build 12) in my Harrier Project is a FRS51 Sea Harrier in the latest Indian Navy scheme. At least I think it's the latest scheme, because trying to find up-to-date reference photos has proved to be quite difficult. Job done now, so a bit late to change. The Indian Navy Sea Harriers are now nearing retirement, so I expect this to be the last camouflage scheme that they carry. IN623 / 23 was the last FRS51 to be delivered to the Indian Navy in April 1992 and is one of only eight still flying / flyable, together with three T-birds. Twenty plus years of service is on a par with some of the longest serving Sea Harriers of the Royal Navy and in much higher temperatures! Yes, it is another boring monotone Harrier, but I fancied the new scheme, even though it meant I pretty much had to create all the stencil decals myself using an inkjet printer and inkjet decals paper. The roundels were provided courtesy of Nick (NG899) from an old decal sheet. I'm still learning the ropes with home made decals and as a consequence the swear box kitty has had a bit of a topping up (I'm sure the charity where the proceeds go will not mind). Trying to produce colour matching to print light numbers proved beyond my wallet. Hence, there's a few dodgy decals, but probably in keeping with some other parts of the venerable Airifx 1/48 scale kit that I chopped and changed to try and get a more representative SHAR (courtesy of Nick's indispensable build guide). My reference photos from 2010 showed a pretty clean Sea Harrier just out of it's "LUSH" upgrade, so I've moved it on a couple of years and given her some wear and tear in keeping with the traditional state of Harriers. Aside from having a go at most of the suggestions in Nick's build notes, I added a resin seat, and Heritage Aviation's nozzles and dropped door intakes. I did mix and match the undercarriage from various items in the spares box. She's brush painted of course, using Life Color's acrylic Light Compass Ghost Grey (FS36375) and Light Gull Grey for the radome. Klear coating has darkened it a fraction more than I would have liked, but let's not go to far down the shaes of grey debate. Weathering from Tamiya and rounded off with a spray of Humbrol matt varnish. So here she is ... Comments welcome as ever. Next up on the bench will be a Monogram / Revell AV-8B II.

Hi all, Wast going to post this as nearly shelved it half way through, and I know there a re a few very knowledgeable Harrier guys on here!! Not my best model, kit is pretty dated, fit is ok but detail is sparse on the interior to say the least, and I couldn't get hold of the Eduard cockpit etch set, so stuck the pilot in and closed the cockpit up. Anyway, apart from the intakes from Heriatge its all OOB, still need to finish a few bits off and add a few small decals but sun was out so deiced to shoot it now. Added some Airfix winders and a centerline pylon with a 100Ib bomb, not sure how accurate this is though! cheers Simon