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Harrier GR.3 Falklands 40th Anniversary (K48139) Includes Royal Navy Tow Tractor Mk.II 1:48 Kinetic via Luckymodel.com The Harrier is an iconic (in the truest sense) example of what was possible when British Aviation was at its prime. It was a revolutionary design back in the 60s, and has seen many improvements and even a complete re-design in the shape of the Harrier II, which saw McDonnell Douglas get more heavily involved, giving the US Marines their much beloved AV-8B, and the British the Gr.5/7/9, all of which had new carbon-composite wings, massively upgraded avionics and improved versions of the doughty Pegasus engine, which was always at the heart of this legendary design. The Harrier is a taxing aircraft to fly due to the high pilot workload, and requires the best pilots to do it justice in the hovering flight mode especially, where the pilot must control the throttle, direction of the airflow, and make minor adjustments to its attitude and altitude with the use of puffer jets, even before having to do anything ‘basic’ such as dogfight, navigate, or land. The original Harrier to reach service at the very end of the 1960s was the GR.1, which still bore a quite striking familial resemblance to the prototype and the earlier (and smaller) Kestrel, having a pointed nose and relatively confined canopy that hadn't yet been ‘blown’ to improve the pilot’s ability to move his head around to gain better situational awareness. The GR.3 had a more powerful engine, the laser tracker in a peculiar ‘anteater’ extended nose fairing, as well as many sensor, avionics upgrades, and Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) upgrades. When the GR.3 was transported to the Falklands in 1982 to back up the new and untested FRS.1 Sea Harriers, they were refitted with new pylons that could carry Sidewinder missiles with all the necessary cabling and avionics changes, so that it would be able to replace any possible SHAR losses, as until that point the Harrier was mainly used in the Ground Attack/Support role in the RAF. With the re-development of the aircraft into the Harrier II, the anteater nose was phased out and the new composite winged GR.5 with massively improved avionics, engine and other systems took over the mantle. For the most part, the general public don’t really see them as different machines, and the media’s constant reference to them as “jump jet” makes the eye-corners twitch for those that know. The Kit For many years modellers of the Harrier were crying out for a good quality new tooling in this scale, and Kinetic put a lot of effort and research into making our dreams a reality, firstly with the two Sea Harriers, then the two-seat trainer Harriers in ‘tin-wing’ and later composite winged versions, all of which we have reviewed here a few years back. Once the original metal wing had been tooled, the natural progression was to tool the early Harriers, which was always Kinetic’s stated intention, although we weren’t too sure on the order in which they would arrive. Kinetic's Harrier kits are all thoroughly modern toolings, benefiting from a lot of extra detail that just wasn't possible back when the older toolings were made by other companies. It arrives in a special anniversary Kinetic Gold box with a rather nice painting of a GR.3 on deck with a tractor on the front, and eight sprues inside in a mid-grey styrene, plus one in clear, a fret of Photo-Etch (PE) brass, and a large and busy decal sheet. The instruction booklet is in portrait A4, and the painting and markings diagrams are at the rear in greyscale. Don’t fret though, as you can pick up colour profiles below. Some of the sprues originated with the Sea Harrier FRS.1, with others coming from the trainer Harriers, plus a couple of other sprues including a new fuselage with optional LRMTS (Laser Rangefinder and Marked Target Spotter) nose parts, and of course the early single-seat fuselage. The extra sprue contains the parts for the tow tractor, which has been issued separately in the past. Despite the box stating that it is a GR.3, some of the decal options allow you to build a GR.1 if you wish, as the decal sheet is identical to the original GR.1/GR.3 boxing, just bereft of the tow tractor. Construction begins with the cockpit, which is nicely appointed with raised dials, knobs and so forth on the main panel and side consoles, a clear HUD, separate rudder pedals and control column. The Martin Baker seat is made up of a two-part frame, cushion, head-box topper, and rear ejection tube, plus the actuating loop between the pilot's knees, and some PE seatbelts that aren’t covered in the instructions. This fits into the tub with the addition of a rear bulkhead, which in turn mates to the nose gear bay, with built-in intake section that leads to the face of the engine fan in a bell-shaped intake housing. The rear gear bay and air brake bay are built up as one unit, with the brake shown being installed as a flex-fit part, which you'll perhaps want to see if you can fit later if you're planning on deploying it. Harking back to the old toy-like kits of the 70s, the nozzles are all joined internally by connecting axles between the sides, and linkages that replicates the movement of one pair of nozzles in the other. This is simply clipped together and the only glue needed is to secure the nozzle bases to the axles. With these built, you're now able to close the fuselage. The exhaust nozzles are very nicely done, with lots of moulded in detail thanks to some slide moulding, although a little flash has crept in, but is easily removed, leaving only a fine seam down the centreline to scrape away before they can be installed on the previously mentioned stubs, with the ribbed heat-resistant panel behind the aft "hot" nozzles. At this point the intake lips with their blow-in doors are built up from an inner and outer skin, and a choice of closed doors for flight, or "drooped" upper doors when the engine is inactive. There are some slight sink marks present in the door parts, so check yours and fill the depressions where necessary before you install them. The wing upper surface is full width, with the top surface of the fuselage moulded in, with the detail well done, capturing the curve nicely. After drilling out some holes for certain decal options, the lower wings are added before the assembly is placed on the fuselage, as are the flaps and ailerons with their actuator fairings, PE wing fences in the leading edge, and clear wingtip lights. The tail is separate, with single parts making up the elevators with separate swash-plates, and a two-part fin with separate rudder, all of which fit into the fuselage in the usual slot and tab manner, taking care to get the correct anhedral to the elevators. The bicycle landing gear has tyres made from two halves that enclose a single piece hub, with one wheel at the front, and a twin set at the rear (no pearls), adding a couple of clear landing lights on the nose leg. The bay doors are supplied with moulded in hinges, so should have a good solid attachment to the bay sides, and detail is again good. The two outriggers are each single parts, and have detailed painting instructions next to them, which seems to be the case throughout the instructions, happily. The nose has either the tapered cone nose with clear lights and pitot probe fitted for the GR.1, or the extended LRMTS with clear lights for the titular GR.3, moulded-in pitot, and a PE panel with blade antenna on the top for one specific decal option. There’s no clear option for an open “eye” for the tip of the nose, so if you’re going for that look, you’ll need to snip the tip and put some clear plastic in the hole and maybe some eyelids, although the eye was usually closed unless it was in use. At the rear the tail faring is fitted with an insert on the underside, and a choice or curved or contoured tip, depending on your decal option. There are a host of antennae and sensors around the airframe, some of which are optional depending on the decal variant, so take care when applying them. The result is a Harrier that fairly bristles with antennae! The canopy has been moulded without slide-moulding, as it doesn't have the characteristic blown-style of later marks, so there's no annoying seam on the centreline. It fits on a separate rail part that some people seem to loathe, but as long as you're careful of your choice as well as quantity of glue, it should go together just fine, and don’t forget to apply the decal for the det-cord canopy breaker early on. The windscreen is similarly well moulded with a raised windscreen wiper, and has some nice delicate rivets, plus the asymmetric fairing at the front that houses the wiper gear. On the lower boat-tail fairing, there is a part in PE that can be applied if you are going to use your own decals, but it isn’t used with the supplied airframes. Nice of Kinetic to think of us, and do check your references. No Harrier (or modern fast jet, for that matter) is complete without some additional tanks to extend its range, and/or some kind of war load, and Kinetic have been their usual generous selves as far as this kit is concerned. A full set of pylons are included, with additional detail in the shape of separate shackles that fit into the bottom of each one, plus the 30mm Aden cannon pods that are synonymous with the mighty Harrier slung under the belly, and a pair of strakes (D22) on the sprues that replace the gun pods when not fitted to keep the airflow tidy, just in case. In addition are the following weapons for you to choose from: 6 x AIM-9 Sidewinder A2A missiles 4 x Matra 155 Rocket Pods 2 x 2” Rocket Pods 2 x Drop Tanks (Large) 2 x Drop Tanks (Small) Plus these items that will end up in the spares: 4 x AIM120 AMRAAM Beyond Visual Range (BVR) A2A missiles 2 x Sea Eagle Anti-Ship Missile (ASM) A full complement of stencils is included for the supplied munitions, with their placement given on the markings section at the rear of the booklet. Deck Tractor The little deck tractor has power beyond its size, and is made compact due to the size limitations of even a huge warship such as an aircraft carrier. The chassis is a tangle of boxes, adding front and rear bulkheads to give us our first clue which way it travels, fitting sides and the top cowling that has a raised grippy surface moulded into it. The seat, steering column and foot pedals inserted into the centre solidifies the direction of travel, and a pair of headlights are fixed to the front, and a rolled-up hose on one wheel arch. Speaking of wheel arches, they’re filled by four two-part tyres wrapped around their hubs, and with a stub-axle inserted from behind, after which they are installed, one in each corner. A tow-bar with a pair of transport wheels on a V-shaped axle finish off the build phase, and over the page painting and decaling is covered on set of diagrams, with a choice of Golden Yellow or Olive Green depending on when your tractor was operating. The stencils were stable over the years, with just the unit markings and military number plate differentiating them. Markings Kinetic have included a generous seven sets of markings in the kit, and from the box you can depict one of the following: Harrier GR.1 XV788/M – 1(F) Sqn., RAF Wittering, 1970 Harrier GR.1A XV788/M – 1(F) Sqn., RAF Wittering, 1970 Harrier GR.3 XV795/05 “The Intruder” – 1(F) Sqn. Belize City Airport, Belize, 1975 (LMTRS not fitted) Harrier GR.3 XV787/02 “Hot to Trot” – 1(F) Sqn. Belize City Airport, Belize, 1975 (LMTRS not fitted) Harrier GR.3 XV760/F -233 OCU, RAF Wittering, 1977 Harrier GR.3 XZ997/31 -1(F) Sqn., Operation Corporate, HMS Hermes, 1982 Harrier GR.3 XZ997/V IV(AC) Sqn., RAF Gütersloh, West Germany, 1992 The decals have been designed by Crossdelta for Kinetic and printed by Cartograf, so quality isn't an issue. Register, sharpness and colour density are excellent, with all but the smallest weapons stencils legible with the aid of magnification. Conclusion A thoroughly modern tooling of the first generation of this superb and greatly missed aircraft. There are a couple of sink marks, some ejector pin marks to fill, and some seam lines to scrape, but we're modellers so we shouldn't be too shy of exercising our skills. Plus, Kinetic's designers have kept these to a pleasant minimum to keep us happy. As well as being available from Lucky Model in Hong Kong, you can now select UK, USA, Australia, and Malaysia with local shipping when purchasing your model, as Kinetic now have local warehouses in these locations to reduce the postage costs for us modellers. If you’d like to learn more about it, there’s a page here on Luckymodel’s site. Extremely highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of

Hey everyone, While this isn't really 'armour', I couldn't think of where else to post it. So Mods, please feel free to move! This is the little 1/72 Fujimi Deck Tractor from their Flight Deck Crew set 35001. Built out of box but turned the front wheels to make it look a bit more interesting. Will probably add the driver at a later stage and maybe some scale chains if I can find them (anyone know where?) Gotta hate the macro setting on the camera - just spotted nasty seams on the wheel chock! The WIP build log is here and thanks for looking!