Kinetic 1/48 Sea Harrier FRS1 XZ451 during operation Corporate

[Phone Phixer]

I can't help with definite info for a FRS1. But I am currently building the GR3 and it has PE2 as the outboard wing fence and PE3 as the inboard.

 

Rob.

[NellyV]

OK. So I worked out from photos which PE wing fences to use. Kinetic PE Part No 3 for the inner and No 4 for the outer. Let's hope I'm right, 'cause they aint coming off now!

Pylons are now on. I've also attached all the various antenna, lumps and bumps I'm going to do prior to priming. Tail planes, stores and Aden gun pods will go on after painting. I'd usually use Maskol as a temporary glue to fix the UC bay doors in place closed for painting at this point, but because they have their hinges moulded in and in the case of the main bay are also slightly undersized, I'll stuff the bays with PU foam and some tape to prevent overspray of the interiors.

Although I managed to get the Eduard HUD frame in place, I failed completely to add Eduard's acetate combiner glass. I just couldn't get it to stick in place and so I fell back on using the kit clear part, which although overly thick, proved easier to stick in place and to be honest it can't be seen that well through the windshield anyway. The only other Eduard parts I've not ended up using so far are the PE vortex generators, which proved to be a nightmare to glue on accurately and the nozzle lever in the cockpit. Eduard supply three copies of this very small PE part (there's a clue right there), and believe it or not I managed to get one attached first time before I closed up the fuselage around the cockpit. However, at some point later I must have knocked it off and although I had two further goes at attaching the remaining two spares, both pinged off and are now buried somewhere in the carpet pile. I'd also knocked off the small black and white colour PE part from the cockpit backwall, but have now reattached it after finding it two days later on the carpet when I was looking for the two blade aerial parts which I'd also just dropped on the floor😆. As you can see below, I decided to close off the middle intake blow-in door, which Kinetic chose to leave open, because this appears to stay closed in all the pics I've seen of a parked up SHAR with the engine off. I'm going to trim off the projecting upper lip of the nose intake ahead of the windshield. I think this is Kinetic's rather crude attempt to replicate the small D shaped hoop guard rail that sits just in front of this intake. BTW Kinetic don't even reference attaching the supplied intake part in the destructions! I might have a go at replicating a separate guard, then it's time to mask up the windshield (not forgetting to Maskol the reccy camera port!) and spray away.

Based on the reference pic below, I'm not so sure now that the outer wing pylon front end did actually needed reshaping? I think mine are probably now too deep, but I also think the kit's are still a shade too shallow. The reality I think is that they lie somewhere in between. I did my best to reshape all the wing the pylon forward attachment surfaces, but I'll only know how successful I have been in getting the stores lined up correctly when I hang them on the pylons. A preliminary test fit shows the front of the tanks are more or less where they should be, but the winders might end up being a shade nose down.

 

 

[NellyV]

Main assembly is now been primed (1st pic) and painted in AK RC295 EDSG lacquer (2nd pic). Its a rather matt finish, but a coat of Quick Shine should gloss the EDSG and matt black radome up nicely for decaling. Now I've seen the pics I can see a few spots that may need a bit of touching up. I've been thinking about how to try and best represent the on-board ship respraying of the white underside in EDSG on the way down to the South Atlantic. Unlike the aircraft on Hermes, the aircraft on Invincible were apparently sprayed and not brush painted, so in theory the overall finish may have been fairly homogenous. I could try and play with the shading of the lacquer directly but it might be easier after decaling to apply a final Quick Shine coat on the top surfaces with a not so 'hard' edge where the original finish met the white underside, then apply a satin finish to the underside, feathered up over the hard edge. This should introduce a shade difference (hopefully subtle). Any views on this idea? I'll also try and replicate partial ablation of the underside EDSG on areas subject to aerodynamic wear, such as tank noses, pylon fronts and intake lips using touches of white paint.

BTW I gave up on trying to recreate a guard ahead of the small nose intake. TBH there doesn't appear to be one here in some of the SHAR pics I've seen and I'd be bound to make a complete mess of it anyway. I spent ages making a jig to make sure I got the right degree of tailplane anhedral versus the hinge end plates and failed miserably. I ended up dry fitting them to the fuselage and adjusting using the Mk 1 eyeball while the cement set. I think I also mentioned previously that Kinetic didn't provide enough sway braces for all the pylons. Wrong again! When I was rummaging through the box, I found a load that I had forgotten I'd snipped off the main sprue early on in the build. What an ejiat!

 

 

 

[Johnson]

3 hours ago, NellyV said:

Any views on this idea? I'll also try and replicate partial ablation of the underside EDSG on areas subject to aerodynamic wear, such as tank noses, pylon fronts and intake lips using touches of white paint.

From photos of toned-down Invincible Sea Harriers, the difference between the upper EDSG and lower (over the white) is hard to spot, only a few pics show it. Very subtle. The aerodynamic wear, revealing the white, on the lower front lips of the intakes, front of the 100 gal tanks and on the pylon fronts is certainly evident. Varied on plane to plane. A lot of SHAR models overdo it. 'Less is more', as they say.

[NellyV]

From photos of toned-down Invincible Sea Harriers, the difference between the upper EDSG and lower (over the white) is hard to spot, only a few pics show it. Very subtle. The aerodynamic wear, revealing the white, on the lower front lips of the intakes, front of the 100 gal tanks and on the pylon fronts is certainly evident. Varied on plane to plane. A lot of SHAR models overdo it. 'Less is more', as they say.

15 hours ago, Johnson said:

From photos of toned-down Invincible Sea Harriers, the difference between the upper EDSG and lower (over the white) is hard to spot, only a few pics show it. Very subtle. The aerodynamic wear, revealing the white, on the lower front lips of the intakes, front of the 100 gal tanks and on the pylon fronts is certainly evident. Varied on plane to plane. A lot of SHAR models overdo it. 'Less is more', as they say.

Tx @Johnson

Thinking further on this I agree. I found a pic on aerial visuals of XZ451 which was purportedly taken on its immediate return from the Falklands and although it's not a particularly hi-res image there doesn't appear to be any discernible difference in shade between topside and underside, plus not that much evidence of ablation. So I may do away with any shade variation and only attempt some subtle ablation. Unfortunately, this all makes for a very boring overall monotone finish, although underside shots of Shars when they had just entered service show a lot of stream wise muck on their white rear fuselage undersides due to all the debris thrown up during VTOLs presumably. Will be interesting to try and replicate this, but still difficult to pull it off successfully on an EDSG background. 

 

Mulling over the nozzle finishes now. I think the front cold nozzles were painted EDSG, but the rears look to be a burnt metallic bronze with some colour variation across them as are the heat shields. Anyone have any views on best colour matches for the hot end parts?

[Johnson]

7 hours ago, NellyV said:

burnt metallic bronze

Bronze may be a bit too golden/brown. I think they were steel. I used Alclad II Stainless steel with a very light coat of Jet Exhaust and a bit more on the heat shields.

[NG899]

I’ve updated the guidance on the pylons, so please drop me a PM with your email in it and a summary of the other info you need and I’ll send you some pdfs.

 

Cheers 

 

Nick

[NellyV]

On 25/01/2023 at 20:32, Johnson said:

Bronze may be a bit too golden/brown. I think they were steel. I used Alclad II Stainless steel with a very light coat of Jet Exhaust and a bit more on the heat shields.

It amazes me how light quality and surface finish affects the apparent colour of metallic objects. I looked again at some pics and the nozzles appear to have a bronze or coppery tone in some photos and a greyish silver in others. So I've attempted to blend in coppery/silvery/burnt tones on the nozzles and heat shields. I only have Alclad Aluminium lacquers to hand so I used a base coat of Tamiya metallic grey/bronze acrylic, which was initially way too coppery and bright, but then applied some blue, burnt red and oil stain from an old Tamiya weathering set. Finally, a dry brush over with titanium silver added some silver highlights. The end result may not be entirely correct, but they appear quite convincing to me at least. Unfortunately. they look totally different and unconvincing in these iPhone shots taken with indirect (1st) and direct (2nd) electric lighting. They're really not as dull as the first pic shows them to be and not as bright as in the second one, but you'll just have to take my word for it.😉 I've been bringing the remaining elements together today, including the canopy and should make rapid progress from now on.

The canopy is another challenging problem. Kinetic chose to mould the clear part with a fraction of a mm overlap of the EDSG colour across the join with the frame. There are also sprue gates attached to the clear part where it joins the frame. Therefore. you have to be very careful in cutting the clear canopy from the sprue so as not to get blemishes that will lie outside the to be painted area. Despite the lack of information in the Kinetic destructions, I'd seen that the decal sheet had decals (3 & 4) for the canopy detonation cord and I set about applying these. However, Kinetic managed to curb my enthusiasm for this kit once again when I realised these were only a fit for the FA2 canopy, which has the wider cord spacing! I threw caution to the wind at this point and painted the internally moulded cord lines with white paint using a fine brush. The end result looked fairly convincing after clean up with the sharpened end of a cocktail stick. I know a commonly used way of attaching plastic transparencies is to use PVA which is transparent when dry, but my own experience is that PVA doesn't have much grab and so I only use this for attaching items temporarily. I generally use Tamiya Extra thin cement and carefully run this around the base of the transparency in situ. This so far (touch wood) has worked OK for me. In this case, I used a combination of extra thin Tamiya cement to spot weld the canopy to the frame in a few places and then ran some extra thin CA carefully around the entire seam with the end of a cocktail stick. This was a somewhat sphincter puckering moment, but I managed to do it without fogging any of the un-painted transparency area and the transparency is now firmly welded to the frame. I butted a layer of Mr. Surfacer up to the join on the frame and polished this back to fill in the joint as much as possible. The canopy is currently still masked up awaiting a final gloss coat to the frame, but I'm hoping it should look AOK in the final reveal and will include a pic of the end result in my last few posts.

 

[Johnson]

1 hour ago, NellyV said:

The end result may not be entirely correct, but they appear quite convincing to me at least

Look pretty good to me!

[NG899]

The rear nozzles and exhaust shields soon get very sooty. Matt black for the nozzles, dry brushed over gunmetal works for me, while the exhaust shields are similarly treated with maybe their upper edges in natural or gunmetal. 
 

I’ve stood by these things and they are dirty!

 

I know I’m joining this late, busy!

 

Hope that helps 

 

Nick

[NG899]

On Invincible the demarcation between upper surface original EDSG and lower surface white oversprayed EDSG was very subtle. Look at photos from the time. The usual tell tales were white edges on some of the panels. Must photos are B+ W which picks up the difference more than colour film did.

 

On Hermes parked aircraft had their nozzles 80-degrees down to limit engine windmilling with a broom handle shoved down the starboard intake as a brake, honest. On Invincible the blanking plates seem to have been used more so the nozzles were usually fully back on parked aircraft.

 

Canopy, fit the frame to the fuselage and then attach the transparency, I use Klear for this, to get the best fit between windscreen and hood if you have the canopy closed.

Will play catch up over the weekend.

 

Nick

[NellyV]

18 hours ago, NG899 said:

The rear nozzles and exhaust shields soon get very sooty. Matt black for the nozzles, dry brushed over gunmetal works for me, while the exhaust shields are similarly treated with maybe their upper edges in natural or gunmetal. 
 

I’ve stood by these things and they are dirty!

 

I know I’m joining this late, busy!

 

Hope that helps 

 

Nick

OK. I'll add a bit more muck. Thanks!

[NellyV]

18 hours ago, NG899 said:

On Invincible the demarcation between upper surface original EDSG and lower surface white oversprayed EDSG was very subtle. Look at photos from the time. The usual tell tales were white edges on some of the panels. Must photos are B+ W which picks up the difference more than colour film did.

 

On Hermes parked aircraft had their nozzles 80-degrees down to limit engine windmilling with a broom handle shoved down the starboard intake as a brake, honest. On Invincible the blanking plates seem to have been used more so the nozzles were usually fully back on parked aircraft.

 

Canopy, fit the frame to the fuselage and then attach the transparency, I use Klear for this, to get the best fit between windscreen and hood if you have the canopy closed.

Will play catch up over the weekend.

 

Nick

Thanks Nick, love that broom handle solution to the windmilling problem😁 Sounds like I need to invest in some photoetch intake mufflers if I really want to have it parked up as it would have been on Invincible, although I'm planning on having the canopy open to show the colour PE in the cockpit, so maybe a boarding ladder and a standing pilot figure would be a better look? I've glossed everything up ready for decaling now and unmasked the canopy which looks OK, although it looks to me like there was a white border around the transparency edge on the real thing (continuation of the detonation cord maybe?) that I've not attempted to recreate. Wasn't sure what colour the inside of the canopy frame was. I think likely Admiralty Grey, but as I don't have that so I chose DSG as a close match. Once again, the shade of grey with this lighting effect looks a lot lighter than it does in reality. I really need to clean the inside surface a bit more based on this pic!

 

 

[NellyV]

OK. So I've glossed everything up for decaling and I've been looking at the fit of the UC parts and this has thrown up a conundrum that perhaps those who have completed the Kinetic kit can offer some advice on? Below is the main oleo (part E36) on top of the Eduard PE instructions. E36 has what appears to be two mounting lugs, one of which presumably fits into the rectangular slot in the front of the main UC bay as seen in the second pic below. However, the Eduard schematic shows the part only has one lug. When I test fit the part, it is not possible to get the lower lug in the pic below into the slot because the upper lug is the same length and it prevents the lower lug from going in. Should I remove the lower lug to make it like the Eduard diagram, or would this make the UC leg too short? Did Kinetic include two alternate locating lugs to allow for an extended oleo for say hovering flight and a compressed oleo for sitting on the ground? This of course makes no sense as the scissor linkage is moulded as compressed, but so much about this kit is slightly whacko. BTW. I already worked out that Eduard have incorrectly marked in red for removal the flexible coupling on the front of the leg, presumably because they think it's another scissor coupling. I also suspect Eduard part 26 should be shortened and attached to the base of the flexible coupling, rather than running all the way to the axle. Do you think I'm right?

 

 

[Pajarito]

Hi Neil,

That's quite odd, as the main landing gear wheel well part (E35?) ought to have holes for both lugs on the strut... 

 

 

Don't cut anything.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Pajarito
Part E35

[Johnson]

16 hours ago, NellyV said:

it looks to me like there was a white border around the transparency edge on the real thing (continuation of the detonation cord maybe?) that I've not attempted to recreate.

I think it was the continuation of the det cord, and quite a prominent feature of the canopy. I used very thin strips of white decal (from used invasion stripes). Tricky but possible.

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235111244-esci-172-sea-harrier-frs1/&do=findComment&comment=4556865

 

I did consider masking and painting but I didn't think I could achieve a consistent line width at 1/72. Might be easier at 1/48. If you did use decals, the advantage is that you can cut multiple strips (with a new blade) and choose the best. And if they don't look right, easy to remove when still wet.

 

Cheers,

[NellyV]

14 hours ago, Pajarito said:

Hi Neil,

That's quite odd, as the main landing gear wheel well part (E35?) ought to have holes for both lugs on the strut... 

 

 

Don't cut anything.

 

 

 

 

You are right. I hadn't spotted that detail in the destructions. Lord knows why mine only has one, but the lower wing parts for the FRS1 didn't have holes for the aileron actuators either. I'm not gonna try and open up the other hole now but will just remove the now redundant lug and rely on CA glue to hold everything in place with one lug.

 

5 hours ago, Johnson said:

I think it was the continuation of the det cord, and quite a prominent feature of the canopy. I used very thin strips of white decal (from used invasion stripes). Tricky but possible.

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235111244-esci-172-sea-harrier-frs1/&do=findComment&comment=4556865

 

I did consider masking and painting but I didn't think I could achieve a consistent line width at 1/72. Might be easier at 1/48. If you did use decals, the advantage is that you can cut multiple strips (with a new blade) and choose the best. And if they don't look right, easy to remove when still wet.

 

Cheers,

Great minds think alike! I was only just thinking on using decal strips to do this late last night. It will mean however that they will be on the outside surface rather than the inside, but not having a complete det cord border will otherwise detract from the overall effect.

[Johnson]

2 minutes ago, NellyV said:

It will mean however that they will be on the outside surface rather than the inside

This occurred to me also. At 1/72 applying to the inner surface would have been a bit difficult, but maybe easier at 1/48? I found that having a lip of paint on the outside (the edge of the EDSG) for the decal to butt up against, positioning the thin decal strip much easier than I thought. Having it on the outside, although not ideal, was better than not there at all.

 

Cheers,

[NellyV]

Some assembly still required. Nick kindly sent me his notes on the reworking required for the Kinetic FRS1 kit. I shan't be able to carry out many of the recommended mods as I am too far on in this build and I'm going to draw a line under some of the hyper detailing options. Hopefully, to the uninitiated eye it will look reasonably authentic when finished. I still have some way to go to get to black belt in this hobby🙂

 

[NellyV]

On 27/01/2023 at 20:08, NellyV said:

Despite the lack of information in the Kinetic destructions, I'd seen that the decal sheet had decals (3 & 4) for the canopy detonation cord and I set about applying these. However, Kinetic managed to curb my enthusiasm for this kit once again when I realised these were only a fit for the FA2 canopy, which has the wider cord spacing! I threw caution to the wind at this point and painted the internally moulded cord lines with white paint using a fine brush.

 

So, I've just discovered the hard to see white decals helpfully buried in the footer of the decal sheet with the label NARROW MDC next to the sheet serial number! These appear to be the Det Cord for the narrower spacing on the FRS1 canopy, but on laying these up against the canopy, they don't appear to be a perfect match for the moulded detail either. I'm going to try and use these together with some white decal strips to make a better job of recreating the canopy det cord. Watch this space.

Has anyone made a better job of providing placement instructions for the decals. Kinetic's guidance is woefully lacking in detail. just like their assembly instructions.

[NellyV]

Canopy det cord is completed. I applied thin strips of white decal cut from the edge of the red fin flashes on the decal sheet to the inside of the transparency edges to recreate the missing det cord edging. I didn't use the Narrow MDC decals because they are definitely not the same shape as the moulded in detail and therefore relied on my previously painted on detail in the end. The white decal edging is maybe slightly too wide, but the width discrepancy looks worse in the photo than it does by eye as per usual and the transparency looks a wobbly mess here, whereas by eye it's also not too bad😉. 

I've also begun making some of the mods recommended by Nick in his latest Shar build notes. The first of these involved moving the centre line pylon forward from the original position provided by the Kinetic locating pins. I was able to gently ease the pylon from side to side to release it and then remove the pins before cementing it back in place 4mm further forward as seen in the first pic below. Second pic below shows the end result after re-touching the paintwork.

 

 

 

 

[NellyV]

I feel like I'm finally getting there. I've been humming and ahhing about whether to fair-in the very un-aerodynamic kit tailplane pivot points, but in the end I decided to bite the bullet today. A somewhat tricky job at this stage because of the risk to the paint finish, but after applying some protective tape strips I managed to keep the damage to a minimum and a respray got it back to more or less where it was before. Also after reading Nick's detailed build notes, I took the opportunity to fill the slight step mis-mould in the underside of the port tailplane leading edge that I hadn't spotted before myself. Also debating if I can be bothered to add the missing vertical rudder strakes at this stage of the build, because I'm pretty much at the decaling stage now and hope to have a 95% completed model for my next post. However, I will have to carve and polish a new transparency part 3 because of a moulding mis-shot I've just spotted on sprue F in my kit. Ahhgg!😒. Here's a question: Ever since building the Tamiya 1/48 Shar kit back in the early 90s I've always assumed that Falkland era Shars had their underwing roundels overpainted in EDSG. Only this week have I begun to doubt this because of photos I've seen of other folk's builds. Can anyone confirm roundels should/shouldn't be on the wing undersides on XZ451 and be the same as the over wing roundels if present?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NG899]

Underwing blue/red roundels confirmed under the wings on XZ451/006. Source reference: the late R L “Dick” Ward on the carrier’s return in 1982. 
 

 

[NellyV]

17 hours ago, NG899 said:

Underwing blue/red roundels confirmed under the wings on XZ451/006. Source reference: the late R L “Dick” Ward on the carrier’s return in 1982. 
 

 

Thanks @NG899. This is the photo on the IWM site that introduced doubt in my mind. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205022252 Any idea when it was likely taken? IWM states the aircraft peeling away is XZ451 and it doesn't have underwing roundels in this shot, but it is also carrying the larger wing tanks which I believe weren't used during the campaign and what appears to be one live 9L. So I guess it was most likely taken post Falklands, because as you point out in your notes at least some of the aircraft retained their all over EDSG paint jobs well into 1983. Also the roundels on ZA176 in the foreground appear to have the correct type B proportions, rather than type A with the white overpainted in blue. There's also a dark shadow on the ventral fin that could be a serial number, but it's hard to tell. I believe this wouldn't have been present during the campaign either? The sidewinder rails also appear to have the later type of pylon adapter with the projecting "winglets". 

[Collin]

On 1/29/2023 at 10:08 AM, NellyV said:

Some assembly still required. Nick kindly sent me his notes on the reworking required for the Kinetic FRS1 kit. I shan't be able to carry out many of the recommended mods as I am too far on in this build and I'm going to draw a line under some of the hyper detailing options. Hopefully, to the uninitiated eye it will look reasonably authentic when finished. I still have some way to go to get to black belt in this hobby🙂

 

Are Nick’s notes available for other potential builders of this kit to consume?

Cheers

Collin