AV-8B Harrier by Trumpeter - Finished!

[themongoose]

So many possible schemes to do! I really love the winter camouflage, maybe a night attack version, Desert Storm maybe? Well I'll have some time to decide as this won't get started until after NATS but I better start the thread so I commit myself to it 

I've got a good deal of aftermarket for it so it should come out looking more like a Harrier than Trumpy did. I won't correct everything for sure as it does look the part as is in terms of overall profile. In the end though who knows what rabbit-hole I'll go down once I actually start assembling plastic  

 

 

[alaninaustria]

Nice!

Cheers

Alan

[themongoose]

Well i was on the road for work this week so decided to drag this kit along and do some assembly in the evenings! Pretty much just some standard assembly. Thought i would show the mods i’ve made so far using Dave Roof’s tweak list (from the thread pages).

i cleaned up the rough molding on each side of the fuselage

filled in the vent alignment marks trumpy put in. I decided on a day attack harrier so these needed covered up.

 

Sanded off the square radar

filled in the duplicate access panel

 

edit - i also got rid of what i think are mold insert marks around the extension from the wing leading edge. In bright light i see these will need a little sanding before primer to see if everything is gone.

 

Forgot to grab a pic of the fire access ports on the LERX. I drilled them to face forward as suggested. As expected I’ve contemplated going overboard and fixing the nose up. Dave put some good overlays in his thread and i think i can reform the nose relatively easily. I am skipping one of the mods that isn’t really seen, the thick vertical band that trumpy made proud of the surface in the intakes. Doesn’t look hard tho so I bet i change my mind on that 

Edited July 12 by themongoose

[themongoose]

Making a little progress this week. Nothing special going on yet, just some assembly 

 

fan’s looking good

 

 

seams on the fuselage look good in bare plastic. We’ll see what it looks like when i get to primer. I’m getting pretty good with the black CA so hopefully nothing to see when we get there 

 

 

 

Getting the internals to match up was tough.

 

it’s enuff to make me wonder whether to leave the wheels down or do an in-flight display. Any thoughts from you guys?

[blackbetty]

cool! i have the same kit with lots of AM, will follow closely.

[themongoose]

I’m preparing to change the look of the nose. Following Dave Roof’s thread i rescribed the nose hinge line 3/32” forward.

you can see also when i went around the panel with a needle in a pin vise to establish the rivet location before sanding down the way to proud panel.

I found letting the area dry just a bit that the dust in the holes dries different so it’s easy to locate the holes and then make them uniform.

And finally some bondo! Will clean this up later and use some fine filler to smooth it out. Let’s hope the angle looks right!

 

[themongoose]

Next up is the kinky wing  

what i decided to do was scribe the backside of the wing from the forward fence back to the flap edge on the outboard side. I cut some brass and bent it to 10deg. Best i could come up with was to measure the dihedral off a front on shot of the Harrier.  Once i locked in the angle i filled the scribing with black ca and assembled it all. 

 

now that looks more like a Harrier Jump Jet!!

I’m working on blending in the leading edge along the dihedral. With the change in angle the top and bottom don’t line up anymore. Some bondo glazing putty should do the trick. More tomorrow when i start sanding the nose and wings 

[Martinnfb]

Perfection!  

[themongoose]

I’m working on a bunch of smll stuff. Couldn’t help putting some primer around the fuselage to see how my bondo job came out…

 

 

 

Ohh yeah! Pretty happy with that 👍 1st time too, no rework even.

The worst of the misc stuff oddly has been the flaps. They don’t fit at all. I had to cut off the positioning tabs and sand all the sides. 🤪

 

[themongoose]

Well I’m back on the Harrier! Mostly normal build stuff and PE so haven’t posted anything lately. Tonight I got on the guns and am pretty happy with my mock-up. This is made from the pointy end of a rocket launcher from a 1/35 Viper attack helo and some styrene.

 

more to come for sure over this rainy weekend!

[Oldbaldguy]

This is a really nice build!  It needs more coverage/exposure.  None of the surfaces on any of my Trumpeter kits fit where they were supposed to go, BTW.

[themongoose]

Many thanks Oldbaldguy!

I have been making progress on her. Just not much more than some boring pics as I assemble things. I've been fairly lucky so far in that I've been able to trim and shim parts to get them to fit with minimal putty.

I added typical styrene strips under the wing to fuselage joint and I sanded away the back face of the piece that sits inside the inlet fan hub.  That got the front fuselage to mate up clean with the back-half 

 

And I am making up something that looks more like the ammunition belt crossover than the kit part did...by the way the dang kit part didn't fit across the gap side to side, ugggh, thaat was the final straw in the decision to make my own part!

 

 

I'm done with my 1:1 car build for the Fall so hoping to spend lots of time at the bench this weekend 

[themongoose]

Well the beautiful looking pylons from flying leathernecks turned out to be a huge amount of work. They just don’t fit the shape of the wing. Fortunately the hinges on them fully cover the kit hinges that have to be cut off. That saved some effort for sure. Then for the outer 2 where I changed the wing dihedral i had even more sanding and shaping to do. Each of them had to be drilled for at least 1 pin. There’s no allowance for that but I think it’s worthwhile so they don’t shift while the glue dries. 
This inner pylon is on a section of wing not modified so you can see the gap. I checked pics to get the alignment to the leading edge right so this is where it’s supposed to be.

 

Work in process from the morning…

 

 

 

 

 

Im very happy with how straight they came out. The stabilizers on the pylons look sharp. Wait till I get some paint on them. Now I’m conflicted on what ordnance to load up. Saw another cool mixed loadout while I was studying how to install the center pylon. My logic may be to build a bunch up and see what looks best... more on that in the upcoming weeks.

 

[themongoose]

Lots of progress today! I found all but 1 piece of ordnance in kits except for the Litening pod. For that I did find a flir pod so i’m going to use that as it will at least look the part until you get up close and personal. Once I sand all those old attachment points on the ordnance it will be ready for paint!

 

 

Edited November 11 by themongoose

[themongoose]

Paint is on  

Main paint done. Gonna have to repair the sand color tho. It came off in the same spot on both sides, which is where I had the black superglue. I must not have cleaned it off properly. 1 small edge where my snake was out of alignment. 1 blue spot, just a corner of the intake, that should’ve been dark gray instead of blue gray.

 

Mottling

 

freehand the blue

 

 

 

 

Poster putty for the grey 

 

And the reveal

 

 

 

 

I’m using MCW lacquers so everything will be gloss. This is nice because once I do my touchups, I can go right to decals and then a flat clear….but I guess I need to fix that leading edge before I go too far lol