INTRODUCTION
The
first
time I built a Harrier (aka SHAR, aka
Jump Jet) was the Matchbox 1/72nd kit, around 1980.
I loved my SHAR and was really impressed by the characteristics of this (at
the time) brand new plane. Later on, close to 1982, I traded this
kit with a friend at school, who gave me a (badly built) Me-110 night fighter
(minus all the antennas which were lost or broken). My first Harrier had
a very bad ending when my friend in
1982, whose cousin was fighting in the islands as a private, decided to
smashed it to the floor and stepped on it…
I
have always built Argentinean planes from the conflict, as it is
important for me to tell our side of the story and not the history that the
entire world knows thru the British (an old saying goes something like:
That who wins the war, writes History).
Some
months ago I saw a HobbyCraft’s Sea Harrier on sale on my local hobby shop
and decided that buy it and write an article about our side of the losses of
SHARs during the conflict.
This
plane ias ZX450. This plane had lots of “firsts”: first operational
Sea Harrier ever, first presented to the public, the first that took off from
the ski jump jet ramp, and a plane that had been used in tests for the Eagle
air-sea missile.
BUILDING
MY JUMP JET
Fuselage:
After
I bought the kit, I check the references on the Internet and they could not
have been worse…Anyway, I went ahead.
The
engine is good and has a device that, in theory, allows all 4 nozzles to be
moved at the same time (Matchbox style).
Click on
images below to see larger images
As the cockpit is quite sparse
(only a decal for the instrument panel) I had to go with the kit-supplied
pilot. This, by no means, pretends to be a representation of Taylor.
I followed the instructions from HC and painted the helmet in white…I had to
correct it later when the kit was almost finished as I found out that they were
actually gray.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The only picture
I have of ZX450 during the war shows the
top half of the little doors on the air intakes open. So I decided
to cut them open, which was quite a challenge. You can also see that the
fit of the 2 halves of each one of the 4 nozzles is poor.
As there are no walls for
the nose gear area, I had to scratch build them using an old card.
Now I found the second
challenge with this kit: either you make the 4 nozzles of the engine fit
into the holes of the fuselage, or you have a good fit of the air intake
to the engine. I went with the first option, which left a huge gap
in the intake. I had to fill it with curved pieces of plasticard and
I then used putty to cover the holes.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Wings
and landing gear:
The
fit of the wings is not good and acrylic paste and putty helped me to overcome
the problem.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The landing gear is tricky, to
say the least. The nose stands too tall, same as the central gear. The ones on
the wings are too short unless the wing angle is too steep…so I decided to
trim the main gear and a little bit of the nose one.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Fuselage
part II:
A
piece that is missing all together in the kit is the tail radome. I had
to scratch build it using scale plans, plasticard and lots of putty. The
radar warning on the tail is not present in the kit, so I had to build it
myself too.
I
added the Aden gun bays. The fit left lots to be desired and I used
acrylic base again to cover the gaps. I checked for flaws in the unions
using paint. And the areas of difficult access during painting (inside
the air intakes as an example) were painted before hand using the final
gray. The nose (radar radome) was painted in black.
Click on
images below to see larger images
As the little doors on the air
intakes lead to the engine area,
I painted the cut out parts in black. Then I glued them in place (terrible
fit) and used putty, pieces of plastic and
sandpaper to fix the area.
Painting:
The
entire plane, once it was masked where needed,
was given a good coat of gray. The radar warning radomes were painted in
a mix of yellow and brown. The tip of the small legs was painted in
yellow and green. All landing gear was given a coat of aluminum.
Several hands of Future left the kit ready for the decals.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Decals:
Good
things and bad ones about the Hobbycraft decals: quite thin, very good
adhesion, but very poor register.
And
to make things worse, I put the main panel lines (red) and crosses upside
down. When I tried to fix them 5
minutes after I had placed them, they were so well adhered that I was
forced to sand them out…Two days later, after I calmed down, I masked the
area and created my own panel lines and crosses. A new coat of Future
restored the color. The crosses are a little bit too
big, I was not going to redo it again. Besides, it had been a very painful
process to create those masks.
Click on
images below to see larger images
After doing a thorough search for
roundels in my spares box, I decided to paint out the white with blue mixed by
myself. To do so, I masked with Maskol the blue area and left the white
one exposed. I mixed blue and black to get an approximate color. The
blue of the decals is too dark and I finished (I believe) with the opposite
effect: the center blue should have
been darker than the outer circle.
An
example of the problems with the decals is the arrows in the canopy.
They should be yellow but the kit has them in white, and the white does not
match the black borders! I cut out the
white area and painted inside the
black border using yellow paint and
a brush.
“ZX4”
came from the kit and I added the “50” for “ZX450” under the tail
using spare decals. Same was the situation with the “50” on the air
intakes (actually it was “450"
but the “4” was painted out with gray like some stencils during
the trip to the South).
Click on
images below to see larger images
Decals
for the ejection seat are from Condor decals (the set
I have used is the one that has several Argentinean kill for Sea Harriers –
very good quality indeed!)
Other
details:
The
windshield wiper is not present in the HC kit. I had to scratch build
it. This is what it looks like originally and the final look.
I
painted the position lights and had to scratch build the one under the fuselage
(missing in the kit, I made it using a piece of a clear red disposable knife).
Click on
images below to see larger images
To
make the several openings in the Aden bays, I masked the area and painted them
using a brush and black paint. I added a gun sight using clear
plasticard, the windshield, the external fuel tanks (very tight
fit - I had to sand the opening under the
wings), the landing gear doors, the air brake with its actuator arm,
the nozzles (that finally, after all my efforts, don’t move…), the little
“antenna” in front of the windshield (again, scratch built), and the pitot
on the nose.
I
finally painted in chrome silver the tip of the radar radome and that finished
the kit. It took me 3 months to complete it.
This
kit is dedicated to the Argentine gunners who made the British flyers respect
them, and to the 1000 + who died in the war, the 500 + that committed suicide
after it, and their loved ones whom they left behind.
Sources:
-
Falklands
Air War (Hobson and Noble)
-
Sea
Harrier over the Falklands (Sharky Ward)
-
Historia
Oficial de la Fuerza Aerea Argentina (Book 6, Vol. I and II)
-
Guerra
Aerea en las Malvinas (Andrada)
-
Halcones
sobre Malvinas (Carballo)
Acknowledgments:
-
Ricardo
Caballero
-
Piero
de Santis
-
Fabian
Vera
Pablo
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