Airfix 1/72 BAe Harrier GR.3

AIRFIX 1:72 BAE HARRIER GR MK.3

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: March 2009

Kit Details:

Airfix #02072 - British Aerospace Harrier GR.3.

Aircraft History:

Originally known as the P.1127/RAF the BAe Harrier started out as a simple tactical attack aircraft, with the venerable V/STOL capability that was salvaged from the ruins of the P.1154 in 1965. The Harrier entered service with the RAF as the GR Mk.1 (GR.1) in 1969. Few observers could have envisaged that this rather small fighter aircraft would change the face of air combat for the future. It effectively pioneered new tactics.

Critically, the thrust factor of the Harrier makes it what it is, with two cold and two hot nozzles vectoring air out from underneath the main wings on the side of the fuselage to give the aircraft lift in the absence of airspeed. The Harrier can lift off vertically (without a load), hover and even fly backwards, operating from any flat solid ground or ship. A short take off run enables the aircraft to be loaded up with ordnance.

The GR.3 Harrier was improved from the GR.1 in many respects but it's most distinguishable change was in the "bottle nose" housing uprated radar and avionics equipment, allowing to hug the turf and laser mark targets. The Harrier has been notoriously tricky as a combat performer in the air, as shown in the Falklands War of 1982, and even more tricky for opponents. Its small size, odd shape, smoke less engine, tremendous thrust/weight ratio and the ability to vector in forward flight to make manoeuvres beyond the capabilities of any other aircraft at the time it was seen in the skies. It also performed admirably as a ground attack or "mud mover" aircraft for which its role was always destined to be in the Falklands.

The GR.3 was the mainstay of the Harrier fleet for the RAF during the 1980's and early 1990's but has now been replaced in service by the improved and avionic enhanced GR.5 and GR.7 versions.

The Kit:

The kit comes in the usual Airfix style box which provides Humbrol numbers, details about the examples the kit covers, part numbers and measurements of the built up model on the side. There are just under 50 light grey parts on four bits of sprue (I have never really considered them complete sprues!) and the fuselage halves float loose in the box. According to the instructions there are three clear parts with two small panels on the fuselage behind the cockpit, my kit only had one clear part, the one-piece reasonably clear canopy. As is reasonably typical of those 80's reissues by Airfix, the plastic is very soft, easy to bend out of shape, and you have to watch any excess glue, or it will fuse ugly around the edges. There are loads of ejector pin marks, most of them carrying a bit of flash but thankfully most of them are on interior parts. Keep your trusty #11 handy as you will need to remove a few of these to get parts to fit. Flash also encumbers other parts in the kit, but nothing too major that season modellers will find anything more than a nuisance. There are also a few sink holes that need to be filled. Panel lines are raised, not a great lot of detail but also fairly typical of Airfix molds.

Instructions:

An A3 sized sheet is folded to make an A4 booklet to make up the instructions and follows the typical Airfix format. It launches with multi-lingual brief history of the Harrier on page 1 (in so many languages, there's only really a paragraph of text) and then half a page of modelling symbols and information, before then providing 13 assembly steps. Things get a bit busy in a couple of steps near the end but are easy enough to follow. The back page features four-view diagrams for painting and decal placement.

Construction:

A pilot figure and a generic looking tall boy.. er.. ejection seat is provided for your cockpit. While I build wheels up so a pilot figure is acceptable I think this is as always a very disappointing aspect of Airfix kits. The best I could do with the limited space was add in harness detail and ejection handles... well, something that looks marginally like them anyway. The dashboard was painted black and I found an old decal that I just used for the console. A long way from being detailed, but at least it looked a little better than what the kit offered.

There's also the exhaust nozzles which are fed through their fuselage holes (the larger nozzles can actually be fed out easier from internally) which I pre-painted aluminium and of course they are not cemented in place. I also painted part of the external scheme on the fuselage halves before installing the nozzles, to save hard to reach areas to paint later. O-rings are cemented to the back of the nozzles on the interior side of the fuselage halves to keep them in place, of course being careful not to get glue on the fuselage halves or you won't be able to turn the nozzles later. A couple of cross beams are then supposed to connect the port side nozzle with its corresponding starboard side, and the two cross beams themselves are connected (not cemented) by a part resembling a spanner! The idea here is you can turn one nozzle and this makes the other three turn. But before you can do this, you also have to assemble the intake fan which again is not cemented to a rear bulkhead. You feed the fan through the shaft and glue it to a stopper on the otherside, so the fan can spin (that's the theory anyway). The intake fan assembly goes into the alignment grooves inside the fuselage halves and one thing I do like with Airifx is they sometimes will give you a helping hand - in this case on the back of the bulkhead is printed "top" so you know which way the sub assembly goes in.

The tricky part of course is to make sure the pilot's seat, intake fan assembly and the cross beams from the nozzles (don't forget to put a dob of glue on the end of the cross beams so they will ensure you can use the moveable nozzle feature) all line up as you carefully put the fuselage halves together. Needless to say, test fit all this first just to make sure. A little bit of flash was discovered that needed shaving off that I hadn't spotted previously. Then very carefully and making sure the beams line up with the holes on the other fuselage half's nozzle holes (if that makes sense!) the fuselage halves are placed together. Phew, everything fitted reasonably well and the end result turned out okay with moveable nozzles! If you do not want moveable nozzles, or don't care they move together you can dispense with the cross beams and just glue the nozzles in place.

The wings are upper and lower halves, and not surprisingly contained some ejector pin marks within that needed removing (or at least sanding down) before the wings would fit flush together. The distinctive intake covers were added to the fuselage, and as is often the case with Harrier kits, were not a perfect fit. They do fit quite well once you remove more ejector pin marks and sand the mating surface so it is smooth, but the smallest gaps and step result that need attention afterward.

As I like to depict my models in wheels up mode, I started glueing in all the gear doors etc. These fit okay providing you do test fits and fill and sand. The air brake door really is supposed to be in the open position - it fits nicely in the closed position but there is ridge either side that needs removing. Airfix do provide both styles of wing tip wheels - ie: wheels up or down mode. Again after test fitting these I found small ejector pin marks that needed carving off and the mating surfaces sanded smooth, which still resulted in a small gap between the wheel fairing and trailing edge of the wing.

I fitted the main wings to the fuselage without any major problems, but did sand the mating surfaces smooth to remove any small seam lines (something else rife through this kit). I followed the instructions for affixing the correctly numbered tailplane each side, but found one side's locating tab was too large to fit in the hole, so had to carve it down to fit. Not sure whether it is a misprint or the locating tabs on both my parts were the same size (and the hole was smaller on one side).

One pleasing aspect of this kit is that it contains full underwing stores options including single large and dual rack bombs, rocket pods, long range drop tanks and a centreline pod of some sort. You really have a great choice of combinations, you can have all the pylons with rocket pods or bombs, or a combination of any of the above which means plenty for your stores box afterwards. I sub assembled most of underwing stores while I considered my choices! I then settled on inward pylons for bombs and outer pylons for rocket pods. The Aden gun pods are also affixed underneath and fit well, remember the curved part is the outer facing side, and two small alignment tabs are found on the fuselage which you line up with the corresponding section of the gun pod underneath. Also just remember before adding your stores that various decals underneath the wing may need to be applied across pylons, so plan this component ahead.

In the final construction phase I added the nose probe, canopy and tail boom. All need to be test fitted first and then adjusted to fit, although the nose probe fitted very nicely. The canopy is a poor fit and I was unable to escape one side having a gap underneath it, and the less said about the fit of the tail boom the better as it was very poor.

Colour Schemes:

The kit allows for a couple of different unidentified RAF GR.3's to be replicated. First up is XZ964 in the boxart arctic wrap around scheme of white and dark grey. This was the version I chose and the model required two coats of satin white and then I added in the dark grey camouflage. The other version is a standard H163 Dark Green and H164 Dark Grey disruptive camouflage in a wrap around scheme. I didn't look into this version with too much depth but most of the photos and profiles I have of this scheme suggests white undersides. The arctic scheme looks better and is a little different to the drab schemes, and really is just the Dark Green part of the standard camouflage replaced with White. It certainly adds something different in appeal to the modelling cabinet!

Decals:

As always Airfix decals can produce a real love-hate affair. They are almost always nice and thin, easy to apply and look great on the decal sheet, but their printing can be such a let down. This experience is unfortunately no exception. The colour register looks great and although you do not get a great deal of stencils, you are provided with plenty of warning triangles and danger rectangles along with the lines that form a box on top of the fuselage. The decals apply very well with water and with Gunze Sangyo setting solution and give that all important painted on effect later. The underwing decals are the most troublesome because they have to be applied before you add your stores. I tend to plan this by cutting serial numbers in half and slicing a couple of parts off the roundel (I have never been good at applying decals before pylons). Unfortunately the small stencils are very blurred and completely unreadable. There is white edging all around the roundels which is a pain in the proverbial, however, I can rotate them so the edging is against the white camouflage part. But the problem with these decals is that they are so thin they are see through. The demarcation lines of camouflage are plain as day through the UK roundels so I had no option but to ditch the kit roundels and source them from my spares box.

Accuracy:

I wouldn't say this was a definitive model of the Harrier GR.3. Many aspects of it are just not quite quite, most notably the nose section, intake profile, main wing planform and the absence of all antennae and aerials. It scales out dimensionally quite well within a few mm of its proper measurements. It certainly looks like a Harrier but lacks that convincing look about it for some reason. But overall most modellers would agree it is certainly an acceptable looking replica.

Overall Recommendation:

There are much better, more accurate and easier kits out on the market and this Airfix kit is quite long in the tooth now. It wasn't an easy kit as there were many aspects of it that needed skill well beyond the novice level, required a lot of correction (eg: removing ejector pin marks, flash and sealing up small sink marks) and the problems with the decals as noted above. On this basis the kit is not one I would recommend. But I did enjoy making this kit, like many Airfix products you get a passable replica that is generally fun to build, but I would be going for a Hasegawa or the like next time.

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