Airfix 1/72 Harrier GR3 (old tool, slapped together)

[JamesPerrin]

I found this Starter Kit in a thrift shop in Bowness a few weeks ago for £3, I thought it would probably be the old tool but though t what the heck. Indeed it was ye olde Harrier. I decided would knock it together for my 2yr old daughter to play with. I decided to build it OOB as much as possible using the glue and paints provided. It would need to be robustly built so undercarriage up and no stores. My aim was to get it done as quickly as possible and to not sweat the small stuff.

For construction I only used snips, a knife and a sanding stick. It took one and half to get it together mainly removing flash from the ejector pins on the mating surfaces. The nozzles are linked together with a nice sturdy mechanism but I decided against using this as it ruled out adding the nozzles post paint. The internals got a coat of black and the pilot was added after a coat of green on his gear.

As I needed to make sure the paint adhered it was given a blast of primer from a rattle can - unfortunately white as I'd run out of grey. This required the canopy to be masked also (3min job).

The painting took far longer than expected over 2 hours. Firstly I painted the grey following the scheme, I really should have given it a coat all over as when I applied the green it had no coverage at all. The grey sufficed after a second coat but even after three the green was still patchy but I was calling it quits. I really did slap the paint on in hope of covering the primer so about as far from a flawless finish as one can get. Finally some Klear to ready it for decalling.

I just added the serials and roundels - the remaining stencils could prove handy. These were fine if a little brittle. The heavy surfaces detail was a pain and I moved the side roundels to avoid the compound curve on the intakes.

So the paints lived up to expectations - though I not sure how old this release was. The tool had seem far better days but is simple enough to build. Best of all is the huge amount of stores you get with this kit:

2x ferry tanks
8x flairs
4x Matra pods
1x recon pod
4x iron bombs

plus the Aden gun pods which were added.

they may not be the best of their type but certain a generous and a useful addition to the spares box.







29 year ago the Matchbox Sea Harrier and GR1 were my first successful forays into modelling and I've not built another Harrier since - (though there are plenty in the stash) and the finish of this is only a gnats crack better than they were. I got glue on the canopy and moved the fuselage serials when I stuff it into the box when she came to see what I was doing. How lucky we were to be trusted with enamels - even if we lacked the patience for them to dry when we were young.

If anyone posts "great build" I suggest you need to got to SpecSavers

[shangos70]

Given what you had to work with and the time frame its not a bad result. I built the same kit a few years ago and it fitted where it touched. I've seen worse built kits for sale on EBay at daft prices. I'm sure the nipper will make short work of it anyway.


It's helped pass a few idle hours at the least.

[Stuart]

If your daughter enjoys it - then it served its intended purpose and is indeed a 'great build'

[Dazzled]

The perfect toy .

Now all it needs is a banger inside it

[DavidWomby]

Thank you, James! I am going to ignore all the text in your post and just keep telling myself that the pictures prove that now I can build models nearly as good as yours :-).

Sorry, couldn't resist. It looks like a Harrier and the build sounds fun (apart from the green paint part). I hope your daughter enjoys it.

David