Modelling the Sea Harrier - 1/48 Scale

Another great article with some useful model aircraft insights on building the Sea Harrier.
The full article can be read in Scale Aviation Modeller, August 1996


"Since the English Electric/BAC Lightning's withdrawal from RAF service in 1988, the Sea Harrier has been Britain's ONLY single seater fighter, a fact that will only change when the Eurofighter 2000 enters service. It is also destined to be the last of a very long line, namely Britain's totally indigenous war plane (apart from maybe the Hawk Tla "Fighter") The Harrier "Family" is celebrating its 30th birthday this year, with the Sea Harrier being in service (somewhat disturbingly as it seems like only yesterday when it first flew) some 17 years. Without a doubt its 'finest hour' was during the Falklands War in 1982, and the upgraded FA.2 (Please someone tell me why the MoD/FAA dropped the FRS tag) has of course more recently, proved its worth whilst operating in the Adriatic on operations over former Yugoslavia. 
Models of the Harrier family have been well depicted, both in quality and quantity, in 1/72nd scale, unfortunately this cannot be said for 1/48th scale. Monogram and Tamiya produced models of the AV-8A/GR.1 in the mid70's. These were joined by examples from Airfix (a Harrier GR.3 and a Sea Harrier FRS.1) issued in the wake of The Falklands War. At about the same time, Tamiya re-tooled their GR.1 into a Sea Harrier FRS.1. These kits, while being generally accurate in outline, were and are no match on the quality of their smaller counterparts, or indeed for the latest 'State of the Art' models of the Far East.
Tamiya's Harrier GR.1 kit, when introduced some 20 years ago, was described then as 'State of the Art'. It also had a few gimmicks built in, as was the vogue. The underwing stores, I seem to remember, were produced so that they could either be displayed on or off, hence the massive underwing slots. Likewise the ejector seat was no more than a lump of plastic designed to place a pilot upon. Nowadays it is rare to find a pilot in a kit, let alone anyone that actually models them, detailed seats and cockpits are now "In". The kit's metamorphosis from a GR.1 into a Sea Harrier retained some of these dubious features and some inaccuracies that required correction or replacement, with items from the cottage industries, to bring the model up to modern standards and to be comparable to the quality we discerning (?) modellers expect."

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