1/72 Hasegawa AV-8B

by Arrin Holt

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  USMC Birthday 2004 

 

This is the Hasegawa offering.  It is OOB & the fit was great other than the forward wing/LERX.  The instructions have you place the forward LERX hood on the fuselage and then attach the main wing.  I did and had a terrible step - I know, I know, a little dry fitting would have identified that problem right away.  What can I say, sometimes I have trouble with the "shake & bake" kits.  I have three more on the shelf and won't make the same mistake with those.  I will definitely attach the LERX to the wing first and then put it on the fuselage.

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I decided on the Gulf War markings of VMA-231 from Superscale.  I followed the camo scheme in the instructions and used Testors Model Master enamels and Metalizer.  The decals went on a coat of acrylic gloss and went down great.  The only kit decal used was the detonation cord on the inside of the canopy.  I was really worried about using it, but tried it and was very pleasantly surprised with the results.  I also used a set of Superscale stencils and data markings. They stencils took a full week of evenings to get all 200 on the bird!  Once I was finished I swore I would never do that again, but I found them on sale at Squadron for $2 and bought 3 more sets for the kits on the shelf. Yeah, I am a slow learner, but nothing looks better than a plane with full stenciling.

I overcoated all the decals with another coat of acrylic gloss and applied an enamel wash.  I wanted the weathering to be light, so I left it kind of clean.  A coat of Testors Dullcoat provided the final flat finish.  I expect that one day I will get around to putting on the Sidewinders that came with the kit.  Hasegawa caught a little flak with the closed airbrake & simplified hot exhausts, but I think it looks every bit like a Harrier, and the open blow doors look great. 

Semper Fi!

Arrin

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Photos and text © by Arrin Holt