1/48 Monogram AV-8B Harrier II+ (Part 1)

by Craig Sargent

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Introduction

I’ve always liked the beefier look of the American late model Harriers compared to the more anaemic look of their British counterparts. Unfortunately, until very recently with the release of the new Hasegawa kits (and they still have some faults), there wasn’t a readily available kit of the radar nose version of this ubiquitous jump-jet.

Some time before the announcement of the Hasegawa kits, I got hold of the older Monogram tooling of the standard AV-8B with glass nose (donated to a worthy cause by a modelling friend), and around the same time, ordered the AMRAAM Line late-model conversion set. The AMRAAM Line set was quite comprehensive (though I ended up only using 6 parts from the 23 supplied).

The kit started out with insertion of the painted Black Box components into the thinned fuselage halves. Due to having a spare intake piece, I was able to separate the fan from the trunking on both and use the fan from one and the intake from the other.  This allowed me to close up the fuselage and work on seams, without having to paint the intake interior first.

The entire model was rescribed and the AMRAAM Line parts attached in the requisite places. Unfortunately, my early incarnation of the AMRAAM Line instructions had the intake at base of the fin’s removal point at around 10mm too far back, as I discovered AFTER I made the cut and tried to fit the resin intake piece. After a few choice words, it took some plasticard and judicious cutting, filling, filing and sanding to remedy this error (this mistake was fixed on later instruction sheets).

Click on images below to see larger images

The kit sat for some time at this stage in the closet awaiting further impetus. This came when a friend in the US sent me a whole lot of resin castings of some Hasegawa F/A-18 Sidewinder launch rails, which were perfect for the Harrier too. These were attached to the outboard pylons and a little more work done on refining panel lines and detail. The gun pods had the front of the 20mm rotary cannon scratchbuilt and detailed, and were attached to the model. It wasn’t enough and the kit was eventually relegated to the cupboard again.

Final Motivation

The kit was finally pulled from the cupboard to finish in February 2005. The main reasons were fourfold: first was the approaching Scale Model Expo in Wellington (suffice to say I didn’t finish in time); secondly was the arrival of a TAV-8B conversion kit for one of my Hasegawa AV-8B kits (this meant a lot of the AMRAAM Line resin parts could be replaced with easier to work with, and better detailed, spare Hasegawa parts); thirdly, the arrival of the Aires F/A-18 radar set (which was almost identical to the one used in the Harrier); and finally, the arrival of a decal sheet from a friend in the US (thanks again to Emil "Elmo" Varosi for the decals) depicting the scheme I had been wanting to do for some time. These four things worked together to get me sufficiently motivated to finish this kit off.

First in the order of things was to fair in the intakes properly with Milliput and paint them white, then paint and add the engine face, so the wings could finally be fitted. Intake doors were scratchbuilt from plasticard. Also before the wings were fitted, I added the front half of an Aires Harrier main wheel well to mount the main gear to. The wings took some serious sanding and filling all around to hide the seams, including 30 thou shims between the lower wing and fuselage.

The AMRAAM Line nose, upper fuselage chaff/flare dispensers and small exhausts on the keel were replaced with Hasegawa items. For some reason, the light grey resin bits had all turned yellow by this time. The Monogram gun pod and ammunition pod (which I had previously detailed and attached) were forcibly removed, as the aircraft I was depicting did not carry a gun in Iraq. These were replaced with fuselage strakes from another Hasegawa AV-8B kit. This meant a cleanup and rescribe of the lower fuselage, where removing the gun had damaged the surface.

The AMRAAM Line LID bay (the speedbrake-like device just behind the nose gear) was removed and replaced with one folded up from the Eduard etched set (this set was in the kit when I received it). The LID door was also replaced with the very nice Eduard item (the Eduard set also contributed the HUD frames on the coaming and the vane for the wind direction indicator in front of the windscreen). The Hasegawa forward nose section, upper instrument panel (a shortcoming of both the Black Box and AMRAAM Line sets) and coaming were cleaned up and attached to the fuselage.

The radome was sawn off at the panel line and cleaned up to use as a master to plunge mold a new radome. This had interior detail added to it, along with the hinge from the Aires Hornet radar set. The Aires radar was modified to represent the Harrier version. A scratchbuilt bulkhead was glued to the front of the Hasegawa nose and then the Aires radar was attached to the front of the fuselage, and final detailing done to it. The IR lens was drilled out and a Reheat instrument bezel attached as a surround, and the Monogram pitot tubes glued to the nose (note that if you build the Monogram kit, they would have you attach the pitots at different heights on the nose - just look at made up models from the front to see what I mean).

Click on images below to see larger images

The Monogram underwing pylons were all removed and replaced with items from the Hasegawa kit. Scratchbuilt items included the GPS and shark fin comms antennae on the upper fuselage spine, the leading edge wing fences, formation light strips and engine bay hinges. Panel lines were rescribed and rivets added to duplicate the ones on the Hasegawa kit. Some of these were not quite right (especially on the AMRAAM Line upper fuselage/LERX part, which had all panel lines filled in and rescribed) and referral to good images and plans was used to try and get the panel lines correct on the Monogram kit.

The four engine nozzles were made up and all were thinned considerably before adding the internal vanes in the hot nozzles from plasticard. The lower fuselage chaff/flare dispensers were taken from a Fine Molds F/A-18 etched detail set. Wingtips lights were removed and replaced with Cutting Edge tinted resin pieces, cut and sanded to shape, and the wingtip radar-warning bumps added from sprue.

Final step in the assembly process before priming was to add the Hasegawa windscreen (the Monogram transparencies had crazed with age). Unfortunately, the Hasegawa kit moulds part of the windscreen on the fuselage, which Monogram have chosen to mould as part of the windscreen. The bottom pieces therefore had to be cut off the Monogram windscreen, added to the Hasegawa windscreen and the whole lot faired in to the fuselage. The cockpit, windscreen and intakes were masked, before whole model was then primed with Mr Surfacer 1200 to check for flaws.

Part 2 to follow.

References

  • Windrow & Greene Wings 5 - Marine Muscle: Hornet And Harrier (ISBN 1-872004-47-4)
  • ARC Walkarounds
  • Hasegawa kit instructions
  • Various articles by Lance Braman
  • Steve Belanger's MCAS Cherry Point website

Inspiration

  • Cyrus "The Virus" Tan's Monogram AV-8B conversion
  • Piero de Santis' Monogram AV-8B conversion

Craig

Click on images below to see larger images

Photos and text © by Craig Sargent