Airfix Sea Harrier FRS.1

Chelmsford Model Club had decided to have a Falklands War rememberance themed competition for their meeting in October 2022. To show willing (as I ran the competitions then) I decided to build an Airfix FRS1 Sea Harrier that I’d bought that year. I thought I’d also build a base for it as I’d seen some pictures of one landing on HMS Fearless. They landed on HMS Interpid too so I chose that for the mini diorama.

Quite a recent release “A04051A” this Airfix Harrier FRS1 (2018) so I was expecting something decent. I’d seen a very good build article of this in the Airfix magazine by Stuart Fone the editor. I should have smelt a rat when Stuart Fone used piles of aftermarket resin to correct the kit.

I wasn’t too bothered about the accuracy though, I just wanted something that looked like a Harrier so thought the resin wouldn’t be needed.

Well there was one problem with the kit right from the off. There were pages missing from the instructions ! I think what’s happened is that this reissue has fewer decal options than the first time round so they’ve removed the page that has the third colour scheme. Unfortunately what they failed to notice is that this page seems to have disappeared too ? The page that shows where all the small parts go. Fortunately some kind soul had uploaded the original release instructions to the excellent Scalemates model website.

The fit of the kits was good and surface detail was good too.

I understood why Stu used resin replacements for the output and input nozzles when I build them. The small ones around the main air intake were a real mess and hard to clean up. The output nozzles were also a real pain as the way they were split meant that it seamed ( no pun intended ) impossible to hide the join along these vents. On the plus side however they’re quite hard to see.

I did try to find some resin replacements but they were unavailable for this version at the time I was building it.

The canopy was nice and clear and the cockpit detail was fair enough in this scale. The pilot figure was also pretty decent.

Here are a couple of images of the build. I didn’t take many. The last one has a coat of Humbrol satin white 131 sprayed over it. I thought I’d use enamels for a change.

I wanted to make a base for it and after seeing some drawings on Britmodeller I used these as an inspiration for my foam board deck of HMS Fearless / Intrepid. I painted it with Tamiya XF54 and gave it a coat of Johnsons Klear before weathering it with oils. I used compasses to mark out the holes and a tooth pick to punch them. The edges are some wood strip from John Duttfields model shop.

I used this page from a wee book to paint the pilot.

The tail end undercarriage was very crude, I was hoping it would be better. Two final problems were with the decals where a large one intended for the tail curled up and died when some MIG decal solution was brought near it and the decal that says “rescue” and should be on the canopy frame was too wide for the frame and had to go on the body.

When it was all done however it didn’t look too bad. I ended up winning a competition with it at the Chelmsford Model Club though there were only two other entries that night. The whole thing was painted with Humbrol enamels which seemed to work ok.

Not sure I’ll be building the FRS.2 version mind you.

This one’s for Mick 🙂