1/72 Hasegawa AV-8B 

Night Attack Harrier VMA-311 “Tomcats”

by PS

--------------------

 

For my fifth ARC contribution, I'll talk about my first non Sci-Fi model since 15 years : my AV-8B Harrier.  I chose this kit because I liked the black tail with Sylvester the cat riding a bomb over a big red heart, some humour among the sadly grey aircraft… I opened the box and I found the decal sheet… Oh My! There was a big shark mouth in there, great, more fun!

Talking about fun, some words about this aircraft (164117), it belongs to US Marines VMA-311 “Tomcats” based at Yuma, AZ. Some “Tomcats” were detached to NAF Kadena in Japan from May ’96 to September ’99, this aircraft, as ET-55, belonged to this detachment. It received those nice shark mouth in May ’99.

Click on images below to see larger images

This is a nice Hasegawa kit, the fit is good (I just had to sand the separation between the single wing and the fuselage), the structure lines are finely engraved, the cockpit is relatively simple, as always. No weapons are provided (buy the Hasegawa weapons set !) except for 2 sidewinders and the optional gun pod (which I chose instead of the lateral strakes).

Three decal options in this kit : 1° VMA-311 “Tomcats” (ET-55 164117) in April ’98, 2° the same aircraft in May ’99 with the shark mouth (the one I built) and finally 3°, a VMA-513 “Nightmares” aircraft (YP-56 164141) dispatched to HMM-163 in July ’98 (also with shark mouth, but little and grey one, not fun).

I enhanced the model with Eduard photo-etched (72356) which is very complete (cockpit, airbrake, exhaust nozzles, landing gears…). The result is very nice !

For the painting, I used a mix of Gunze acrylics and Humbrol enamels (let it DRYYYY !!!) : grey FS36375 (Gunze H308) for the underside, grey FS36320 (Gunze H307) for the upper side and finally greyish blue FS35237 (Humbrol 145) for the extrados, I don't know if those colors are really accurate (I forgot the tail fin, of course, it’s painted black Gunze H12). Then the whole thing is covered with Future/Klir (kind of gloss varnish), decaled and weathered. For weathering, I applied an enamel juice using dark grey (Humbrol 164) and airbrushed some clear smoke grey (Gunze H95) around the rear exhaust nozzles. The finish is satin.

Click on images below to see larger images

I’ve always liked this original aircraft since I visited an English carrier armed with Sea Harriers and saw it fly like an helicopter. I enjoyed building this kit and I hope you’ll enjoy the result.

A big hello to all the “helicopter-jet” crews !

PS

Click on images below to see larger images

Photos and text © by PS