I’ve started this build as a part of a group or buddy build, dedicated to the Harrier 50 year anniversary. I have both the Tamiya and Hobbycraft boxings of the same model, and choose the HC one to build, as the decals to the Tamiya kit had a yellow tone to the white areas. Having no replacement decals made it an easy choice. In retrospect I should have choosen differently, for reason that will be explained later in the build.

Anyway, as I had a deadline to follow, I had to get cracking with the build. As there was a bit of competition, with prizes included, pictures of the box and contents with some sort of time/date stamp was required.

Those pics were taken with my android, and not so good, but they filled their purpose.

The first things to be done is the cockpit and the engine. I choosed to not show the engine, but it still needs to sit there in order to hold the exhaust vents.

The engine was a pretty quick assembly.

Sadly the fit in the fuselage, mainly to the intakes, wasn’t very good.

So I decided to do something to sort that. i started by cutting the location tabs, and cleaning up the intake cone. I also removed the tabs from the fan and cleaned that up too.

The alignment of the engine and fan cone wasn’t good, so I cut away the fan, so I could get that part sit right. I also glued the cone parts to the fuselage to get them to sit right.

I painted the fan too, even of much of it won’t be seen once assembled.

It looks kinda crazy with the engine tilted that way, but it actually aligns with the openings for the exhausts. I don’t know if HC have made some error when copying Tamiyas kit, but in my point of view, it’s pretty possible.

Next up is the cockpit and fuselage assembly.

Cheers,

Håkan