BAE Sea Harrier F.3 (another revised designation)

[kitnut617]

I've revised the designation, there are other RAF aircraft which are Mk. 13's so this should be one too.

[Captain Canada]

Looking beauty so far, Robert !



I did a two seat naval SHAR way back when....never did finish the darn thing. Had no wheels so I called it a SlingSHAR. I'll resurrect her someday, when i start all my naval stuff again.....someday......

[rickshaw]

Yeah, the white missiles seem to be Martel too, but appear more accurate in proportion.  The missiles from the Bucc kit look too short.  I'm pretty sure they're not Sea Eagle, which is longer than Martel, has a blunter nose & an intake scoop for the turbojet.

I'm actually rather taken with the idea of an air-to-air Sea Eagle.  The turbojet confers tremendous range.  Speed wouldn't actually be much of a problem, if the targets are intended to be strike aircraft/bombers hunting the carrier.   You could pack a really big, unitary warhead or go for a non-unitary one.  Even if you reduced the warhead by half, you'd have a hell of a punch!

[kitnut617]

I did a two seat naval SHAR way back when....never did finish the darn thing. Had no wheels so I called it a SlingSHAR. I'll resurrect her someday, when i start all my naval stuff again.....someday......

I started out by trying to fit the FA.2 nose cone to mine too Todd, I thought about using an FA.2 forward fuselage and then grafting the rear half of the two-seater cockpit onto it, the idea being I could get the two crew closer to the same level.  After lining up the various fuselage halves, I realized that I just needed to change the very front part of the nose and find a suitable nose cone, but an even larger one than the Blue Fox nose cone.  Rumaging through the stash I looked at various nose cones until I found the old Airfix F-4 which has multiple nose cones.

[kitnut617]

My thinking is this would be primarily a 'fleet defence' interceptor but you wouldn't need very many of them, one or two to each squadron (so they would be converted T.10/12's).  I'm very intrigued with this new data-link technology, in my opinion it opens up a whole different way of fighting.  I know data linking has been around for a while but mostly it's been between the AWAC/AEW and an aircraft, but now each aircraft can data-link to each other independantly.  I'm not sure why this has taken so long to be, probably related to advancements in electronic miniaturization.

Anyway the scenario behind this is that the defending force needs to engage the attackers much further out, like F-14 Tomcats did.  The very powerful phased-array Blue Wolf radar installed in the F.13 allows for dozens of aircraft to be tracked at the same time and the computer selects the most likely targets as needing attention first and locks onto them.  This is where the data-link comes into play, as the F.13 can carry only two missiles you'd think it wouldn't be very effective, but the data-link allows for a squadron of defenders to be used, I'm not sure how many aircraft are in a RN squadron.  The defending force would comprise of one F.13 and as many FA.2's or, as the time line is now, JFH GR.9's that are servicable.  Each aircraft would have the data-link capability and carry one or two AIM Martels which would all be controlled by the F.13.  The initial engagement would see all the AIM Martels get fired at selected targets from beyond visual range and then afterwards the JFH GR.9's would continue onwards to attack the remaining targets with AIM-120 or AIM-9's or whatever.  The F.13 would stand-off and continue monitoring the situation, and at the same time continuing to update the other aircraft through the data-link, sort of acting like an AWAC.

Of course this would only work if there was some advance warning of an attack on the fleet, I would imagine there would have to be some pickets way out in front, a submarine or an AWAC, so the F.13 wouldn't be the total answer to defending a fleet.

[Captain Canada]

You know what bugs me most ? You keep coming up with these ideas that I want to build ! Now cut it out ! The whole scenerio makes to much sense....I guess some of the other SHARs could carry three missiles, eh ? And you could also arm the GRs with the Meteor for a little more reach. I'm looking for an excuse to go buy another Typhoon if you need some !

The nose on mine was the front half of a german WWII era bomb, btw

[kitnut617]

You know what bugs me most ? You keep coming up with these ideas that I want to build ! Now cut it out !

I hadn't thought of the Meteor ---hmm!  I was thinking the SHAR's got only a couple of AIM Martels, because they would need to have the shorter range missiles too, to finish off what got through the first salvo.

The nose on mine was the front half of a german WWII era bomb, btw

It works !  

[Captain Canada]

Do you have Meteors or do you need me to get you some ?

[kitnut617]

Could I get four of them please.

You know what this means though,  I've got a few more SHAR's to build     I know Airfix is supposed to be coming out with a GR.9 sometime too.

[kitnut617]

My plan is to add a fuselage plug just behind the wing so I've studied how it was done on the FA.2 Sea Harrier, the plug for that aircraft was added in between the main u/c bay and the airbrake which moved the airbrake backwards.  Comparing the two Airfix Club kit Harriers (GR.7 & FA.2) reveals that the GR.7's fuselage was extended about the same amount when I line up the main u/c bays of both types only the airbrake on the GR.7 was moved back to it's original position just behind the u/c bay.

In the top photo below you can see what I mean, although it doesn't explain the differences the two kits have in the wheel bay lengths ??

So I've cut the rear of the fuselage off the T.10 but had to do a 'Z' cut, I carefully cut along a panel line which comes down about half way along the airbrake opening then horizontally across then down in between the wheel bay and the airbrake bay.

[kitnut617]

Next thing I did was glue the rear fuselage halves together and then fabricated a plug which I glued in place, and afterwards filed it down to be just a little bit bigger than what the finished article will be.  I'll smooth that out once the front half gets glued on but I've some cockpit work to do first.

The way I have done the cut it would seem that this might have been considered in real life as it works out really good.  It should end up something like the bottom photo though. 

[BlackOps]

She's really coming along nicely, this is going to be way cool when finished. 

[kitnut617]

Below is just a recap on this project---

OK, I'm going to expand on this idea, and for the GB I'll add the 'slave' missile carriers to it, an FA.2 and a GR.7.  This will now be a project that gajillions of bucks got spent on it developing the system, only to have it binned just when it looks really promising (I've been reading Project Cancelled and BSP again  )

My thinking is this would be primarily a 'fleet defence' interceptor but you wouldn't need very many of them, one or two to each squadron (so they would be converted T.10/12's).  I'm very intrigued with this new data-link technology, in my opinion it opens up a whole different way of fighting.  I know data linking has been around for a while but mostly it's been between the AWAC/AEW and an aircraft, but now each aircraft can data-link to each other independantly.  I'm not sure why this has taken so long to be, probably related to advancements in electronic miniaturization.

Anyway the scenario behind this is that the defending force needs to engage the attackers much further out, like F-14 Tomcats did.  The very powerful phased-array Blue Wolf radar installed in the F.13 allows for dozens of aircraft to be tracked at the same time and the computer selects the most likely targets as needing attention first and locks onto them.  This is where the data-link comes into play, as the F.13 can carry only two missiles you'd think it wouldn't be very effective, but the data-link allows for a squadron of defenders to be used, I'm not sure how many aircraft are in a RN squadron.  The defending force would comprise of one F.13 and as many FA.2's or, as the time line is now, JFH GR.9's that are servicable.  Each aircraft would have the data-link capability and carry one or two AIM Martels which would all be controlled by the F.13.  The initial engagement would see all the AIM Martels get fired at selected targets from beyond visual range and then afterwards the JFH GR.9's would continue onwards to attack the remaining targets with AIM-120 or AIM-9's or whatever.  The F.13 would stand-off and continue monitoring the situation, and at the same time continuing to update the other aircraft through the data-link, sort of acting like an AWAC.

[saintkatanalegacy]

just proves that twin seaters look awesome!

[Weaver]

Kitnut - this looks very interesting: more power to you! 

Yeah, the white missiles seem to be Martel too, but appear more accurate in proportion.  The missiles from the Bucc kit look too short.  I'm pretty sure they're not Sea Eagle, which is longer than Martel, has a blunter nose & an intake scoop for the turbojet.

I'm actually rather taken with the idea of an air-to-air Sea Eagle.  The turbojet confers tremendous range.  Speed wouldn't actually be much of a problem, if the targets are intended to be strike aircraft/bombers hunting the carrier.   You could pack a really big, unitary warhead or go for a non-unitary one.  Even if you reduced the warhead by half, you'd have a hell of a punch!

Wonder if it would be feasible to give it an afterburner? It would cruise subsonically most of the way, but if the autopilot determined that fuel range exceeded target range, it could dump the excess fuel in the jetpipe for extra terminal velocity.