green devils harrier

[noxioux]

Okay, here it is finally.  I gotta officially thank joeP for the inspiration on this one.  Anyway, this one of the Green Devils Harriers, VMA-255, USMC aerobatic demonstration team.

As previously mentioned, the Green Devils were hand picked from top Marine pilots, mostly from the Wake Island Avengers and Black Sheep squadrons.  VMA-255 is primarily a combat unit, deployed in the Middle East, mainly for the daylight CAS mission.  The unit is not permanently stationed at any particular base or carrier, but roves around doing demonstrations for troops and friendlies in forward areas.

A single company of infantry, with FAC, is typically assigned to provide ground security for the Green Devils in 'hot' areas.  During demonstrations in these areas, the birds' cannons are loaded and armed.  They can also land and be fully armed by their mobile support team within a few minutes, if required.







Since the pics didn't turn out that great, here's the tail art:

[Hobbes]

Wow. Which kit did you use for this?
That second photo is amazing. If you crop out the not-to-scale building, you'd be able to fool people into thinking it's an 1:1 aircraft.  

[Captain Canada]

Holy Sh** ! He's finished a kit !



Great stuff ! I agree with Hobbes there....I did a double take ! Love the tail art as well, and the story. I could just see it, doing a nice 4 ship formation pass, and all of a sudden they peel off and start blowing apart the nearest mountin !

 

[noxioux]

It's the Revell kit (the one that comes with the little Iraqi Freedom book).  I seem to be doing a lot of these Revell kits.  It did have the awful raised panel lines, and I really don't like the way the hardpoints/stores go on, especially those drop tanks.  It's not a terrible kit, though.  The overall fit was pretty good, and I didn't really need a lot of putty to clean it up.

I think the Revellogram kits are better for scratchbuilding and modifying, because there's a lot of plastic, and they're tough as nails.  Scribing panel lines isn't really that big of a deal, either, as long as you're not counting friggin' rivets.

It would've been done with this much faster, but I got sidetracked with this damn Panther thingy.  I'll tell you one thing for sure, I'm not going to waste my time with another interior set for a tank.  No way no how.  I think the only way it would be worthwhile is if you're making a cutaway version or something like that.

[Joe C-P]

OOOO-RAH!!

B)      

[nev]

That looks pretty damn cool  B)


Any chance you could get some more piccies showing that tail art?  Did you do your own decal or hand paint it?

[NARSES2]

That looks good and the second picture sure did fool my brain for a few seconds just as Hobbes says

Chris

[Patrick H]

Wonderfull job there. Love the nose- and the tailart.



Patrick

[noxioux]

Thank you for massaging my ego.

Nev, I printed most of the decals on some clear laser decal paper, did the artwork in Illustrator and Photoshop.  I only used the kit decals for the safety markings and the low-viz stars n bars.

the clear paper works really good on dark neutrally colored things like black warning signs, tail numbers, etc. . .  I need to get some of the white paper for the bright colored bits.  I can't remember exactly where I got the paper from. . .

There's a guy at work that has one of those monster digital SLR's, I left the model at work, and I'll try to talk him into taking a nice pic of the side.  The little digital point and shoot thing I use isn't all that fancy.

[Gary]

Sweet. That is really neat. I'd love to see an aerobatic harrier group.  

[John Howling Mouse]

I hate to ask this dumb question since the model itself is so nicely done but where the heck did you get that tarmac?!?!  That has to be the most realistic looking hunk of scale apron I've ever seen!  Did you paint that?  If you could make it to an airport and have your finished model on that base in the right place with the right natural lighting and background, your model would have easily fooled my eye!

Good job!

   

[noxioux]

I made the tarmac from a piece of MDO I had laying around.  I actually have 3 pieces like that, where I experimented with different ways of making it look right.

I used to work at a sign company painting MDO (with a roller, no kidding) so I have some of these scraps of super-smooth painted plywood laying around.  The first one I made by spreading bondo onto the board with a putty knife, then scratched in the seams with an engraving tool.  I then spray painted it white, and did a couple of washes with black Higgins ink (non-waterproof kind).  That worked okay, but now the bondo is peeling off the surface, so it looks like crap now.

This one I just sanded the paint down so it was rough, then used the same engraving tool and a ruler to make the seams.  Then more washes with higgins.  My method for 'washing' was to squirt some ink thinned with alcohol/water onto the board, and then taking a rag to it.  Works pretty good.  Thinner ink would equal lighter pavement.  I simply masked and painted the lines and numbers with plain old enamel model paint.

You could use any kind of plywood, I think.  Probably a good way to go would be to get a sheet of 1/4 AC plywood, and roll a couple of coats of heavy primer onto it.  Then scratch the lines for the seams, and do a couple of washes.  The only reason I used MDO was because I already had it laying around.  It can be pretty expensive.

What would be a good idea for photo taking purposes would be to do one about card-table sized.  As long as you had somewhere to put it when you aren't taking pics.

Maybe I better do one, and post a build-up here.  I'll have to make a brand new one for my next project, anyway.

By the way, John, that trainer is coming along very nicely.  Can't wait to see the finished product!

[F-32]

Great model, love the concept.

"Devil 1 to Devil 2, break right and napalm that SAM site before we do the diamond 9 pass" ^_^