When I was in grade school and into Jr High and High school, my father and I used to frequent the air show circuit around northern California (where I grew up), specifially, Moffett Field, Travis AFB, and Beale AFB. The Beale AFB show was always our favorite as you usually got to see the SR 71 up close. My dad always LOVED that plane, was completely enthralled by it and any chance we got to see one, he was all over it. In 1984 or 85 we got to do an over night and special tour at Beale with a group of Explorer Scouts that were all trying for entrance to the service academies. This trip included a special early morning take off of the SR. Armed with a Super 8mm camera my dad caught one of the best photos of the SR taking off and then punching through some low clouds. It left a doughnut hole in the cloud and the cloud cover was pierced by a single shaft of early morning sunlight. Magical.
At some point I acquired this kit, from where or when I do not know. But it has been hanging around a while. This is the original 1981 issue of this kit, and it is terrible. Truly terrible. The plastic is brittle. The fit is miserable. The parts and instructions are over simplified and there are tons of flash, gaps and areas that need to be filled and sanded. Other than that this is a great kit. . . .
So I seem to be on a wing thing kick of late as I now have no less than 3 aircraft models in the works along with a Tank Transporter and an M1A1 too.
The kit jumped out at me as I was doing a quick inventory the other day and I thought it would be a quick easy build that I might give to my brother as a Christmas gift. Work Commenced Monday night and was interrupted Tuesday due to illness. Today I have gone to the doctor, filled the gaps and re-glued the nose cone and subsequently the cockpit glass to, don't ask.
The point of this build log is to see if I can turn a sows ear into a dog treat. (Let's not kid ourselves into thinking that I am going to put "silk purse" effort into this one) So there was nothing started on this and I began with trimming up the flash and walls of the main body halves. The engine parts were next for cleanup. The cockpit glass DID NOT get the future treatment as this was going to be a "quickie" and just needed some clear glue.
The engines are fairly simple and have a notch/pin type setup, although crude. The forward nozzles on the engines need to be canted inwards slightly and down a touch, but I settled for just pointing inward a bit. The engine cowlings are really poorly designed and there are some serious gaps that need to be addressed once installed. Do your best.
The upper and lower body halves also leave much to be desired for fit and such. They go together well but need to be clamped sererely for a while to hold the fit tight. If you fail to do this right you are going to be left with two halves that do not set upon each other. The gaps from the top at the cowlings need to be filled, and the bottom where the two halves meet all the way front to back, yes, seriously. The nose cone also leaves some issues that need to be addressed. Do your best to line it up so the top seam is minimized. the bottom seam can be filled and sanded easily where as the top, not so much.
Be careful when you are fitting the front halves and the nose cone as clamping is required and if you get too close tot the cock[it you are going to break something, did I mention the plastic is really brittle? Yeah. So,initial pics below, enjoy let me know how I am doing. Cheers.

I think your doing just fine, Damon. She looks to be about 14-16 inches long. Thats alot of sanding and polishing, but, well worth it for a bird so beautiful.

Thanks Ben.

Just masked off the windows and sprayed Tamiya spray primer from the can all over. Do not like the Tamiya spray. There I said it. Just tried this out for the first time and I am going back to the Vallejo primer through the AB. Its a pain to clean out but that rattle can gives me the heeby jeegies. Reminds me of being 16 and trying to spray my kits with Testors enamel rattle cans, never turned out well.
So going to go over the bird tomorrow and look for areas that need more sanding then onto a base coat. Still need to find a tail code and some cheap decals for this thing, the kit ones are sadly out of day by 20 years, that is to say dated for birds in the 60's and 70's not the 80's or 90's. there you go. Cheers.

First base coat when on last night over the Tamiya White Primer (which sucks). Took a whole lotta paint to cover that bird. Top side is done, bottom side still needs to be covered. Going to go back over the whole deal with NATO Black, I think, to add some variation on the colour. Still need to put together the gear, which look painfully inaccurate. Still need to get a set of decals for this too as the bird I am modelling is the skull and crossbones that appeared at an airshow at Moffet Field in the mid 80's. Cheers.

Assembled the gear yesterday and wow, new levels of horrible have been achieved. I think I have forgotten how spoiled I was to have all those hasegawa kits available to me when I was younger. I can see now why so many kids never went far in this hobby. One or two kits like this would have put me off it for good.
The first base coat revealed some top side seam issues that needed to be filled, repeatedly, and sanded vigorously and repeatedly to achieve something passable, the nose cone especially needed some heavy grit to remove "most" of the lip. The other are was the engine cowlings where they meet just forward of the vertical stabilizers. This gap needed to be filled several times to get it right and then sanded pretty hard as well. Once it was all passable, I resprayed with black again. This is where I encountered a strange paint issue. There would be darker and lighter "spots" in the paint like streaks.
Cannot figure out why and I did not snap any photos as I was focusing on getting this next base coat on. So I sanded lightly to remove the gritty look the paint had and rinsed the whole bird in cool water, let dry overnight. Now there seems to be some lint looking stuff on a few areas, my guess is paper towel dust, once more through the rinse tonight. Cheers.

Damon, you're a braver man then I. So far it's looks like you're winning the battle. Of course you've most likely gone through a full tube of putty to reach the priming point , only to have to re-putty, sand, prime, and repeat. . But you will win this battle for sure. I'm really looking forward to following your build to its conclusion.

As for your primer issues, the Tamiya gray & white primers are lacquer based. The rattle can, like all cans puts out way too much paint, so you need be be further back from your subject and keep that can moving. I do use both the rattle cans for quick priming of small parts, while doing major sub assemblies right through the entire model, I use the same primer but from a bottle so that I can use my air gun. And I only air brush it in my paint booth.

The White primer really doesn't work well over raw plastic, however, it works very well over a base coat of the gray primer. It's main purpose is to have a sub surface for white, and bright colors that will show up as intended. Painting over gray darkens those colors considerably.

Joel

Went back over the the whole bird tonight with semi gloss black, this seemed to fix the paint issues.also got the tires painted as well as the outside of the gear bay doors. The inside of the doors need to be painted white as well as the bay interior. The gear struts need to be painted as well and then all the detail items too. I will try to find the skull and crossbones decals soon. Pics to follow tomorrow.

Got the gear base coat on yesterday and that is about all I did with here. Spent most of the day painting the 1/48 Harrier. But I promised pics and so here they are, let me know. Cheers.

Got the gear on, as horrible as they are, as well as the bay doors. Future and decals will be next just need to find a set of the skull and cross bones ones and I can get this wrapped up.