1/6 SCALE HARRIER JET

Attached is a story of my Harrier, from past, present and possible future build.

I thought I would share a project I started at least 40 years ago and it’s still not completed. Back when I was twenty something I decided to build a vertical takeoff and landing Hawker Harrier AV8A model which was then in service with the US Marines. This model was done the old school way. I found a really good set of drawings and proceeded to enlarge everything on my then manual drafting machine using the good old draw a bunch of squares on the original drawing, enlarge those squares to the larger size needed and proceed to draw matching lines in the new larger boxes which would look like graph paper by the time you were done.

The fuselage was made by placing a plywood keel down the center of the fuselage, top and bottom while laying flat on a building board. Plywood formers where then glued in place with blue insulation foam being cut to shape and inserted between the formers. Lots of sanding and filler later the fuselage would be removed from the build table and the process would begin on the other side. Nothing new here building wise and this is still a common build method today. The only Epoxy resin I personally knew of back then was the stuff Byron Originals sold for their models so this is what I used with most likely 2 ounce glass cloth over the entire model. The original wing was built out of Blue insulation foam in two parts right down the center of the cord since it needed to be hollow to get the air from the 9” fan unit out to the wing tips in order to hover the model. The wing was sheeted with 1/64” plywood. Something happened to the wing, I can’t remember what and it ended up in the garbage. The project sat for many years after making the fuselage.

Years later I decided to work on the fan unit next. I built the 9” Fan shroud out of carbon fiber cloth and epoxy resin. I constructed a master fan blade and stator; female molds were then made over these masters. The actual blades and stators were formed with Carbon Fiber Tow and epoxy resin laid into these molds. All this was held together with machined aluminum parts for the 9 bladed fan and the 2 cycle Moki 1.2 Cu engine. A friend of mine did the machine work on these aluminum parts. Assisted with a tune pipe this engine fan combination screamed. To test this fan unit, I built an exact same size profile model. First flight attempts where at my local SAC club field which had I believe a 175 long asphalt runway. The model did in fact leave the ground one time when it hit a bump in the runway. The flight was maybe 6 inches high and a few feet long. Hopeful that a longer runway may help, I took the model to the Super Man Jet Fly In down in Metropolis Illinois. Needless to say, the model never left the ground since what did I know about designing a working fan unit, not much. I still have the profile model in my garage and the full fuselage version has been worked on from time to time over the years. Long ago I decided to convert my flying model fuselage into a plug so I could lay up as many fiberglass fuselages as needed to perfect this design. The model is large enough to except two 120mm fan units, sitting side by side, and back then the Dynamax was my fan unit of choice. Now that the fuselage was going to be a plug weight didn’t matter so I decided to blend all that foam into something nicer looking. I love using phenolic micro balloons as my go too filler but it was impossible to find it in any useful quantity that was affordable on the model side of things. I did however find a company on the west coast, I then leaving in Illinois that sold it in bulk. Soon, either a 30 gallon or 30 pound, I can’t remember which, blue barrel shaped container was delivered by truck to my house. Needless to say, I still have a three life-time supply of the stuff sill sitting in my garage.

I moved the family out to Colorado twenty years ago and the model with now built wing has been hanging in my work shop for all these years waiting for something to be done to it. My plans for a VETO model are now gone. Now, I simply want to install one or two EDF units in the model and fly it in a conventional flight manor only, since it would still be super cool to see fly. If I was to start this model today, I would have built the entire thing out of wood so I wouldn’t have to make fiberglass female molds to lay up a fuselage. These days I don’t mind making a mold for a small part like a cowl but a fuselage is going to take a whole lot of work. I would really like to see my Harrier fly before I am no longer able to build of fly such a project, so either I find someone with a passion to help create these molds and build and fly one for themselves, or I’ll have to do it all myself, which brings me to partly why I am posting this STUFF on this forum. I know there are some fiberglass mold guys out there so I thought I would ask a few questions since it’s been a long time since I molded a complete fuselage and that one was for a large Delta winged UAV and used 18 layers of 18 once cloth but still needed a massive wood structure added to it’s back to prevent it from bending.

Some questions are, since this model has such a large contour change throughout its entire length, would it be best to split the mold both down the center vertically and down the side of its entire length? Down the center vertically would be easy since I still have the original paper template used to create the original parts from, but creating a parting line down the entire side would be very difficult to do. I was thinking maybe splitting the mold down the center vertically but separating the forward fuselage say one inch behind the leading edge of the air intakes from the rest of the fuselage. Besides the intake undercut I don’t see any other major issues. The exhaust fairing nozzles have some under-cut but I can add a slight taper too the rear of the fairings which get cut away any way. For the edges of the doors, I can fill in all those areas so there is only a 1/32” lip there. I would hope the female mold could bend a little to get over the edges, or am I dreaming for this to happen. I really don’t think I want to mold the wing. I can just use it to mold the top belly pad over the wing. I built up wing shouldn’t be that hard to come up with since I still have all the airfoil templates that I used. I’m not sure if I should add the vertical tail to the fuselage since that would make that mold much bigger. I’m also not sure how many layers and of what weight cloth I would need for the layup. I wish fiberglass matt could be used with epoxy resin, since I’ve got a huge roll of it, but it’s my understanding the fibers won’t unbind like that do with polyester resin.

I’ve included one photo of my 1/9 scale F-106 fuselage next to the 1/6 scale Harrier. The Harrier fuselage is actually a little longer. My Harrier was a big model, back in its day. Not so big these days.