The Hornet's Nest GB 10/10-10/11

That's a lot of resin on those wings, looking forward to more!  Good save on the slime lights too.

Jarhead93

Thanks I am in the process of odering my next kit.   It will be Hasegawa 1:48 scale F-18D with the wolfpack upgrade and the afterburner green nights iraqi tour.  Hopefully I will get is started in time.  I am going through hireing process right to, so my time is limited.  Thank you though.  I did post some of my previous 2  bugs in my last post.  I will do my best to get started and get some photos up.

Jason

Jason- Excellent!  I just purchased one of those a couple of weeks ago to round out my collection of Hornets.  I went ahead and added you and the kit to the roster on page one, looking forward to those pics!

Thanks I am in the process of odering my next kit.   It will be Hasegawa 1:48 scale F-18D with the wolfpack upgrade and the afterburner green nights iraqi tour.  Hopefully I will get is started in time.  I am going through hireing process right to, so my time is limited.  Thank you though.  I did post some of my previous 2  bugs in my last post.  I will do my best to get started and get some photos up.

Jason

Here are a couple of pics of the wingtips.  I accidentally broke one of the slime lights so I had to cut a piece of styrene sheet to fix it.  It wasn't very hard to do, though.  These are the resin wingtips by Wolfpack, btw.

Here they are assembled:

The fuselage and most of the sub assemblies are primed and ready to be painted but I won't be able to get to it for 3 or 4 more days.  I'm also scratch building covers for the engines and the engine inlets.

Buddy- Great photos, thanks for sharing them!

Fly-n-hi- Excellent progress photos, lovely work with the PE bits.  Especially those inner doors, wow! Hope it's OK that I added you to the roster on page one.   No worries on the finish date, runovers are no problem.  As a matter of fact, I haven't even started mine yet- YIKES!

Kevin- Nice work on those seats, that sure was a lot of work- especially doing four at a time.

Jarhead93- Hello back, and thanks for stopping in!  As long as you're here, why not pull out a kit and stay a while?

Archangel Shooter- Looking forward to those pics!

Starting to make some progess here, the canopy is pretty much cleaned up now though there will be a major fit problem mounting it to the canopy frame. Have begun applying the decals, I was going to use a set I just got from MAW but opted to use the kit decals instead and will be depicting VMFA (AW) 533. The MAW 'Moonlighters' set looks excellent and I decided I will save those for when I later pick up a Hasegawa F-18D. The Hobbyboss decals appears a little thick but they do snuggle down well using the Microscale solutions. After getting a few decals on the lawn dart, she's starting to look pretty good now.

One note about the MAW decal set, they include a detailed F-18D weapons loadout sheet which comes in handy. I have been taking pics along the way and will post them shortly. 

I believe they do.  I would also like to say hi.  I am a hornet junkie as well, and this is my first post as well.  Here are my 2 most recent builds and I am gearing up for a F-18D that I would love to share.  If you look on youtube there are some vary good videos of hornets launching.F18Supersrhinos

Great looking seats Mac

Question for everyone/anyone...I saw this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUltbapMQxU&feature=related ) and at  ~0:35 the tomcat lowers its nose right before takeoff by shortening the front landing gear strut.  Since I am building my plane on a deck, and hooked up to the catapult, I was wondering if the Super Hornet has a similar mechanism because some of the pictures I've seen look like the front of the plane is slightly lower than when it is taxiing.  Anyone know if it does or not?

Nice build Fly-n-hi. 

I managed to get all 4 of the 1/72 scale True Details ejection seats painted up.  They look ok I think. 

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I never officially entered into this GB but here are some progress picks of my Hasegawa 1/48 F/A-18C:

So for this kit is mostly good.  There have been a few fit issues.  The intakes didn't line up to well.  The nose section took a little wok, too.  And the top and bottom fuselage halves didn't line up exactly as they should have.  It's all manageable, though.

This is just going to be a "plain Jane" Hornet...no colorful decals on this one.

I noticed that I need to touch up the paint under the seatbelt on the ejection seat.  

I just busted out my Hasegawa 1/48 F/A-18C about a week ago.  Getting it done pretty quickly.  I am using Eduard photo etch and the Wolfpack folding wingtips.  I'll get some picks up shortly.  Don't know if I'll be finished by May 31, though.

Great stuff guys, keep those pics coming!

I apologize for my recent absence, but family issues have come up and it looks to be a while before things settle down.  In the meantime, my phone is my main source of Internet and unfortunately FSM does not support posting via smart phones.

I will do my best to keep up here and keep any changes to page one current, but please understand that it could be days before I can get to a computer to update here.  Thank you for understanding!

Some good work going on here.  Gotta get started on mine soon.  Here's some pics I shot at Air Expo 2011 at Carswell JRB in Fort Wort.  They even had a Growler!

Can someone post a pic of a F-18C with this loadout. I am officially starting this build, and this is the only possible loadout I can use lol.

Sprayed the top and bottom with Model Master enamels.  Top is dark ghost gray, bottom is light ghost gray.  Like Arki said, the difference between the two is very small as can be seen in the second picture just aft of where the horizontal stabilizer should be.  Even then, this difference shown is exaggerated by the lighting.  Gear bays were painted with insignia white.  You might also notice my rudders being a bit "off".  I'm in the process of building a carrier deck to accompany the plane and I will be setting all of my control surfaces to what they would be right as the plane is launched.

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I was just venting...been a rough month around here what with my mother first falling thus fracturing a shoulder and hip and dealing with the doctors and the rehab home than for her to passed away from terminal liver desease just the other week. I wiped out that canopy seam in just a few minutes, it runs deep and still show slightly but it looks better than when I first seen it. Next would be to spray gloss over the plane and get it ready for the decals, deciding to either use the kit's or order a set? Didn't like the seats in the kit so I got the True Details seats from Squadron and they look pretty good.

It's become pretty commonplace on today's jet models to have seam or mold line along the canopy, even Tamiya's newest F-16's have it.  May have something to do with with the newer slide-mold technology.

Anyhoo, take a sanding stick to it first.  Then progressively move up in sandpaper grits to 8000-12000 range.  If you have some polishing grit, use that as your final sanding effort.  Dip it in Future and voila, seam gone.

Archangel Shooter

 I shoulda took out the Academy 1/32 F-18D for the build .

So...let me get this straight.  One measly mold line, easily polished out with a little elbow grease, is so demoralizing that you'd rather start a whole different kit?  Seriously? One mold line is all it takes to declare a kit unbuildable?

Man up, dude, it's just a mold line. 

GRRRRR!!   I just took a closer look at the canopies on my Hobbycrap F-18D and found seams running down the center of both pieces. Anyone knows what's the highest number sandpaper to start using so to smooth them out? I shoulda took out the Academy 1/32 F-18D for the build .

Nice work Travis!  You're going to town with that one now.

Hey Travis, that is the exact thing I did with mine. I painted the sidewinders and wing tips and fins and then used the kit decals for the rest. The problem I had was that the decals were a bit translusent and the paint was a lot brighter and solid. If I had to do it again I would use the decals as masks for painting. In other words, I would paint the entire aircraft yellow and mask off the tips and fins. Apply the decals and then paint the blue. When it had dried then use tape to rip off the decals revealing the yellow stripes and Navy etc. Its not a fool proof method but I have used it one before and it worked. You may have to use a toothpick or knife to get all the decals off and may have to do some touchups. Just my thoughts on the subject

Steve

Hey everyone! Well I have been working on my Hasegawa Blue Angel off and on. I was thinking that this would be like most Hasegawa kits with a good quick fit! Not so much! Some of it is my own fault. But some things just need to have some extra TLC to get them together. I started by putting a Quickboost seat in with the pilot but I didnt like the look, so I am going back to the kit seat. Has anyone built this kit? One thing I am worried about it the decal sheet. I have Testors Blue Angel Yellow and it appears a lot brighter than the color in the decal. I have to paint the sidewinders and was planning on painting as much as I can then adding the long arrows and stripes from the sheet! Here are the pics:

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Thanks. More to come. I have put it aside to get some "easier" builds out of the way!. Should still finish within the time line!

Travis

Wait, who's that directed at dupes?

Me?  If so, nope no centennial scheme.

Whoah, you're going to bang out a centennial scheme? SWEET!

Who's decals do you already have in your possession?

Christian Theodotou

Looks good Arki, what squadron is it?

 

 

VFA-83

Well, I finally broke sprue on my Hasegawa Hornet last night.  Right now, deciding whether to use an AM bang seat or build the kit OOB.  Decisions, decisions!

Looks good Arki, what squadron is it?

Gracias, gents.

If I don't have overspray or paint pull-up from mask removal it doesn't feel like a real project.

Excellent work!  You are really moving fast now on this one, well done!

Nice work arki!,   Thats gonna an awesome looking Hornet.  I really like the blue on the vertical stabs and on the LERX.  Despite the little bit of overspray, which seems inevitable, the masking would be deemed successful in my book.  Everything looks symmetrical.      Great job!

Update time!  In the painting stage and have managed to make some good progress.

Wheel wells and gear doors have been painted Reefer White.  Underside color Light Ghost Grey has been applied.

Top side color Dark Ghost Grey has been shot (very subtle difference vs. Light Ghost Grey).  Insignia Blue CAG markings have been applied to the LERX, tanks and vertical stablizers.  Have some accidental overspray on the fuselage that sneaked under the masking, but that's an easy fix.

Tanks and ordnance painted, ready for decaling.  Technically this is a USMC loadout, but I like it so I'm using it.

Landing gear and Royale Resin wheels are painted as well.

Still have a bunch of detail painting to tackle, but the big chunks are now behind me.

Cheers

I was thinking today about my planes payload.  Originally I had planned to get the Hasegawa smart bomb set and load the pylons with those.  I started having second thoughts about that when I was looking at the 4 drop tanks that came with my kit.  The cost of the weapon set vs. just using the tanks is what I'm debating right now.  When I searched for pictures of the plane, it seems like the common tank setup is to use 1, 2, 3, or 5  but conveniently not 4.  Can anyone comment or share a picture link where 4 are used?