1/72 Hasegawa Boeing F/A-18F 

Super Hornet 

by Eric Bade

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Like it or not, the venerable F-14 Tomcat fighter is being pushed out of the US NAVY Carrier deck at  a very fast pace by the Super Hornet.

Actually, F-18E and Fs will eventually replace not only Tomcats in the US NAVY, but also Legacy Hornets and Prowlers so we, including all the F-14 lovers around here, should  better get used to its shapes.

Now that the Super Hornet sports famous squadron markings, the airplane might finally make its way to recognition as one of the most attractive fast jet in airpower inventory today.

The model 

Hasegawa is the second company to release a Super hornet in 1/72nd scale, after the Italeri offer. The Japanese model is a vast improvement in both engineering and in accuracy over its Austro-Italian counter part. Furthermore the Hasegawa kit is updated to production machine configuration including the “pizza box” fairing in front of the wind shield and the guard cable just front of the arrestor hook. Surface details are sharp with nice panel lines and virtually all air inlets and outlets are there. All in all it is and excellent basis to build an accurate F-18F in the 1/72nd scale but still there is a room for some regrets :

  • the stabilators are very thick

  • that is 1/72nd scale but the actual machine hangs their flaps and slats at rest

  • jets intakes and exhausts leave a lot to be desired. Exhausts are not deep enough but can be improved. Intakes are a more serious matter and have no walls or bulkheads and are hard to work on. 

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Building 

Model construction starts with the cockpit. As usual with most Hasegawa bulkheads are here but instruments panels are represented as decals. Result is far too flat to me, even in 1/72nd scale.

I used the Eduard PE set  which is designed for the Hasegawa model. Most details are there although I added small bits of plastic card and stretched sprue. Ejection seats are the resin True Details NACES seats in 1/72nd scale (ref 72409). They are very sharp but they look undersized to me. I had to adjust their height by cementing some bits of plastic card beneath. I also scratched built the canopy actuating mechanism behind the rear ejection seat.

The rest of construction went quite well for main parts. I detailed the model landing gears with brake lines and the links on the main gears that are specific to the F-18 series.

Jets exhausts are way too shallow. Hasegawa did not do a nice job here and that is common with their legacy Hornet kits in the 1/72nd scale. I did not worry to much as I found exactly what I wanted in diameter in the form of Airfix A-7 exhausts in my spare box. Plastic tubes of the right diameter are available at model shops and they would do the part too. Step one completed with the engines (I thought).

Then my attention turned to the jet intakes. No representation of jet intakes are provided and there are no walls here. After a short while, I decided it will be too complicated to build up two intakes. Next time I will try to copy the Italeri air intake, but I dropped the idea for my first Super Hornet. I therefore blocked both jet intakes and exhausts with small engine covers. They are built from thin plastic card again, cemented then cut in shape then  covered with white glue. The purpose of a thick white glue layer is to add thickness and allow creation of undulations to mock the soft engine covers.

Next time I build a Hasegawa Super Hornet I will take my time and detail engines ends and drop flaps and slats.

Rest of construction is just a matter of following the instructions, and replace some antennas with thinner plastic cards.

Painting

I did not want to use box decals. I choose decals from the TwoBobs range. Why choose VFA-154? I guess because I had two copies of the sheet when I made my choice. 

Main Super Hornets colours are very standardized and are FS36375 Light Ghost Grey and and FS36320 Dark Ghost Grey. Here again follow the instructions. I use Gunze acrylic paints whenever I can and I thin with isopropyl alcohol. Normally thinning ratio of paint/alcohol varies between 30%-70% and 70%-50% and pressure remains around 1.8 and 2.0 bars (25 – 28 psi).

The main airframe is painted with these basic colours. All trailing edges are painted in a slightly darker colours. I then used darkened or lightened versions of the standard colours to paints some panels, some details or some panel lines. I tried to keep a light hand on this model as it is an XO machine and the Super Hornet still is quite new in the fleet.

Lines were enhanced with artist oil paints (I used sepia and dark grey) thinned with turpentine. The advantage of this combination is that turpentine thins oil paints and will not spoil the acrylic base paint. Beware though as turpentine is very oily and will stick on the base paint. Avoid great wiping sessions. It is better to work with a very thin wash that will flow easily in panel lines and will avoid as much wiping as possible.

I also added the silver surfaces that are on some Super Hornets between fins. Some masking was necessary here and I used a silver colour from the Xtracolour range.

 

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Decals and  Finishing

 

The decal sheet is very complete and sharply printed as one would expect from a TwoBobs sheet. It is also very complete and well designed. With the very fine grain of acrylic paints and the reknowned quality of these decals I did not feel necessary to gloss varnish my model before stickers application.

The main advantage of this is that the varnish layers (two actually, one gloss before decals and another matt layer after decaling) will not flatten my weathering effects. The counter effect is that no gloss undercoat increases the risks of decal silvering. No so much with any decals printed by Microscale. I simply used decal softeners (Microset/Microsol combination did the job). 

A few details still needed to be added. All position lights were painted with translucent paint over a chrome silver painted “lens”. Landing gear doors edges were “written” (painted) red with a permanent ink marker. Last add-ons were two flush antennas that were added on the top of fuselage spine.  

Eric

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Photos and text © by Eric Bade