'03 TMOTA CF-188 Hasegawa/Legends/FlightDecs 1/48

[Charlie Cheetah]

I wrapped up my DS GB A-7E last week, and I cracked open the box for this GP the very next day.

I've been wanting to build this a/c ever since Lyle Katchur (Tilt) first "leaked" picture from the paint booth at 4 wing back in the spring of '03. Well, the TMOARC 2.0 is as good an excuse as I need.

I bought the decals from Derek Howe a few years ago. the Hornet kit came from Robert Binder, and the cockpit set from Lucky Model.

My first task was to fit the resin cockpit pieces to the kit parts. I noticed at that point that some of the parts had shrunk. I also discovered that the resin itself was quite brittle. The tub fit ok, as did the seat and sidewalls. The instrument panel and turtle deck were a tad to small. I wasn't sure what to do at first , I almost decided to scrap the set salvaging the seat and equipment bay parts. I spent the better part of the afternoon today getting everything to fit together. Here are the results...

instrument panel, got it to fit by squeezing the sides of the tub together.

The unpainted equipement bay (Hell Hole) and resin turtle deck

Ejection seat (I know its not the right one for a CF-18, who's gonna know at this scale) Notice the chipped part on the right side of the seat.

Kit turtle deck compared to the resin turtle deck

equipment bay painted

The end result for today

Edited December 9, 2007 by Charlie Cheetah

[Charlie Cheetah]

I checked, and checked to make sure I opened up all the holes I needed to before closing the fuselage together... Guess what, I missed the holes for the attachement points for the centreline pylon and the ladder brace. ;)

Edited December 9, 2007 by Charlie Cheetah

[Aggressor Supporter]

Displays look nice as well as the equipment bay.

[Mark M.]

How are the wheel wells on the 48th kit? They're pathetically shallow on the 72nd one.

Funny thing is the RoG 72nd hornet has better wheel wells, a better assembly setup (I'm thinking of the sides of the intakes, here), but is otherwise undesirable as a kit.

I can't wait til the Academy 72nd hornet.

P.S. I love that electronics bay behind the seat! I couldn't tell that it was a hatch/door on my kit (mine looks very much like your piece there, only smaller)

Edited December 10, 2007 by Mark M.

[Charlie Cheetah]

Hi There

Thanks. I am glad I decided to go ahead and use the equipement bay, it will add a whole different look under the canopy. Mark, on the single seat legacy hornets, its simply a screen that either snaps or velcro's in place to cover the hatch. I've seen a few pics showing the hatch open, The screen is reperesented in a rolled and stowed position, attached to the front of the hatch. The main gear wells, like most kits are shallow, but these are well detailed. I've never felt I needed to add anything in there. Some careful painting of the hydraulics will bring the detail right out.

[GA.modelmaker]

nice looking build youve got going thier cc. but whats the pipe wrench for?

[Charlie Cheetah]

nice looking build youve got going thier cc. but whats the pipe wrench for?

Thanks, I use the pipe wrench to clobber those ill fitting resin sets into submission. :o

No, actually, I use it to remove the caps of those old crusty bottles of ModelMaster enamel.

[Mark M.]

I just use adjustable pliers, but same reason.

So how's the progress coming?

[Charlie Cheetah]

Not a whole lot of progress recently, getting back into gear after the holidays. Curently, I am almost read to place ihr intakes and vertical stabs. Once I have that done I will start painting.

Anyone else noticing that these Hornets are getting worse fitting? Seems every one I build is getting worse.

[Mark M.]

I've only built 2 in my life (second one in progress) but the Hase 72nd, while nicely MADE, is not well thought out, nor is it something I think they really sat down and thought about how the parts would interact.

[Charlie Cheetah]

Still working on this one, Ill soon be ready to start painting. Over the last few days I've been working on the assembly. Pretty much everything I can attache prior to painting and not worry about breaking off has been attached. This evening I attached the hud frame and glass, and pe chaff/flare chutes, also masked and attached the windscreen. I was almost ready to tack on the canopy but my x-acto slipped while trimming the tamiya tape mask and I scratched the canopy.

Not worried though, it wasnt too deep and I was able to sand the scratch away and then I redipped it in Future, should be good as new for my next session.

Once I get some paint on this one Ill start posting some more pics.

Cheers

CC

Edited January 25, 2008 by Charlie Cheetah

[Charlie Cheetah]

I started the paint job today, not much done today except for a few coats of Model Master flat header white used asa primer for the bright orange colors to come. I will paint the orange shades before the grey, I figure I can cover the orange with grey easier than the other wa around.

[Charlie Cheetah]

Well, I got the lighter and middle orange colors done tonight.

For the lighter orange I used Model Master "Go Mango", a nice yellowy orange color. I was gonna use MM "International Orange" for the middle shade, but when I opened the bottle, it looked darker than I expected, even after a vigorous shaking, it was still visibly darker than the orange on the decals I wanted to match. So I go through my paint tray and all I can find is an unopened bottle of Testors orange, I mix it up and do a quick swab on a piece of painted sprue, it's nearly perfect.

Next session, I will finish the orange shades, and mask off anp paint the reddish tigerstripes on the inner tails. Flight Decs did include decals for them, but they are in the same shade of orange that the tails are painted in.

On to tonights pics.

after the "Go Mango"

and after the Testors orange.

[Quiddy]

Can you say bright? Nice work Charlie. Gonna look great at CAMS for the Canadiana category.

[ChernayaAkula]

That alignment "jig" for the orange colours is a neat idea! :)

[Charlie Cheetah]

Can you say bright? Nice work Charlie. Gonna look great at CAMS for the Canadiana category.

Yup, you'll need a good set of shades to look at this one. Right now it the 2 brightest colors on there. Once I get the reddish orange, black and aircraft grey on there it should tone it down a bit.

That alignment "jig" for the orange colours is a neat idea! :blink:

Yeah at first I was just gonna tape the control surfaces together, but then I figured if I made a wing diagram, I could make a good painting guide with it. So I got a unbuilt Revell Hornet to use as a template, eyballed where the demarcation will be, transferred the measurments to the opposite side, them marked the lines to uses as a guide. For the main part of the wings, I simply attached some wide masking tape underneath the wing along the edges, and marked where the demarcation would be on the expoed tape. Over all result is everything will be close to being lined up, and look slightly staggerd with the flaps dropped just like the real thing.

Edited January 28, 2008 by Charlie Cheetah

[Aggressor Supporter]

Looking good there. Keep it up.

[Charlie Cheetah]

Looking good Charlie. You gonna mask off and paint all of the black on the back end instead of using the decals?

I've been thinking of doing that since I have to paint the the area between the tails anyways

Thanks guys.

[Charlie Cheetah]

A few more pics to show. I paintd the red this evening. I got lazy and used 100% Guards red but it was dry to the touch, I felt it was too stark a contrast. So I did a mist coat of the Testor's orange over the red. I also made some paper masks to paint the red tiger strips inside the tails.

And as you can see, the jig I made was a great guide, after just a few little touch ups, I have a near perfect alignement of demarcation lines on all the parts.

[Sean Bratton]

Nice job on a difficult scheme, Charlie!

Cheers,

Sean

[Charlie Cheetah]

Tonight's update. I had the light aircraft grey (fs-36475) dutifully painted on the lower surfaces as per the Flight Decs painting guide, this evening I was gonna paint the black areas around the tail and possibly the walkways too. Well I looked at the kit and it looked to me like the

lt aircraft grey was far too pale. I jumped up and looked at a few reference pictures I had, the grey in the pictures was visibly darker. I have a pic as my desktop backround showing 188720 in all her colorful glory. An external fuel tank is mounted on the center pylon. It was a standard tank, no special markings on it and CF-188 external tanks are painted standard light ghost grey(fs-36375), matching the underside fuselage color perfectly. So I remasked and painted the lower surfaces lt ghost grey. As soon as the paint was dry to the touch, I started masking for the black areas. I decide to apint from the walkways to the heatshield gloss black, instead of just the area between the tails. I also exted the black down the sides of the tail, it would be a trick area to cover with a large decal.

So here is tonights pics, some masking tape remains as the next step will be to paint the heat shields. Im getting anxious to start decalling.

Edited February 5, 2008 by Charlie Cheetah

[trevortex88]

Looking awesome Charlie! I can't wait to see it with stripes.

[Mark M.]

You see how you have the orange point on the nose? I'm afraid to death to do that. I have several paint schemes I want to do, including Royal Maces, Blue Dragons, adn Diamondbacks (to name a few), and when masking something like that on the nose, how are you supposed to know if you've totally screwed up or not?

I mean, how do you know you got the right angle, curve, depth, etc? Expecially in the case of the Royal Maces, you have pinstripe decals that go over the border between the two colors.

How do you know exactly where to mask it?

[Charlie Cheetah]

You see how you have the orange point on the nose? I'm afraid to death to do that. I have several paint schemes I want to do, including Royal Maces, Blue Dragons, adn Diamondbacks (to name a few), and when masking something like that on the nose, how are you supposed to know if you've totally screwed up or not?

I mean, how do you know you got the right angle, curve, depth, etc? Expecially in the case of the Royal Maces, you have pinstripe decals that go over the border between the two colors.

How do you know exactly where to mask it?

Mark, the outline of the orange on the nose closely follows the tigerstrips. So what I did was to photocopy the decals, I then cut out the 4 sections that make up the nose stripes and put them together to make a mask. The orange was painted first, masked then I painted the grey.

Good catch on the bottomside colour Charlie. I know from talking to a few people that some of the stencil markings were done in the wrong shades of grey, so some might disappear....if you have extra stencil decals from Leading Edge, you might need to use those.

Darn fine looking though!

Thanks for the heads up Colin. I was worried about that myself. I just checked the decal sheet, and the stencils are printed in the same grey as the underside stripes, a dark grey, probably close to gunship grey. Not sure how accurate that is for the stencils though. I may use some of the stencils from one of Leading or Arrow Graphics sheets instead.

Edited February 5, 2008 by Charlie Cheetah

[Charlie Cheetah]

Mine are definitely darker than neutral grey. Just took a few pictures to show. on the left is the underside of one of the rear horizontal stabs, painted in light ghost grey. Compaerd to the grey markings decal sheet.