Jump to content

It's twin engined, twin crewed and gunship grey...


Recommended Posts

It's a Hornet!

My third build for this GB will be a Malaysian F/A-18D.

4854.jpg

The TUDM (Malaysian Air Force) purchased 8 of these jets for the maritime strike/interdiction role in the mid 1990's, and has them stationed at Butterworth AFB. They are equal to the F/A-18D's of the USMC and can use a variety of armament like AGM-84, AGM-65, AIM-7, AIM-9, AIM-120 and various bombs, both conventional and GBU's.

I will use the excellent new 1/72 Academy kit, and F-4dable decals from Malaysia. These decals are very nice, and the also come with some instructions how to build it up to TUDM specs with the Hasegawa kit, both 1/72 and 1/48. This should help me enough for the Academy kit too.

Work started with the cockpit and the forward fuselage. Fit is surprisingly good, for such a multi piece affair. Basically you glue 2 fuselage halves, split vertically, to the nosegear bay, and the gun vents piece (2 are provided, early and late). On top of the nose gear piece, you glue the cockpit tub. With everything inplace, it's a rather solid construction that should fit into the upper fuselage with not much trouble.

The Academy kit comes with bird slicer antennas fitted on the nose, but the TUDM birds didn't have these, so I cut/sanded these off.

P3174060.jpg

In the mean time I also started with the rear fuselage. Academy gives you a big upper fuselage piece, that goes from behind the radome all the way up to the engines. To this, you glue 2 pieces on the side from the intakes to just aft of the wings. Again, fit is very good:

P3174063.jpg

P3174064.jpg

The only trouble I had, was with the underside of the LERX's. You're supposed to fit 2 pieces in them, and I screwed this up, a little.

P3174065.jpg

Now, do I fill the seams along these pieces? Or are there panellines there? Not sure, I'll check some refference pics for it

That's it for now, I hope you like it.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

So, it turned out that I didn't assemble the front fuselage absolutely perfect, so it wouldn't fit on the rear fuselage without a big step between the parts. So I had no choice but to take the front assembly apart again, and glued the parts on the rear fuselage part by part instead. I started with the upper front fuselage, cockpit and lower front fuselage.

P3204066.jpg

To this, I glued the side panels of the front fuselage. Fit was now much better, not perfect, but at least the gaps and steps weren't as pronounced.

After this, I continued with the wings and intakes. This went pretty straight forward with only small seams on the intakes.

P3274087.jpg

On the pic you can also see the dual chaff/flare buckets found on TUDM Hornets and the centreline pylon.

Some stores are already assembled. Two fueltanks, two Harpoons from the Italeri F/A-18E, and a AIM-7. Don't know yet what I eventually will hang under it.

P3274084.jpg

And some overview shots:

P3274081.jpg

P3274082.jpg

P3274083.jpg

That's it for now, thanks for looking.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Paint is on! It needs a few touch ups here and there, but overall I think it's quite nice. I used Xtracolor Gunship Grey for it, that's why it's so glossy.

P3314098.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

I started decaling today:

P4064102.jpg

I use F-4dable decals from Malaysia for it, and I must say, they are great. Printed by Cartograf and perfect in register. For the slime lights, I used the kit ones, as they are sized for the recesses on the plastic.

More next time.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

So, decaling is finished, weathering is finished, and it's flatcoated now. On one of the stabilizers, the flatcoat reacted with some leftover acrylic retarder, and I touched that, so the paint came off a bit. Have to fix that. For the rest, I think it went pretty well. Time now for the landing gear, underwing stores etc.

P4154117.jpg

Hope you like it.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks!

If you mean the tan colored tip, it was just masking and airbrushing.

The plastic had a very faint line on it where the demarcation should be. So I just sprayed the whole plane in gunship grey, and then masked the tip using thin strips of Tamiya tape, cutting each strip along the line before adding the next strip. After this, I sprayed the tip using a mix of Tamiya Buff and White. I wanted to use XF-55 Deck Tan, but I didn't have any, and the local shop was out too, so I mixed.

HTH

EDIT

WOOHOO!

I reached 1000 posts with this one, only took just over 5 years. :cheers:

Edited by Pete
Link to post
Share on other sites

It's finished!

P4204119.jpg

Overall, I give this kit a 9 out of 10. Fit is very good, except the nose, which needs some encouragement. F-4dable decals were great too. More pics in the completed builds thread.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Pete-

Very nice build! May I ask where you got the arm/disarm marking for the AIM-9 (the green/red decal on the side)? I've seen this as a decal in larger scales, but never in 1/72.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Pete-

Very nice build! May I ask where you got the arm/disarm marking for the AIM-9 (the green/red decal on the side)? I've seen this as a decal in larger scales, but never in 1/72.

Thanks!

Ah, so that's what they're for, makes sense. Those decals came with the kit, it has very complete markings for all of the weapons. (AIM-7, AIM-9, GBU-12 and various targeting pods)

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...