F/A-18C VFA-15, Last Tomcat Cruise

[arnobiz]

Hello,

Here is my second entry to the GB, a Hornet launch during the 2005/2006 Roosevelt Cruise (CVW-8 again :))

It will be 95% out of the box, with three items from Modern Hobbies (I placed the order yesterday): The NACES SJU-17 ejection seat, the pilot and a GBU-38 JDAM. The kit will be the recent and acclaimed Academy kit, which is I must say a very nice piece of engineering. The details are not always as fine as they could be but nothing some scratch building cannot improve. Also, decals for the Valions do not exist in 1/72

so I will make my own, a first for me so any advice is welcome!

I had just started when I lost one of the two tiny spine antennas. So here I go, trying to sculpt a new one that vaguely resembles the original from a piece of sprue:

Then sculpt it with needle files, checking VERY often with a Vernier calliper how resembling it is from the other side

From now on I will try and not lose parts, it makes the job simpler :)

Arnaud

Edited March 12, 2011 by arnobiz

[HOLMES]

Good luck with the build..

:) :)

[texgal45]

You're off to a good start. You need to feed the carpet monster something besides pieces of the model that you are going to use. ie, chuncks of sprue, unneeded parts, pieces of fingers, toes, the dog, the cat, etc.

Grandma L

[arnobiz]

You're off to a good start. You need to feed the carpet monster something besides pieces of the model that you are going to use. ie, chuncks of sprue, unneeded parts, pieces of fingers, toes, the dog, the cat, etc.

Grandma L

Lol :)

Thanks for the encouragements lads!

Hello,

Over the past week I worked on the wings. Here is the starting point, and after I cut the flaperons with a sharp scalpel and an engraving tool:

This is when I started being stupid: I should have cut the front edge as well instead of working on the flapperons, assembling them and then cut the front bits. The assembled parts are not that strong and cutting takes a lot of effort so it's best if done when the part is strongest. Fortunately I managed not to break too many things in the process :o

The root of the flapperons has not visible seam with the main wing when lowered so I sanded the edge at about 30 degrees and glued them into place, then filled the seam with epoxy glue (which appears black in this picture). The main flaperons are then glued in place, after a round chanfrein was filed at the edge where it meets the roots. Here is a dry assembly on the fuselage, after the front edges were cut:

The front edges are prepared: face sanded at 30deg. In order to compensate for the lost material and to ensure a perfectly flat contact surface with the wing I glued a 0.2mm styrene strip on this edge. Next is the result, with silver paint on the seams to check them (I know, it does not look very pretty)

I finally improved the wingtip missile rails as I will leave them bare. I used 0.2*0.5mm styrene strip to do it, just like in the CVW-8 Tomcat build

Before/ After

And the wings are finished!

Far from perfect but a lot cheaper than aftermarket parts :)

All comments and critics welcome, I'll be happy to learn from you guys!

Arnaud

Edited February 22, 2011 by arnobiz

[SrkiRad]

Blister antenna you've scratchbuilt looks really good :)

So, this one will be pretty dirty looking plane?

Cheers,

Srdjan

[arnobiz]

Thanks Srdjan. Yes, the bird will be as dirty as them come :)

Arnaud

[yardbird78]

Nice work on the wings. The lowered flaperons look very good.

Darwin

[arnobiz]

Thanks for the kind comments guys, I appreciate it.

The kit exhausts are not bad but I thought I might improve them a bit with some 0.2mm plasticard and a turned pipe:

1/ Cut a stripe of plasticard and engrave 11 grooves (the 12th is the junction when you roll it )

Needless to say it took me a while to get the dimensions right so that it would exactly fit in the kit part ;)

Then roll the plasticard around a brush handle and force it into the kit part, with the wider part of the brush on the outside of the exhaust to stick the plasticard onto the inner wall.

Cut to size and you're done!

Then turn a bit of aluminium rod to get a seamless exhaust pipe. This is actually not really necessary as the exhaust is so narrow you can't see very much of the pipe anyway :huh:. On the right is the completed home-made exhaust

Not perfect but I'm quite happy to have tried a new technique :huh:

All comments and critics welcome,

Arnaud

Edited February 23, 2011 by arnobiz

[arnobiz]

Hello,

Before I could assemble the front fuselage I had two things to do: paint the cockpiut and make sure the bottom part fitted well with the top fuselage. Painting the cockpit was very easy, using the kit decals and a bit of paint. On this subject I should note that the Hornet's cockpit is pretty much all black anyway, and that with a pilot in the seat not much will be visible. So I kept it simple :lol:

Ensuring good fit is crucial, and I found that adding a 10mm strut of sprue to force the sides apart (unconstrained they have a gap of 9mm, so I had to force the bit in quite strongly).

Thanks to this I did not have to do any sanding/puttying other than a tiny gap (but absolutely no step).

Thanks for looking,

Arnaud

[Ken Middleton]

Arnaud, excellent scratch building - I really like the segmented section you made for inside the nozzles

[Fanakit]

Excellent works Arnaud ! I'm looking forward to your build

[arnobiz]

Merci Fanakit!

Lately I worked on the wings to fuselage assembly, taking a slightly different route from the instructions. I glued the wings to the top fuselage and strengthened the joint with quite a lot of epoxy. I think this makes the joint a lot stronger, thus less likely to crack later, and easier to sand and fill the seams.

First, a picture I forgot to post yesterday but this is quite important to ensure good fit between the front and aft bottom fuselages:

Here the the wing/fuselage assembly:

And finally plasticard, putty and sandpaper to get a clean seam on the top side as well:

As said in the picture, I tried to use superglue to fill the seam but it's very hard to sand, which makes it more likely that engraved details will disapear in the process. I won't use this technique again, plasticard (for the main job) followed by putty (for the finish) gives better results in my opinion.

All comments welcome,

Arnaud

[arnobiz]

Now for the hard part: the intakes. The kit has them as shallow as a river in central Sahara so I decided to go high-tech there :lol: and use rapid-prototyping. I am very familiar with CAD softwares so it did not take very long. First I did a 3D scan of the bottom fuselage, so as to have some reference to draw the part, and 1/h later I had the digital model of an intake. Mirror it to get the other half, give it to the RP machine and voila!

Sorry this one is a bit blurred.

As you can see the result is quite coarse but some putty and sanding should make it OK, and hopefully better than the original parts

Arnaud

[arnobiz]

Quite a bit of progress done since last time I posted: Intakes assembled, fuselage halves glued together, aircraft primed and pre-shaded.

Top

Bottom

And the external fuel tanks

Actual paint will start tonight

Cheers,

Arnaud

[arnobiz]

Wow has it been so long this I last made (and posted) progress on this?? :blink:

The home-made decals are nearly finished, thanks to Jeremy Gould (who posted great pictures of this Hornet on JetPhotos) I got most of the markings information required (BuNo, pilot/maintenance crew names, tail markings etc...). Drawing them on Illustrator (vector graphics software) and printed onto clear decal paper, and voila!

Cheers from Austria,

Arnaud

Edited November 26, 2011 by arnobiz