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My very own Big Hornet


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I've been slowly working towards completing my Hornet.

 

I always knew that painting and markings will give me the most trouble on this build. If I had chosen a plain gray scheme I would have gotten a nice Big Hornet more than a year ago. But then again You know... the mountain is there.

 

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way to paint all the tiger stripes. In the hindsight I should've painted model dark gray and try to mask tiger stripes and then paint the light grays. Ah well...

So lazy me figured out a way to scale Academy painting instruction and try to make masks out of it. Well long story short I was unable to cut them out properly. There was always some places my knife slipped. In the end the tiger stripes did not line up on the nose. If I was masking only the stripes this would not have been such an issue.

 

So I figured out another way to go. Trace every stripe with pencil very lightly - just enough to show an outline and then when everything is laid out on the model attept refinements. The real trouble is I've only 5 pics of my jet from about the time I want to model and NONE show the wings, upper fuselage and elevator tiger stripes pattern. Yeah, so I took what I had, mixed it up with Academy drawings (which are more or less inacurate for my time period) and:

 

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Took me several days just to outline and mask the basic shape of the stripes. All is good, no one got hurt during this process. I actually enjoyed it (I might have lost some sanity during masking). Masking the light gray color was even more time consuming. It took me like 15 minutes to shoot paint. I never took any picture after painting. There were a lot of fups. A lot. But I fixed most of them.

 

Lovelly. Of course there was some trouble trying to match the Tiger stripes color to the pictures. I thought of 36118, black and 36081. Eventually I settled for 36081.

 

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Another issue I'm still having are the markings. Academy decals are too light. Most of the builds I've seen online show them to be only a bit darker than 36320. So I figured how hard can it be to make my own decals, right? Having acces only to black and white laser printer was going to be an issue later. But first I had to scan all the markings. I used Academy unit badge and scanned it in Inkscape, repainted them to what seemed like appropriate color. I also had to create my own numbers, and unit designation. When I was at it I also made my own stars and bars and intake warning decals.

 

Here's and early draft, still a bit inaccurate. I used that black square for scaling. It's sides are 1 cm.

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Of course the printer could not match that color, so I chose what I thought would be the closest match. I used Techmod decal paper. Man this paper is awesome. Decals came out super thin. So thin they folded on themselves in a few places. You can still see some overspray, or places where my masking was not good enough.

 

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Academy decals seem very nice but they're just too light. The unit designation decals are of the wrong style for my time period. This is the third set of markings I've made. I have to remove most of what I had placed on a model.

 

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Hopefully I will finish applying decals soon so I can finish my model.

 

Right now however I seem to have noticed a mistake. I don't know if it's mine or Academys.

Wingfold:

I attached it the way instructions would have me do. This causes a gap between wing sections so I figured I would add some plastic to fill it.

 

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This was bugging me for a long time now. I figured I'd remove the glued pieces and reattach them after some dry fitting. After some very carefull work with knife I managed to do detach the pieces. Honestly not something I would like to do on an almost completed model.

 

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I figure the problem is in the piece that attached to wing. It has some square pieces on the sides and in the center that prevent that "rod" piece from attaching deeper. I hope this makes some sens. I also hope I am right.

 

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Well, here's where I am now. Hopefully I'll manage some more work on my Hornet this weekend. There's still a lot to do.

 

Thanks for stopping by. If You have any suggestions or comments feel free to let me know!

 

Cheers!

 

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  • 1 year later...

Merry Christmas Folks! It took me a while to build this beast. Gotta say, an awesome experience! Wish I had money to get another one. But frankly, I wouldn't even know which scheme I would pick 🙂

 

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Here it is in all its glory, about a year ago, on a best shelf. 1/48 Hobby Boss F/A-18C is under, some Hasegawa Super Hornets are on top.

I'm pleased to report, that MLG did not sag as of today. So I guess I can recommend the SAC landing gear.

Thanks for checking out my build, and for all the comments and advice along the way!

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  • 5 months later...
  • 1 month later...
On 6/26/2020 at 3:44 AM, Bell209 said:

Lovely job! That masking effort is inspirational.

 

Thanks! I was really scared of doing it. In hindight I recommend doing it the other way around ie. painting dark scheme first and then masking tiger stripes.

Apparently, in OIR there was another non-ATARS bird that wore Tiger Stripes. Huh... I guess I could build one more, right? 😉

 

On 6/24/2020 at 3:45 AM, mika14 said:

Great work!

 

Just asking what colours did you use for the exhaust nozzles & exhaust pipes?

 

Thanks!

 

 

I usually use MM metalizers - the buffing type - brush painted. I don't remember what colors I used this time. But usually I paint the ring stainless steel and the petals magnesium.

Sometimes I paint the ring magnesium and the petals burnt iron (or burnt iron? one has a very brownish hue - that's not the one). Sorry for the late reply.

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