Thadeus Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 Hi there! So with my previous build slowly getting to an end (i litterally have one more thing to add before gluing canopy and calling it done) I figured I could try and squeeze one more build into this GB :) As usual the choice came with a story of its own ;) I was actually going for one more Hasegawa 1/72 F/A-18 (this time a single seater from VFA-113) in order to apply some of my new ideas to the build and to check how much time it actually takes to perform every task. Worthy goal I figure, nice decals too. But.... About that time it turned out that I've had to get rid of my 1/32 Academy F/A-18C. Insuficent shelf space for such a big beast. Along with the model went some very nice VFA-37 CAG decals from Eagle Strike. I think I actually regretted these decals more than the kit. So I figured, 1/32 is too big, but perhaps I could find some space for a 1/48 version, and off to a search I was. Funny thing - not too long after sale I found a cheap 1/48 Hobby Boss F/A-18C with Eagle Strike decals for a VFA-37 bird. Only issue was... You know... Hobby Boss 1/48 F/A-18C came with these decals ;) Doing some quick check of completed HB Hornets, checking my spares for any good parts left from my 1/48 Hasegawa F/A-18C that I build long time ago in a neighborhood far far away and going through my decals stash I came up with a twisted idea... On the sprues Hobby Boss F/A-18's look very nice. Indeed almost like Hasegawa, but with deeper panel lines. Interesting... I procured some VFA-81 decals from Lucky Model. Hey, there's one more VFA-37 there ;) Shame that Bulls don't cut it for this GB. I chose VFA-81 because I'd like a lo-vis, dirty airframe. The added benefit was that early Charlies still had straight type uhf antennae, screen style gun gas vents and straight center pylon. And that's just what You get in the box ;) When I was deciding whether I should grab a cheap Hobby Boss Hornet I couldn't find any direct comparison to Hasegawa Hornets. Considering that I found some suspicious areas on the pictures of completed HB Hornets I took off to do some first hand checking. Hasegawa is still on spures. It would appear that HB Hornet is a little bigger than Hasegawa. Lower fuselage, however similar isn't the same length. Difference in panel depth is obvious. Also some details are a bit different (wheel well shape and details, aux intakes, and even tailhook attachment). One of my points of suspicion were the fuselage AIM-7 stations. They just seemed off on pics of HB Hornets. They look fatter, less pronounced than Hasegawa ones. Wasn't expecting different locations of elevator attachments. Upper piece is Hasegawa. Sorry for the out of focus picture. For me, a dead giveway the model is a HB Hornet is the front windscreen. It looks a bit too fat, or too long. It's my biggest gripe with the kit. I happen to have a used Hasegawa F/A-18C windscreen laying around so the plan is to use it. As it turned out it's not going to be that easy. The entire HB cockpit piece is wider than Hasegawa. When I'll begin my kit I'll check. Oh... and then there's this: Another suspicious parts are the intakes. This time, Hobby Boss piece is on the sprues. They're bigger, more squarish. Dry fitting Hasegawa intakes to the HB parts show some difference in splitter plate thickness too. I plan on using intakes from scraped Hasegawa Hornet for this build. Finally, the upper fuselage. I aligned them by the front part. Funny thing about wing placement and the angle. HB is on top. I took some pics of clear parts for comparison, but they did not showing anything. It seems that HB windscreen is indeed a bit wider, and probably a bit taller than Hasegawa which makes it look too bulbous in the pics. I will take some better pictures when I get to that stage of the build. Hopefully this will be a pleasent stroll in the park kind of a build. I plan on using some parts from Hasegawa baby Hornet - windscreen and intakes and splitter plates. I think about using Hase metal landing gear. The HB opening holes are a bit too small to acomodate Hasegawa MLG's. Nothing a bit of drilling won't help. I just don't want to do it right now. So this is all that I've done right now. I'll get on this right after I finish my 1/72 F/A-18D. Till next time! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
speedlimit Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 Nice to see the comparison pics. Looking forward to the HB hornet build. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tosouthern66 Posted January 6, 2018 Share Posted January 6, 2018 Thad Nice comparison between the two kits. Can't wait to get your full report on the HB Hornet Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted January 7, 2018 Author Share Posted January 7, 2018 My Hasegawa Hornet is complete, and all that I need is to take some pics. So I took out this one. I've dry fitted parts and the overall fit looks pretty good. Only place that I'll have to be carefull is the nose to fuselage assembly. I begun by cutting speedbrake well. This ensured very nice fit of that part. Another step was to add intake side inserts. Since I'm planning on replacing kit intakes with Hasegawa ones I expect some work will be required. I did not glue the entire piece, just the aft part. Whis will help with the fit of these Hasegawa parts. Hopefully. Some more thoughts on windscreen. HB is a bit wider and higher. IMHO disturbs the look of Hornet's elegant nose. So I wanted to check the fit of Hasegawa canopy and... ooops... There's not a lot I can do about it. I could, in theory, add a bit of plastic behind the canopy, move all the details under the canopy and behind it a bit forward. I'm not really going to do it though. I think it'll disturb the proportions of the model. HB canopy is a bit too high for the Hasegawa windscreen. Whatever the case I'm not going to close the canopy. I just hope that the fact this gap exist will not have any effect on a finished model. Here's the comparison of the two parts. Right now I'm doing some work on the intakes, cockpit and wings. Frankly, cockpit might be a bit troublesome. As usual, some problems are self indulged. If installed as per instruction, one might end up with such a fine looking glove compartment. Simple fix is to install the cockpit to the upper half of the fuselage. I'll just have to check how this affects ejection seat height. For me it's quite prominent feature of the Hornet. Normally the seat looks like it almost touches canopy glass. That's how I determine proper height of on a model. The other minor problem are the sidewalls. There is no sidewall detail save for a gap. I'm pretty sure neither of these 'glove compartments' are present on a real Hornet. I'll have to decide if I'm going to build sidewalls from scratch or just extend the cockpit to the sides. If I choose the latter I might still add some sidewall detail. What's bugging me more is the way the IP sits under the coaming. Check how deep it is. I'll have to move it closer so it will show a bit. This might cause some trouble, especially with the stick placement. Check the gaps between the cockpit and sidewalls. Everything is dry fitted except for the turtledeck but I suppose the gaps will remain when I glue the cockpit. Hopefully, when I add the cockpit tub to the upper fuselage gaps will be a bit smaller. I hope to move the IP in line with the angled side consoles. Thanks for stopping by. If You have any suggestions be sure to let me know. I'll take any advice I can get :) Cheers! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tosouthern66 Posted January 8, 2018 Share Posted January 8, 2018 Thad Looking good my friend! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted January 14, 2018 Author Share Posted January 14, 2018 After much work I've managed to close the fuselage. Yeeeeeey! Watch out, there's 7 days of modeling in a pill. First, the cockpit. Sorry for the grainy pictures. I added some semblence of sidewalls. My focus was on painting the IP and side consoles right. I really like this stage of build. I drybrushed side consoles and IP with 36320, the same color I painted the tub with. It's not the proper color for the Hornet, but looks better to scale IMO. From afar this doesn't look bad y'know... After taking this picture I've noticed I did not paint the other pedal black. Not that they're black on the real jet. Shame I didn't take any pics before painting. I moved the IP a little to the back of the airplane, so it would sit better under the coaming. I also had to add some material to the upper part of the instrument panel since the part did not match the curvature of the coaming. I never really noticed how shaky my hand was during painting. Wow.... Here it is installed. Now the seat is a bit too high - canopy would not close. I guess I can sand it from the underside. Next time I guess I'd remove cockpit floor, so the seat would be sitting on the roof of the NLG. What did escape me entirely was the fact there is a hole behind the instrument panel. I'll see how much is visible through the windscreen and perhaps add something there. What took me the most time were the intakes. I figured I could copy my 1/72 scale method of doing intakes, so I did. Here's a shot before I installed the cockpit and joned the fuselage halves. I made the tubes out of 0.25 mm plastic sheet that I put over the Hasegawwa part. This provided me with a funny challenge. I had to pass the wheel wells. In the end I added a bit of glue to the edge of the wheel well (it was sanded first so the edge would not be that sharp). This softened thin plastic and made possible to bend the plastic tube a little where it attached to the wheel well. Hope this makes any sense. Initially I wanted to blend them with putty. So I tried it on the left intake first. I could not reach the putty with my sanding sticks. Damn... I rolled a bit of sandpaper and tried it this way with moderate success. I failed to sand all the putty so I didn't try it on the other intake. And just when I thought the hard part was over I had to paint the intakes. Why did I ever add that damn spreader before adding the intakes? Everything would be so much simplier if I just used intake covers. Left intake: You can just see the bend I made in the lower picture, it looks like the plastic was broken there. and right one: The front part of the intakes will be gray - the one from Hasegawa. My own part will remain white. The step that exist between the parts will help with masking. I hope ;) I've made the fan faces out of Fujimi F-14 fans. I just had to remake that long center part. In the end I decided to remove it and just use the plastic sprue visible to the left... ... and to the right. I've had trouble deciding should I make the shock cone coincal or rounded off. In the end I went for the round one. I can't tell You how happy I was to close the fuselage and add the nose. Finally something resembling a Hornet. Oh... and I cut the wings. I might have forgotten to mention that. Did You know that Hobby Boss Hornets lack that characteristic twist the real Hornet's wings have? Funny. This shows when wings are folded. So I thought how to make the wingfold. I decided to make some 3 x 4 mm, 1 mm thick rectangles attached to both part of the wings. Initially I thought about a plastic rod with some rectangles masking it, but somehow I thought this would be easier.I just forgot how bad I am with cutting similar pieces. Be it pieces of rod, wire or some rectangles. They theoretically should be identical. They're not. This works pretty nice. Doesn't look too much like the real deal though. Gotta see what I can do about it. Right now the outer wing parts are waiting for the glue to set. So, ready for one more curved ball? I really wanted to use the Hasegawa landing gear. The NLG is pretty much a drop fit. The MLG needed the locating hole to be enlarged. The detail is so much better (left one is Hasegawa). Oh... Hasegawa landing gear is metal, so some bending could be done. Not sure bending will resolve that one though ;) Don't worry I have a few ideas. Just have to check what will give me correct angle of the landing gear. Remember when I posted the difference in HB and Hasegawa Canopies size? I wasn't going to do anything about it. But I checked against Hasegawa upper fuselage. The darkened panel line is about 2 mm aft on the HB kit, counting from where the windscreen attaches. Yea... I'm going to try and fix this. I've added some 1,5 mm worth of plastic and I hope to sand and cut it to shape. And I'm doing this for no reason at all apparently, as the canopy will be opened on this one. You know, I thought of this build as a quick and pretty much straifght forward build. Oh man. As I'm moving forward I begin to think what to hang underneath. The most obviuos choice would be just the centerline tank. Easy, painless. Nope. Not me. I'd like to build this bird as it was sitting on the deck before the famous engagement with MiGs. So 4x mk84, centerline tank and a pair of aim-7s' and 9's. Only trouble is, I've no mk84's. The kit missiles will do, they're not terrible. There are some very nice Eduard bombs, but the price tag times two, since there are two bombs in a set, and the fact that I meant this build as a quick, cheap, out of the box build prohibit me from buying them. In my neck of the woods they're only about 20% cheaper than a Hasegawa weapons set. Oh... there's another idea. Hasegawa gives two mk84's along with some nice 82, and 83's. But again, money. Or perhaps I could just do one of loadouts with 6 mk83's. But I've only 4 mk83's. I don't fancy converting GBU-31's or GBU-10 to mk84's. Jdams I will probably need in the future. GBU-10's I might need. What I do have (apart from what seems like a twisted idea of punishing myself) is a nice set of 8 mk82's in 1/32 scale, leftovers from my 1/32 F/A-18D I'm building. They're not exactly the size of 1/48 mk84 though. I figure I'd need to extend the bomb by about 10 mm. I coud add about 1 - 2 mm in front, and the rest 8 mm where the bomb has biggest circumference. This way I might get away with the extension and not make it too obvious. Here's Hobby Boss GBU-31 and Academy MK82. from left to right, HB LGB (an gbu-16 probably), Hasegawa GBU-10, Academy MK82. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stefan buysse Posted January 14, 2018 Share Posted January 14, 2018 Hi, Interesting build, Thadeus. I do believe that, for the famous Mig engagement, they had 4 Mk 83's, not Mk 84's. Cheers, Stefan. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stefan buysse Posted January 15, 2018 Share Posted January 15, 2018 Hello again, Thadeus. I checked my references and they were indeed Mk 84's. Sorry for the confusion I may have caused. That is quite a bombload for an F/A-18C! Cheers, Stefan. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 Hey Stefan, thanks for stopping by, no worries, I'll take any info I can get. Would've loved if they were 83's ;) Funny thing, researching loadouts I've stumbled upon this thread on ARC. No lex fences on my jet during the mig kill hop? Very interesting! Here's a link to a story (more like a memo?) about V.Adm. Fox's retirement, with an image depicting the jet during engagement (note the painter and the user who posted the info regarding the removed lex fences). So now I'll have to decide wheter I go with what I know about Hornets in general or act on a suspicion that the jet didn't have lex fences during the engagement. AFAIK the Atlantic fleet (incl. Saratoga) was stationed in Red Sea, the fact the jet had only one external fuel tank, and huge bombload I guess it seems believable. It would certainly make for an interesting detail on a completed model. Aaah, decisions decisions. Cheers! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted January 21, 2018 Author Share Posted January 21, 2018 Some more progress :) I'm getting closer to the painting stage. I've cut and sanded my canopy plug. In the hindsight I should've used Hobby Boss canopy rail and cut it to shape. Here's a shot with Hasegawa canopy. Fit isn't perfect but it doesn't have to be. Pretty close will do for an open canopy. I've had some trouble scribing panel line just aft of the canopy. I've filled the old panel line and ecm bumps placement guide. I won't need them. Biggest issue was covering the hinge cutouts in HB kit. If I thought of this before I would've added some plasticard from the inside and build it outside. This would be simplier than trying to add some plastic only from outboard with little support from the inside. As seen on precious pics, I've added the windscreen. I was going to add a spreader to make it wider. Two things prevented me. I've noticed the Hud was too high and would interfere with Hasegawa windscreen. I've had to move HUD a bit aft and install it at a slight angle. It doesn't show that much. Hud glass is from Hasegawa, the frame is Hobby Boss. In the end the Hasegawa windscreen is about 1 mm too skinny for the HB Fuselage. I deemed that spreading out the part would be too risky for little gain. I'm fixing the difference with putty. Hud is touching the windscreen. If I knew this beforehand I would've removed the IP cover, reatach it slightly lower I've installed the flap actuators. Reading how people drop the flaps on HB kit I noticed a lot people bend them. I tried this but found that cutting the actuator in two will be more effective and will allow me to attach the flap at a later stage. I've added some detail to the wingfold hinge. Not much, but it's there. It seems I've some seams to fill in the wheel wells. So this is how my Hornet looks right now. Canopy is not yet masked. I hope to remove the green paint when I'll be polishing it. I have to drill the two holes on the upper fuselage between the tail fins. I've left the lex fences on. I'm still not sure if this is accurate. I've not seen any pic that would support removing them, so I guess they will stay on. Other thing I'm still thinking about are the leading edge flaps. I've noticed that on many pics from the 1990's Hornets have them in up position. I've attached LEF in slightly lowered position and now I'm not 100% sure it's correct. Couple of fun notes. Don't trust Hobby Boss. The placement guide for the ecm bumps on the nose above the slime lights (sort of rounded panel lines?) are fake. I only noticed it after gluing them. I know, not that severe. I see sink marks. Every thicker part has some sink marks.It's like they're there on purpose. I've filled two deepest ones on the right fin. I don't have the patience to fill all the rest. And there are a lot of them. Outer wing pretty much complete. Notice how HB would like You to attach the outer flap actuator? I only noticed it when I added the longer one. It's filled now ;) Thanks for stopping by. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stefan buysse Posted January 21, 2018 Share Posted January 21, 2018 Fascinating build, Thadeus. I have not seen a Hobbyboss Hornet with all these Hasegawa parts incorporated before. For ordnance, I may start using micromagnets. This would allow me to use the same ordnance part on different aircraft, or have an aircraft displayed with one load-out this week and another load-out the next week. I don't have them yet, so I can't tell how well it will work or how easy or difficult it will be to install the magnets inside pylons and ordnance pieces. Cheers, Stefan. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted January 30, 2018 Author Share Posted January 30, 2018 Frankly I doubt most people would care. Hobby Boss Hornet looks like a Hornet. There are some minor things that put me off. Windscreen issue is in fact similar to what IMO Hasegawa gives in 1/72. So pretty much most of my work is self induced. Magnets are pretty neat idea. You can swap them whenever You feel like. This time I'm dead set on a loadout. Right now I'm getting ready to decal my bird. I've eventually removed the LEX fences - never seen a Charlie without them, but it surely looks interesting :) I quickly painted my Hornet with Pactra acrylics - my TPS paints of choice. First I went over the entire model with 36375 and only then I painted 36320 on the upper surfaces. I never get smoot enough finish, even with so I rub / polish the entire model with paper towel or toilet paper. Works way better than my 2000 grade sandpaper. Hey, if it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid ;) Pics don't show how bad that panel line behind the canopy is. Awesome :) I even managed to gloss coat it. Can You see the sink marks on the fin? I'm thinking, them ecm bulges aft of the canopy seem a bit too small. Like almost 1/72... I can't wait to start decaling my bird. One thing is I'm a little suspicious of the decals color. I've seen some pics of my jet on dstorm.eu and it seems to have almost 36118 or 36081 markings. CAM decals look more like some 36270 or something like that. I hope I'm wrong, but I'll find out soon enough :) Has someone had experience with them? Did they blend with F/A-18 TPS? Thanks for stopping by! Cheers! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tosouthern66 Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 Thad They might blend in with the paint. I have had sets of decals that disappear due to being printed too light. I have also had some from same sheet show up just barely. If your decal set has extra decals you don't need, spray a test panel with the 36320 and 36375 then gloss it and try them out. Looking good my friend, looking good! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Stefan buysse Posted February 2, 2018 Share Posted February 2, 2018 Hi, That looks great, Thadeus. I'm inclined to believe the story about the LEX fence. If they were going to fly with such a heavy load, it wouldn't surprise me that they were looking at ways to lower the weight. That they were quickly told to put them back on does not surprise one bit either. As you say, it's a unique opportunity to build a C-model without LEX fences. In case the decals give you any trouble, are you aware of this set? http://store.spruebrothers.com/product_p/bma48001.htm I know that many years of research went into that sheet. Cheers, Stefan. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted February 2, 2018 Author Share Posted February 2, 2018 On 31.01.2018 at 1:37 AM, tosouthern66 said: Thad They might blend in with the paint. I have had sets of decals that disappear due to being printed too light. I have also had some from same sheet show up just barely. If your decal set has extra decals you don't need, spray a test panel with the 36320 and 36375 then gloss it and try them out. Looking good my friend, looking good! Thanks Tony! I've had the very same issue. Not with Cam decals, but with gray decals in general. Add this to the fact that most of the 36320's and 36375's are slightly different depending on the manufacturer or batch of paint this can lead to markings blening with the surface. I've been looking at some VFA-81 models on the web and paying special interest to the ones where the builder claimed to have used Cam decals. But then again, there are two sets. I probably should do what You are proposing. There are no extra marks I could use unless........... Image from Wikipedia. .... notice there seem to be NO national insignia on the upper wing surfaces? Curious! Unless it's that light gray blob on the wing. Barely noticable. This leads me to the second point: 8 hours ago, Stefan buysse said: Hi, That looks great, Thadeus. I'm inclined to believe the story about the LEX fence. If they were going to fly with such a heavy load, it wouldn't surprise me that they were looking at ways to lower the weight. That they were quickly told to put them back on does not surprise one bit either. As you say, it's a unique opportunity to build a C-model without LEX fences. In case the decals give you any trouble, are you aware of this set? http://store.spruebrothers.com/product_p/bma48001.htm I know that many years of research went into that sheet. Cheers, Stefan. Thanks Stefan! I've seen that decal sheet. Looks very nice. Unfortunalty I could not afford it. Spending 20$ on a single sheet for a single aircraft is simply too much for me :( However, the scans of instructions are a very nice piece of reference. The manufacturer claims that no VFA-81 jet during ODS had any national insignia on the upper and lower wings. Interesting. This might provide me with a spare decal to test the shade of gray. One more thing, notice how the AA401 is depicted with lighter gray unit markings? I've not seen any picture that supports it. But then again some decal manufacturers have acces to people working on the real jets during depicted timeframe. Such seem to be the case here. I'm guessing CAM decals did some research too. Hence they used that particular shade of gray. Using pictures from dstorm.eu or seaforces.org doesn't yield any results. Well, I'm hopefull for the future ;) This weekend will be decaling time :) Thanks for stopping by! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted February 13, 2018 Author Share Posted February 13, 2018 And decals are on! Weeeeeeee! Cam decals were pretty nice to work with. There's still a little silvering to get rid of - nothing major though. I hope. They worked very well with Micro Set and Sol. For the most part. After placing the CVW tailcode decals I noticed I should apply them higher, with upper side parallel to the upper edge of the rudder. Luckilly they came of with large amounts of Micro Set. I seem to be having some sort of bubble problem. When I place a decal on the model they seem not to show. I only notice them after applying Micro Sol. Before that I always gently press the decal with a cotton bud or something similar. Weird. My fears of decal blending with tps were unfounded. What I did not see is that there should be one more horizontal panel line on the stab, just before the rudder. Did not notice that. One more thing. I've used Cam decals slime light decals. I should've thought of that beforehand and remove the raised slime light detail. Luckilly cutting every slime light in three and applying them individually did the trick, but I've had some minor issues pressing them down in their individual recesses. For some reason I've had the "port side wrinkle" issue. On both the squadron insignia on the tail and walkway decal on the port side I've had massive wrinkles after applying Micro Sol. This is how walkway looks now. The unit insignia I've managed to even out. I'll make some knife cuts on the decal and apply more Micro Sol, hopefully it'll go away. Most of my modeling time is currently taken by my 1/32 Academy Hornet. I work on this one when there's nothing to do and I await something to dry, settle and such. Still, I'm getting closer to finishing it. Just have to complete them bombs. Thanks for stopping by! Cheers! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted February 26, 2018 Author Share Posted February 26, 2018 So I guess I'm not going to make it this time. I'm 99% done with my second build, but there are some things I just can't let go. There's no way I'm rushing this build. Pretty much all that's left to do is to assemble the canopy, install the position lights (I've run out of clear red paint... duh...), paint the radome tip some cream (actually light gull gray with a tiny drop of radome tan), install the wingfold and add flaps. I will have to remove pitot tubes cause they sit at a strange angle, and remove tall uhf antennae - they're just too tall. All in all about a day worth of work for me. What am I gonna do about the ordnance? apparently I'm not the only one that has no idea ;) I've had a blast and I'm absolutelly going to complete this beast. Just not in the deadline. Most definetly not my last 1/48 model. Thanks for stopping by! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tosouthern66 Posted February 26, 2018 Share Posted February 26, 2018 Nice job Thad!! If I get to where I can work on my kits I plan on taping off the walkways and painting them. Decals always seem to not want to lay flat in that area of the kits. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted February 27, 2018 Author Share Posted February 27, 2018 Thanks buddy! I guess walkway decals always look like... You know... decals. This was the worst part of this CAM decals set for me. In the end, under a flat coat with all the weathering this wrinkling doesn't show. But frankly, I should've masked them off and paint them by brush with some thick paint so they'd have some texture. Would help with weathering. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Thadeus Posted December 7, 2019 Author Share Posted December 7, 2019 Whoooaaa, almost two years since my last post. Well, I've finished this one. I guess. I've been looking at some nice build threads from few years back, and noticed that a lot of them just finish at some point. I guess mine is was one of them. Them Academy 1/32 mk. 82's I've told You required some 9mm extension. I put 8 mm in the middle with 1mm in the front. Not the best of works, but it does the job. Took a lot of time to finally get some shots. One cockpit shot. I keep getting that jagged edge on the canopy frame where the masking tape was. I cut along the tapes edge but it still ends up a bit jagged. Intakes! Yes. That much is seen. Frankly, where I put it on the shelf, it doesn't even show that much. And one final shot. \ So... I've had a lot of time to think about this build. Was it worth it? Would I do this again? Would I buy another Hobby Boss Hornet? Well, short story - Yes, No, Maybe. I'm glad I did these modifications. The windscreen was the most important to me. Otherwise Hobby Boss Hornet doesn't really look that much different to Hasegawa or Kinetic ones. Would I get another one? I don't know really. It all comes down to pricing. In my neck of the woods I can get HB Hornet for about 60% price of the Kinetic one. If I could get a Hasegawa Hornet, it would be pretty much similar. Without the replacement windscreen I would not get one. All HB Hornets I've seen put me off just because of it. Something seriously wrong there. The only one I'm contemplating is the double seater. I can not get Hasegawa B or D for the love of me. The ones that pop up on e-Bay are too expensive, especially with shipping to Poland. I could get a Hobby Boss "D" for a quick build as a "B" from VFA-125 or VFC-12, since I've decals. But then again, I could do the same with Kinetic Hornet and my shelf space is at a premium. It comes with intakes, nice windscreen that sometimes fits, some nice options like wingfold or drooped flaps. So eventually, I got three Kinetic Hornets, Two Hasegawas and not even one more Hobby Boss Hornet. That is kind of self explanatory 😉 So would I recommend it? It does have nicer than Hasegawa panel lines, that keep wash nicelly. Can be built as a nice model and is not too complicated, fit is pretty good. So I guess if You don't share my views on Hobby Boss windscreen, and would like a nice, cheap Hornet, go for it! And since I put so much pressure on the windscreen... Here's one with Kinetic Hornet. So I guess, if anyone ever sstumbles upon this thread, thanks a lot for stopping by! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pvw82 Posted March 31, 2023 Share Posted March 31, 2023 Im just starting a hobbyboss hornet, same kit actually. This was a wonderful story and gave me a few ideas, although the windscreen is as important to me lol. Great build, great looking plane 👍 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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