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New Tool 1/48 F/A-18E Super Hornet Announced


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Stevens Has their MSRP set at $115.00 yes you read that correctly. That's just ridiculous. I could buy 2 from Hong Kong and still pay less than the guy who buys 1 from the LHS.....

         
Edited by viper730
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On 12/17/2020 at 12:15 PM, Solo said:

Please look at my last picture with pylons. As you can see, there is riveting on Hasegawa one, there is no rivets on Meng's. Also Hasegawa has got, I believe, more delicate panel lines.

When I look at the photos, I would agree that the Hasegawa panel lines are more delicate, but I must be blind regarding the rivets, because I don't see any more rivets on the Hasegawa than the Meng parts...they look the same to me.  The Meng rivets look sharper, but this could be due to a variety of things, including differences in the photography, as well as the Hasegawa's molds being years old compared to Meng's. 

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19 minutes ago, Solo said:

 

1.jpg

 

2.jpg

 

A few items of note if it's going to get this picky.

 

1. Those aren't rivets, they're screws.

 

2. While Hasegawa has the one's around the access panels depicted, they missed the several dozen others that cover the pylon. If you're going to fault Meng for missing those, you need to fault Hasegawa for missing a hell of lot more of them.

 

3. The F/A-18E/F pylons by Phase Hangar Resin are light years ahead of both.

 

4. If you currently, or have in the past followed any of the several hundred scale modeling groups on Facebook, it becomes apparent that those modelers that point out these types of issues are in the smallest minority. I would venture to guess less than 1% of the modeling community as a whole. Not saying it's wrong to care about such details (I do depending on the subject.....ordnance for example), just saying the vast majority of modelers simply don't care. 

 

Personally, I hope the kit is a major hit for Meng as it will provide them with the incentive to do more subjects. 

 

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On 12/19/2020 at 12:02 PM, Dave Roof said:

 

A few items of note if it's going to get this picky.

 

1. Those aren't rivets, they're screws.

 

2. While Hasegawa has the one's around the access panels depicted, they missed the several dozen others that cover the pylon. If you're going to fault Meng for missing those, you need to fault Hasegawa for missing a hell of lot more of them.

 

3. The F/A-18E/F pylons by Phase Hangar Resin are light years ahead of both.

 

4. If you currently, or have in the past followed any of the several hundred scale modeling groups on Facebook, it becomes apparent that those modelers that point out these types of issues are in the smallest minority. I would venture to guess less than 1% of the modeling community as a whole. Not saying it's wrong to care about such details (I do depending on the subject.....ordnance for example), just saying the vast majority of modelers simply don't care. 

 

Personally, I hope the kit is a major hit for Meng as it will provide them with the incentive to do more subjects. 

 

 

Dave, I agree with your sentiments and points 100%  I do not consider myself a 'rivet counter', and I had only asked the question because I genuinely hadn't seen (bad eyesight) where the Hasegawa kit was stated to have detail where the Meng did/does not, and it bothered me.  Do I care if the Meng has those details?  No, not at all.  I think that covering the basics in a model kit, such as correct sizes and shapes, plus the engineering (how a kit goes together) and fit of the parts, make much more of a difference in what makes a kit a good one than this level of rivet/screw/surface detail, and we don't yet know anything about those aspects of this kit.

 

Like you, I hope that this kit is a whiz bang success for Meng, as I really like this company, and have yet to make one of their models that I've not been thrilled with.  Let's face it, as many folks have said on many occasions, there has not been a model yet made that is perfect, 100% accurate.  The time and effort it would take a manufacturer to approach 'perfection' would make such a model prohibitively expensive, not to mention probably unbuildable.  I just want to have a model that looks like the subject, with some of the details present that are easily addressed.  For example, I do appreciate the ability to pose control surfaces, even if most of the time, those surfaces end up being modeled flush with the wing, vertical/horizontal stabilizers.  The fact that Tamiya sometimes doesn't include those options, their F-14s most recent examples thereof, doesn't make those kits any less inherently 'good', but it would be nice if they had them.  

 

Anyway, I just wanted to make the point that I don't want to be included in the rivet counter category of modeler.  I consider myself doing well if I can re-scribe or restore surface details that the manufacturer put there in the first place, once I've obliterated their details by sanding away said details when filling gaps.

Edited by Curt B
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On 12/19/2020 at 3:02 PM, Dave Roof said:

 

A few items of note if it's going to get this picky.

 

1. Those aren't rivets, they're screws.

 

2. While Hasegawa has the one's around the access panels depicted, they missed the several dozen others that cover the pylon. If you're going to fault Meng for missing those, you need to fault Hasegawa for missing a hell of lot more of them.

 

3. The F/A-18E/F pylons by Phase Hangar Resin are light years ahead of both.

 

4. If you currently, or have in the past followed any of the several hundred scale modeling groups on Facebook, it becomes apparent that those modelers that point out these types of issues are in the smallest minority. I would venture to guess less than 1% of the modeling community as a whole. Not saying it's wrong to care about such details (I do depending on the subject.....ordnance for example), just saying the vast majority of modelers simply don't care. 

 

Personally, I hope the kit is a major hit for Meng as it will provide them with the incentive to do more subjects. 

 

Always someone with a bit of common sense poking their head into these riveting discussions.

 

Geoff M

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Sweet. Another Super Hornet. New type exhaust petals are welcomed. Fun fact -  Italeri has something resembling the cut out petals in their Super Hornets. Totally unusable though.

Regarding ordnance - have the SH ever employed the GBU-24's in combat?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well the test build looks much better than Italeri I'm building right now, or the Revell I'm planning on buying.

Is it just me, or that spine looks a bit fat? Might be the angle though or the light.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's been a little while since anyone posted on this thread, so I thought I would.  I have this model on order with The 48ers.  There was a minor error on Ilias' website, the result of a revised, updated site, and while the site showed the GWH 1/48 MiG-29 SMT 9-19 in stock, it was, in fact, not the case.  However, Ilias offered, in compensation, to let me order any kit I wanted, regardless of price.  What customer service!  But, I don't like taking advantage of anyone, so I looked for a kit that was about the same price, and the one that stood out was the new Meng F/A-18E.  It's probably going to be at least a month until they have them in stock, but I'm in no hurry.  Now that I've actually got one coming, I'm particularly interested in any news anyone has about this model.  If it proves to be as good as all the other Meng models I've built, it's going to be super cool!  I may have mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I already have two Hasegawa F-18F kits in my collection, as yet unbuilt.  I kind of like the idea of the single seater '18.   

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On 2/3/2021 at 12:01 PM, delide said:

On a test shot the intake doesn't look good unfortunately, the top and inner edges could be done sharper. One could try to thin it, but that will leave visible wedges. Maybe the production version will be different.

cfa21ccec3fdfc03f89bb0fdc33f8794a5c22676.thumb.jpg.9b4b1a19e20fd5a1edac44af1655ee61.jpg

 

 

 

I got mine this morning. I can confirm the thickness of the intake is like on the picture above. 

 

IMG_5717.thumb.jpeg.fcb2825d84cf8be1f7ac4acc1a879e3c.jpegIMG_5716.thumb.jpeg.31cf65c824741c8f635ee041f19213a0.jpeg

IMG_5719.jpeg

IMG_5720.jpeg

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