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VFA-14 Tophatters 90th Anniversary -COMPLETED! PICS w/PHOTOS


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Hey guys,

I love looking at other peoples in progress shots so thought I'd post some that I've uploaded of the Super Hornet I'm currently building.

I'm using the Fightertown 90th Anniversary decals for VFA-14. They are awesome decals and I am stoked with how they go on. They are thin and look sharp and real but are also strong enough that they apply easily without tearing etc.

Anyway, here's the pics, will post more when I make more progress...

I'm building a model of this exact jet:

hornereal90ann.jpg

I'm using the Hasegawa 1/48th scale F/A-18E Super Hornet kit.

It's going to be on approach to the ship so the landing gear wheel wells are being replaced with after-market resin ones made by Aires. This required a lot of work in cutting out the kits original wheel wells and gluing in the resin ones. Took a lot of paitence. The resin wheel bays are the dark grey ones and the original kit ones are the white ones, you can see how different the resin ones are.

hornetresinw.jpg

I also have to cut the landing gear up so that I can make the oleos uncompressed/extended to the in-flight positions.

hornegercut.jpg

I then found some drill bits that are roughly the same diameter as the oleos and hollowed out the plastic struts so that they slide in nicely.

hornetgeardrill.jpg

I put a resin cockpit it as well and when I glued all the bits together the fuselage had some terrible joints that required a lot of filler.

hornefillerfus.jpg

The rear fuselage sides were really bad too. This was my first real attempt at scribing panel lines, it was fun. I just used the trumpeter panel line engraver ($10)

hornrubble.jpg

You can see how the newly engraved lines over the filler in the previous picture of this angle really hides the fact that I had to fill and sand this area.

hornpaintunder.jpg

Edited by tomcat21
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Freshly painted black on spine and wingtips, tails and stabs.

horndrybox.jpg

A week later and the spine is masked up ready for the gray coating on top.

hornbruis.jpg

Here's a pic of the nose landing gear with the drill bit inserted as the extended (uncompressed) oleo.

hornnlg.jpg

Pilot in the cockpit..

hornjhms.jpg

Another angle showing the instrument panel. I didn't put too much time into the cockpit because with the canopy closed and pilot in this is probably the last time anyone will be able to see it.

horncockpit.jpg

And now the most recent pic, from today, canopy on and painted.

hornbackcan.jpg

More pics soon.

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Jolly nice work so far! :thumbsup:

<...> I'm using the Fightertown 90th Anniversary decals for VFA-14. <...> I'm using the Hasegawa 1/48th scale F/A-18E Super Hornet kit.

It's going to be on approach to the ship <...>I also have to cut the landing gear up so that I can make the oleos uncompressed/extended to the in-flight positions. <...>

Strangely enough, that's precisely the same set-up I had planned for my Hasegawa E! :o :lol:

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  • 4 months later...

OK sorry about my absence on this one guys, I had a 6 month break from this because I was building a couple of 1/35 AH-1Ws for my brother and me.

Put some more hours in on the Hornet yesterday. The undercarriage is greatly detailed on this kit. Spent a whole morning attaching gear doors and their linkages as well as installing the main landing gear struts. They even have the little retract actuators, which is awesome.

Here are some pics of the wheel wells painted, doors installed and a light wash applied. These are the Aires resin wheel wells. i was a bit too lazy to properly remove the ejector pin marks off the doors. :coolio:

shnlg.jpg

shmlgww.jpg

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Hey thanks guys, really helps keep you going when people are saying such positive things :cheers:.

Made some more progress today:

After some painting of the plumbing in the NLG wheel well the nose gear went in without too much trouble:

shnlgin.jpg

The tailhook on the other hand..well it has to be down for landing like the gear is... I had to cut the tailhook away from it's base, cut out the inside of it (it was a solid block) then hack a piece of 1/72 scale Super Hornet landing gear onto the top bit of the hook where it goes into the fitting.

I still have the hook actuator to make but it's looking pretty cool so far. The US Navy gallery is great, found some fantastic close ups of tailhooks extended while on approach and used them to set the angle and everything.

shook.jpg

Oh and Froggy yeah it's such a beautiful kit it's amazing that some of the joints are so bad. I just thought it was because I put so much resin in I might have warped the overall fit etc.

Have just started on a 1/72 in flight 'diorama' of a flight of US Navy jets and the F/A-18F has roughly the same construction. The joints look better but it could just be that its a smaller scale :cheers:.

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  • 4 months later...

Hi guys,

In the time since my last post I have finished this model. There was lots of little jobs including mounting it on some perspex that took me a while to figure out but I thought I'd post some photos I took yesterday morning down by the seaside of the finished model.

shtop1.jpg

nh3.jpg

nh1.jpg

I used photoshop on this one to remove the support...

nh5.jpg

It is currently sitting on a table at the Australian Model Expo 2011, next to some truly awesome 1/48th aircraft (i.e I'm not expecting a trophy out of this ;) )

9022d213.jpg

Anyway, it was great fun to build and the finished model is fun to look at.

Thanks to everyone who posted kind words on here, it was really appreciated!

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Fantastic ! :thumbsup:

Your Rhino came out just awesomely ...

I really love that base support too ... :thumbsup2:

Gregg

hi from a french guy, super, tres joli f18e thats a wonderful decoration He delays me making also

Thanks for sharing.

regards

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