1/48 Hasegawa CF-18 Hornet, #63

Gallery Article by Shawn phantom Weiler on July 1 2015

Canada  Day

 

      

Canuck decals just came out with this out-standing paint scheme. This represents the 2015 air show special which is a tribute to the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. This paint job is near that of a Hawker Hurricane or very early model Spitfire as which fought that historic battle.

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The decals from Canuck decals are a fine match to the real plane and come with very helpful instructions on how to paint this scheme using a mix of Tamiya and Model Master paints. The model itself is a Hasegawa F-18C modified to CF-18AM standards.

To do this one after market part is needed. The nose, which has the bird slicers. For this I used MAW products resin. Now, the unfortunate part is the MAW product does not come with the CF-18 spot light on the port side. You need to drill that out and then glue in the lenses provided in every Hasegawa kit. Other mods are using the "wrong" shock absorbers for the main landing gear. Forget the instructions and go with the thicker ones like Canada uses. Other things include not using the glue on sensor bumps, and removing the middle RWR on the tails. 

It seems we must be running out of airframes for the air show birds. 425 squadron supplied the airframe 188761, which was recently the 409 squadron show bird . The one that has survived not one but two successful pilot ejections. One of the photos show the 2 airframes together. Those decals were supplied by Leading Edge decals. The only sad thing about this model is I finished it the same day it was once scheduled to be flying at my local sir show. Which sadly was canceled this year.

"phantom"

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Photos and text © by Shawn phantom Weiler