1/48 Italeri F/A-18F Super Hornet |
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Gallery Article by Jacob Weintraub |
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I built this kit almost entirely out of the box, and it is a pain in the neck! This is the second 1/48 Italeri Super Hornet I have built, the first being an E model. The E kit was hard to build, and the F kit is no different. The fit is just terrible all over; lot's of elbow grease is needed to make it look nice. I heard Revell-Monogram is coming out with an E kit in the fall, so maybe that will be a nice alternative to look forward to!
I used Two Bob's "Super Bugs" decals, and I pulled two pilots out of a Hasegawa F/A-18D kit. The deacls are excellent, for those who haven't used Two Bob's before. The model was actually built as a gift, so I built it to order: without any ordnance, and gear up. I used Model Master Light and Dark Ghost Gray for the final finish, and weathered the plane with ground up artist's chalk, and a pencil.
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The Super Hornet is
a relatively new plane, and the first squadron deployed, the VFA-115 "The
Eagles"on the USS Abraham Lincoln, left about 9 months ago. The
squadron was supposed to be back, but was called back to the Gulf once the war
started. The plane I built is from the VFA-41 "The Black Aces".
This squadron is part of the USS Nimitz battle group, and is also in the Gulf
right now. The planes look fairly new in most pictures on the web, but I
figured they would look pretty dirty after going into war, so I weathered the
plane pretty good.
While the model is tough to
build, once it is completed, it is a good looking kit. There a lot of
inaccurate details to fix, and most molded right into the kit. One example
is a speed brake between the vertical stabs, which is not there on the actual
plane. That particular feature is found on A thru D F/A-18's.
Another is the intakes. Aside from the poor fit, they are too shallow
inside, giving the appearance that the engines are in the center fuselage
rather than under the vertical stabs like they are in reality. The landing
gear was meant to be down on this kit, and closing the doors requires some work,
especially the MLG doors. My best advice if you want the doors shut is
just get them as level to the intake structure as possible, and fill-sand-scribe
the detail back into them.
I wouldn't tell anyone not to buy
this kit, it just requires a lot of work. Plus, if you want a 1/48th Super
Hornet, there's not much of a choice! I hope everyone enjoys my Super Bug!
Jacob Weintraub
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