paulsbrown

Anigrand (of course) made one it seems. I don't think the silver finish did much for it but this scheme was pretty nice And not the most advanced looking cockpit

Great paintwork, lot's of effective and subtle details, really effective.

That looks great! High praise for the Monogram choice too.

Has anyone tried the MRP gloss white with the hardener? They seem to get mixed 1/1 ratio. I've been doing a lot of white recently doing prototypes so have been experimenting. Because my prototypes have colorful stripes I have been painting the white in lacquer and the stripes in enamel to ease clean up without dissolving the white base. It's been working as the two projects below show but I have found Tamiya gloss white and Mr Paint gloss white tediously thin (and hard to use as a 'Tipp-ex' like correction)so the suggestions of Tamiya Liquid Surfacer Primer White sounds promising.

I found a photo of the 'fitting' of the intakes And another of the cockpit tub scabbing parts from several sources. n

My bad, I used the intakes from the Kinetic F/A-18A kit (which I have replaced with Phase Hanger intakes). Not too much work, some thinning of the internal fuselage plastic and a bit of putty/sanding, worth it as they made a big difference.

Yes, I'm making the white Rafale A right now and want to do one of the white Harrier schemes. If you hit the 'prototype' tag at the beginning you'll see some others I've done. The are the old Monogram kits from 1979 and 1980 Werner. To me they were the obvious choice despite there being much easier, newer kits I could've gone with.

Yes, that's dedication. Great work.

Great work, what a cool scheme. It's gonna look good on the shelf with the others.

And I'm really glad you did!

This was on deck right after my YF-16 and again using the vintage Monogram. The 1980 kit F-18 has the open LEX slots perfect for the first prototype but still needs some small changes, mainly adding dog tooth on the elevators and wings plus some changes in the cockpit instrument panel. I added seamless intakes and a vac canopy as the original was too small and not the more rounded omega shape. In both kits I used the original landing gear struts, they are of the day's molding capabilities but despite some chunky areas are well detailed and even have the brake lines included. Paint was a mix of Testors MM enamel blues and Testors gold, Caracal and Monogram decals. Caracal had matched their 'F-18 Hornet - The Early Years' with the original blue auto paint used in the rollout F-18 which saved me from repainting the Monogram decals the correct color.

Bring on a Hind A.

And they came with good references, I wouldn't have noticed the change in shape of the blue by the tail hook without them. I have your Kestrel and Harrier sheet which I plan to use soon on another Monogram project, the AV-8B prototype.

I've built the Weasel, great kit. I gave it to a friend but I do still have the Monogram single seater to build. Brass undercarriage is really all they need. Stay tuned Werner! Rafale A on the workbench and Mirage 2000 prototype already built It did which was good of them as there wasn't much inside the intake. It adds color and simplified the build as I would've stuck someone's seamless intake on it

I'm a fan for the old Monogram 1/48 kits, they had so much more detail than other kits at the time. This kit I first built as a child, brush painted with some red paint that took ages to dry.... I've wanted to retry it and have had the kit in my stash for a while. After reading Robert Coram's book 'Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War' did the trick and I was finally ready to dig out my 1979 Monogram F-16 kit and make what Boyd referred to as a pure fighter. The YF-16 at that point was more like his vision, not a multirole aircraft but light, fast and maneuverable. This project also got an F-18 prototype kit out too and was next on the bench, another Monogram kit from 1980. The F-16 kit is pretty close to the YF-16, it needs nose reshaping, cockpit/seat changes and some other little things but comparing my changes to profile photos it worked well. Vingtor decals were used. This shows how the nose got bigger with the radar on the production versions. And some minor differences from above And finally to my studio where the shelves are and I paint other things. If interested you can see my paintings here.