A pair of Hornets -- 1/72

[opus999]

I'm pretty excited about this next build because it's been in the making for 19 years. Bear with me... there's a little bit of story here.

 

When I was 16, I got a Testor's F/A-18C for Christmas.  I did the best job I could with the skills I had and was pretty proud of it.  In college, my best friend gave me an earlier boxing of the same kit because he didn't have the patience to do it (he started it though...). A few years later I built it, but didn't finish it and it's been "mostly finished" for 19 years.

 

 

 

 

So, why didn't I finish it? Well, back then, airbrushing was mostly luck for me because I was struggling with a Testors-branded Aztek airbrush and knew nothing about thinning, priming, etc. I spent more time cleaning the thing to keep the paint flowing than actually painting! In this instance, I was putting the Dark Ghost gray on, with the feathered border against the light gray, and I was doing the last half inch, when the airbrush spat out a big glob of gunk, then proceeded to spider all the thinned paint that was dammed up behind it. I figured I'd have to sand it, then repaint it. Frankly, airbrushing was so frustrating and tedious that I wasn't in a hurry to fix it, so I put it away to "cool off" before I fixed it.  Then came kids, and grad school, etc. etc... and here we are.

 

Actually, this isn't a bad thing because I've learned so much since returning to the hobby that I feel I can really do it justice. Plus, it's already assembled and filled and sanded! Here's the kit:

 

 

I really wanted to do an '80's paint scheme because it's a little more interesting than the one they used in the 1990's onward. I really liked the one I did in high school -- VFA-25 "Fist of the Fleet":

 

 

I looked and looked for 1980's era decals but everything seems to be from the 90's on.  Probably because that's when they started to get more colorful. I liked the decals that came with the kit, but my experience with Testors decals of that era is not good.  They seemed to have some sort of milky stuff on them that is hard to get off and turns yellow after only a couple of years (as you can see in the photo above -- although that build is a lot more than a couple of years old -- but you get the idea). So I really wanted after market decals.  The scheme that came with the kit was the first operational Navy Hornet squadron in 1980:

 

 

 

Those decals are in great shape. But I don't trust them. Well... I lucked out.  Just last week I happened to think about this and went to ebay and sure enough found a set of '80's Hornet decals! What's more, they're for VFA-25!! I couldn't believe my luck!

 

 

What's my plan? I'd originally planned to re-scribe the panel lines since I sanded most of them off, and the rest were so fine that they were hard to see.  But I stink at scribing and it never comes out the way I want, so I'm going to use a fine (0.3mm) pencil to draw them on.  I've tried the technique on some old models and it seems to work well if you're careful. Also, I have a huge collection of pictures of '80's Hornets and they were filthy! So, this will be my opportunity to make a dirty Hornet. I definitely plan to use salt weathering.

 

So the first step is to sand all the old paint and panel lines off, and then primer it with Mr. Surfacer Black 1500.

 

What's interesting about this build is it was the last one I did before my long break and it shows where my skills were at. If I hadn't had that paint accident, I would've put decals on (no gloss coat, because I didn't know any better) and dull coated it and that would've been the end of it.  I really didn't know how to weather/wear jets, and was only really starting to learn how to do it on WWII a/c. What I had achieved at that point was the ability to putty and sand seams pretty well.  So, because I'd done this kit in High School as well, it makes for an interesting display of how my skills had grown in 10 years:

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, sorry for the long preamble.  Hope this will be interesting and you'll want to follow along!

Edited March 8, 2019 by opus999

[opus999]

Part II

 

I did say "A pair of Hornets".  The other one is going to be a Hasegawa F/A-18 kit with Canadian markings:

 

 

This ties into the story above. When I did the kit in High School, there were 3 decal options and one was Canadian. That scheme fascinated me because of the slightly different colors they used and the false canopy on the bottom. But in the end the VFA-25 scheme won out because the lightning bolt and fist were just too dramatic to pass up.

 

I decided to get the Hasegawa kit so I could do that Canadian scheme, and so I would have a template for the panel lines.

 

So, I'll document both builds in this thread.

[opus999]

I thought it would be easy to sand the Testors model down to bare plastic, but the paint really held tight.  Which is good! So, I just sanded it until it was smooth.  So all the panel lines are gone except for the ones on the wing hinges -- I wouldn't want to try and recreate those!

 

[Nikolay Polyakov]

Looking good, @opus999! I done these (Italeri boxings) kits 25 years ago - very good kits for its time. Looking forward for the Hasegawa’s one! 👍

 

Cheers! 🙂

[amblypygid]

Nice project, with the personal history. Made me think how the bad experiences seem to stick with us longer than the good!

[opus999]

Didn't get back to this until late last night -- was helping my Dad with his 1/48 monogram Hawker Typhoon. I sprayed a base coat of Mr. Surfacer 1500 black. I masked the decals in the cockpit, but made sure I got the Mr. Surfacer in there because it really needed to be repainted.

 

 

Of course, it didn't all go well.  I was using a spray can and it got a little thick in spots, where it promptly attacked the remaining enamel.  Not to worry, it's only a couple of spots and can easily be sanded smooth and patched.

 

 

 

It will slow me up a little bit, but not that much. I also did a lot of research on Hornet cockpits this morning so I have a good idea of how worn both of the Hornets' cockpits should be (hint: not much).

 

On the Hasegawa side, there's not a ton of cockpit detail, which is a little disappointing. I glued the two halves of the ejection seat together. Why do they have to give two halves of a ejection seat when a lot of other manufacturers provide whole seats? To top it off there were no alignment pins, and despite being careful, it's still a little mis-aligned. I filled in the sink holes in the seat with CA and will need to do some sanding to get the seat looking right. So that slows things up a little bit too.

 

I hope to get the Hasegawa cockpit painted today and it would be really great to start the marble coat on the Testors kit, but we'll see how far I get on a busy sunday!

[opus999]

On 3/9/2019 at 1:20 AM, Nikolay Polyakov said:

Looking good, @opus999! I done these (Italeri boxings) kits 25 years ago - very good kits for its time. Looking forward for the Hasegawa’s one! 👍

 

Cheers! 🙂

Thanks! Back in those days I did a lot of Italeri/testors kits.   The F-5E was a terrific kit for the day. I also thought the F-14 was a good kit, except for a terrible fit in the nose section. The detail was really nice too. I also really liked their B-57 and B-66. Too bad they kind of bottomed out when they broke away from Italeri in the 90's.

 

So far the Hasegawa kit looks pretty nice.  The fit is good except for a couple minor places and the detail is pretty nice too. Just wish they had given me a whole seat instead of two halves of a seat!

[opus999]

On 3/9/2019 at 1:45 AM, amblypygid said:

Nice project, with the personal history. Made me think how the bad experiences seem to stick with us longer than the good!

Funny how that is! I've been pretty fortunate to be able to fix some of the worst experiences by refurbishing the models.

[opus999]

Getting some traction now! I fixed the bad spots on the Testor's kit, got the Hasegawa cockpit painted up, and airbrushed Mr. Color gloss white on everything that needed to be white (landing gears, gear bays, etc.).

 

`Here's the Testors Hornet:

 

 

Patched up the trouble spots:

 

 

 

I painted the Testors cockpit, which was a bit of a challenge as it was assembled by my buddy 35 years ago. Taking the seat out would've helped, but he must've used a whole tube of glue on it because it wouldn't budge! I hear some cracking sounds but they weren't coming from the seat, so I figured I'd better paint the cockpit in situ. It needed painting because the seat was a very bright green color and there was dark ghost gray over spray on everything (apparently my masking wasn't up to snuff way back when). I painted everything the colors called out in the instructions (after finding pictures of F-18 cockpits for reference).  The Hornet cockpits I've seen don't have much wear (if any), so I just used gunship gray to drybrush some highlights to break up the monotonous black.

 

 

 

 

The Hasegawa cockpit was very spartan. For a second I thought I was working on a Hobby Boss Quick Build! There's not a whole lot I can do with it besides paint it.  I don't think a wash would do anything to make it look more realistic. I used the Gunship gray drybrushing on the seat, though and that improved it's look quite a bit. The seat isn't glued in -- I will probably do that after the a/c is painted because it will be easier to mask the cockpit that way.

 

 

 

That's all for now.  It will be a couple of days before I can get back to it.  With three busy boys, my evenings are usually booked way in advance!

[opus999]

Had an unexpected day off from work thanks to the weather, so I was able to spend some time on the Hasegawa kit.

 

 

First off, I mixed up a wash with tube watercolor, water and a little bit of detergent. I applied the wash to the landing gears and when it dried used a dry Q-tip to clean them up a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that it was time to start buttoning up the fuselage. I glued in the cockpit (without the seat) and then glued the top and bottom halves of the fuselage together. Unfortunately, the seam on the nose was terrible. I don't know if it was the casting or if the plastic was warped, but the top part protruded over the seam by maybe 1/2 mm on both sides.

 

 

 

You might notice that on the starbord side, the vertical panel lines line up, but on the port side they don't. Which means I'd need to break out my scribing skills.  which are considerable. Considerably terrible that is.

 

I was surprised and disappointed in the engineering of this kit. For some reason they cast the sides of the fuselage (under the wings) as separate pieces. With no alignment pegs.  Here's a picture of me holding one of the pieces next to where it's supposed to go:

 

 

To make a long story short, it took about 45 minutes to get both pieces on with the best fit I could muster and ended up with this:

 

 

The other side was just as bad. So I had to bust out the 150 grit sanding sticks to get those areas flush. I used a lot of CA for filler (since there were big gaps in the seams behind the wings) and sanded down to 6000 grit. Then I re-scribed all the panel lines I sanded away. In all it was about 2-1/2 hours to get it glued together and fixed. It's kind of hard to see in these pictures, but those seams are smooth as a baby's bottom now.

 

 

 

 

 

That was a bit more of a hassle than I expected from a Hasegawa kit. Hopefully that's the worst of it.  This is an area where the Testors kit was better. The entire bottom of the fuselage was one piece, which is better than the multi-piece bottom of the Hasegawa kit. Also, the Testor's kit may have had large seams, but they were easy to deal with because the pieces were flush and I didn't have to shape any plastic.

 

Still, got a fair amount done today!

[opus999]

Last night and this morning I used my 0.3 mm pencil to draw all the panel lines on the Testors Hornet in preparation for painting.

 

 

 

It was good practice, because this is what I plan to do at the end, as well.  I just took 3 layers of Tamiya masking tape and laid them along the panel lines and drew the pencil along it a couple of times.  The only thing I really learned was to go slow and to be aware of when the tape is losing its grip.  I only had a couple minor goof ups.

 

On to painting! 🙂

[opus999]

Got the marble coat done. Although the difference between the light ghost gray and dark ghost gray is so subtle, I can't really tell the difference in the marble coat.

 

 

 

I generally don't accent panel lines -- I've found that accented panel lines are either too drastic, too uniform or both.  Plus, my reference photos usually don't show them.  But sometimes they do! For instance, the CF-104 in 80's gray/green camo usually had the same panel lines that looked shaded.  Another example is the F-4 Phantom, which almost always has the same access panels on the side with some sort of shading around them.  I discovered with the F-4 that the shading was caused by what ever lubricant they used on the fasteners which made an oily stain that wicked around the panel edges.

 

So, panel shading can be accurate, but only if it's subtle and if reference photos are followed.  Which brings me to my F-18. I've found that F-18's in the 80's got particularly dirty, probably from the flat paint, which has a rougher surface to more easily catch dirt. I've looked very closely at flat painted warplanes in wet environments (the outside displays at the Evergreen museum in Oregon, for instance) and found that the dirt does collect along the panel edge, most likely carried by water running along the a/c skin and "catching" at the panel edge.  So, from a distance, it does create the effect of shaded panel lines, but not over the entire aircraft!

 

With the case of my F-18, you may notice I did put the shaded lines over the entire a/c, but that is because as I'm painting the top coat, I kind of play it by ear and paint a little thicker (darker) in some places, and a little lighter in others so that the uniform panel lines get broken up.  Or sometimes the disappear altogether... 😕

 

Gotta fix a faucet I discovered was leaking today, but hopefully I can get to the top coat before the day is done.

[Hook]

Nice work so far!

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

[jean]

Hi,

if this is not single-mindedness, then I don't know what it is!

I like people who never give up. And on top of that the duo is sure to look stunning.

The only Hornet I ever built was the 1/72 Hasegawa kit of the prototype, which I remember buying in a Richmond model shop near London, in the early 80s...

It did take me a while to build it too.

I am no great fan of the Hornet, but I vaguely remember that only the prototypes had the "tooth" in the leading edge of the wings, and that it had been deleted on production aircraft.

I do stand to be corrected, but...

 

Super progress!

JR

[Hook]

3 minutes ago, jean said:

I vaguely remember that only the prototypes had the "tooth" in the leading edge of the wings, and that it had been deleted on production aircraft.

 

The FSD F-18's featured a dogtooth on the wings and horizontal tail, which were deleted on production ones to improve the roll rate. 

 

Also, originally there were huge slots between the LERXs and the fuselage.

 

They were very efficient at generating vortexes along the fuselage which were beneficial to stability at high AOA, but unfortunately even better at creating drag so there were gradually filled until only small slots remained. 

 

This post has some pretty good pointers. 

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

 

[opus999]

4 hours ago, jean said:

only the prototypes had the "tooth" in the leading edge of the wings, and that it had been deleted on production aircraft.

 

4 hours ago, Hook said:

originally there were huge slots between the LERXs and the fuselage.

 

Uh-oh. I wondered why I couldn't find any pictures of Hornets with the slots. I chalked it up to early production types, but alas I was wrong. I missed the dog tooth entirely.

 

Wow, so this means that Testors was selling a kit that was supposed to be the production aircraft, but it really was the prototype. Wonderful...

 

I just finished painting today. I guess I need to re-evaluate where to go on this -- I can fill in the slots and repaint, but taking off the dog tooth (teeth?) will be a major pain -- plus I don't see how I can extend the wings.

 

Don't get me wrong! I really appreciate the feed back! I like to learn these things and get it right -- it just seems I always find out late in the process

[opus999]

Got painting done today.

 

 

 

 

On that last picture I used the flash, so you can't really see the contrast between the dark and light gray, but you get the idea. I also painted landing gears, gear doors, fuel tanks, and pylons.  I'd hoped to get to the anti-glare, but I ran out of time.

 

Regarding the kit inaccuracy pointed out by @jean and @Hook -- I took a look at the kit, and I think with my epoxy putty I can fill those slots in and I can probably get rid of the dog teeth by sanding.  then some touch up and I should be back to where I was.

 

I'm glad I found this out before decals!

 

[opus999]

I set out to "fix" my Testors Hornet (bring it up to spec? ). I started by gluing sheet styrene in the gaps between the LERXs and the fuselage to give the filler a back stop.

 

 

Then I used my Apoxie Sculpt epoxy putty to fill in the gaps. I like using this because it is water soluble and easy to shape, and it has a long working time -- at least an hour.  The down side is that I have to wait over night for it to cure, but it will cure hard as a rock, so I have no problem waiting.

 

 

 

I bunged up the paint worse than I expected, so I may just paint everything forward of the leading edges of the wings all over again.  Which is a bummer, but it shouldn't take too long.

 

A minute and a half with the grinding wheel on my Dremel, and there were no dog teeth any more.

 

 

That was much easier to do than I thought.  If I had done this before painting, I would've sculpted the leading edge where the dog tooth was so that it would be a sharper leading edge.  Right now there's a flat where the dog tooth used to be.  It will be OK though, it really isn't noticeable unless you know about it. And you have to look close!

 

So, when the epoxy putty cures, I'll sand it a little smoother and then repaint the front.

[opus999]

Sorry it's been quiet, but it was a pretty busy week in this household. I was able to get a couple iterations of sanding/painting/filling the LERX slots in, though.  As with any filling job, I found it didn't look as good as I thought when I painted it with primer. Tonight will hopefully be the end of it as I only had a couple minor dips in the filler last night.

 

I did a little research last night to figure out where all the little blisters in the Hasegawa kit go on the fighter. Their instructions were not too detailed and I wanted to make sure I got it right. I made sure to find early- to mid-80's US and Canadian Hornets as most if not all of the pictures I have are from the late '90s on. Well, to my relief, all but 2 of these blisters are not on early hornets.  I also found that, according to a RCAF news article at  http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/news-template-standard.page?doc=canadian-air-task-force-and-cf-188-aircraft-headed-to-romania-for-bilateral-military-training/ikwu8jh7 that the little "fences" on the LERXs (which they call LEX Fences in the article) didn't appear until the "Mid-80s", but I found a few late 80's photos where they are missing.  Bummer part is, I already drilled the holes for the LEX fences in the Hasegawa kit.

 

I have Canadian decals for both an early 80's and a late 90's Hornet, I guess I need to decide which one I need to do.

 

I'll post pictures of the LERX fix when I finish it tonight after work.

[opus999]

Got some time to do some painting and I'm back to where I was at last weekend. I'm really happy with how filling the gaps in the LERXs turned out:

 

 

Here's how it looks -- notice that I got rid of the dog teeth on the wings too.

 

 

And, here's the pylons and tanks I painted a few days ago

 

 

I also filled in the holes I'd drilled in the Hasegawa kit for the parts I'm not using now, and got some primer on that kit. I'll be able to start painting it if I have any time this weekend.

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by opus999

[opus999]

A little progress this weekend... I sprayed Aqua Gloss on the Testors Hornet in preparation for decals. I have a hard time with Aqua Gloss in an airbrush.  I can't seem to get a very smooth finish, unlike the Tamiya X-22 clear. So after spending 45 minutes at it, I gave up and painted it with a hand brush.  It always goes on smooth and doesn't leave brush strokes -- I don't think I'll mess with it in the airbrush again.

 

Today I painted the anti-glare on in front of the cockpit. This is the first time I've used MRP paint and it worked very well.  It was just a small patch, though.  The true test will be when I use it to paint the top of the Hasegawa Hornet.

 

 

I started with the decals and didn't get nearly as far as I'd hoped.  There's a ton of "no step" stencils, which I knew would take a little while, but I didn't think about how tough it would be to align them without panel lines!  I did a lot of measuring on the Hasegawa model to determine where the stencils should go and then measuring the Testors model to put them on.  It will be a long process, but it will be worth it in the end.  I got one wing done and decided to go for a little instant gratification and do one of the vertical stabilizers.

 

Those stencils are tiny!!

 

 

 

This may be a little bit of a long haul!

[opus999]

I was distracted by a Spitfire, and then spent the weekend at our family cabin, so no progress. But, the rest of the family is off on spring break, while I only have 0.9 hours of vacation since switching jobs.  So that means I have some evenings free to try to get some traction on these birds!

[opus999]

That's more like it...! I painted the bottom of the Hasagawa (Canadian) kit tonight.

 

 

 

[opus999]

A little more progress.  Got the Top of the Canadian Hornet painted. I used MRP paint for the (almost) first time. I really liked it. I'm not sure if it's the best value -- I'll see how long a bottle lasts. I did the black basing technique where I oversprayed the black Mr. Surfacer 1500 primer with a marble coat, avoiding panel lines to a certain extent, and then misting on several coats over that. Here it is with the US Hornet (which got several stencils put on tonight):

 

 

Side view of the nose:

 

 

I spent about 3 hours between tonight and last night putting little "no step" decals on.  I'm only about 1/3 done. ☹️ Normally I'm a fan of stencils, because if the decals are done right, they add tremendous realism. This time, I'm wondering if I'm wasting my time! The stencils are so small and so low-viz that I wonder if I will be able to see them at all after all the weathering. One thing is for sure -- I'm going to be at this probably a week longer than I expected because of all the little decals.

 

 

[opus999]

No pictures tonight, but I was able to finish the decals on the top. Man those '80s era super scale decal instructions stink horribly! They're small and almost impossible to read.  I gave up and searched on the internet and found a decal company that had a pdf of stencil placement. Very high quality too.  It sure helped and really sped things up!

 

It also makes me wish I'd purchased some better decals -- I was more concerned with the Fist and Lightning bolt markings than the stencils. The stencils are not very legible (besides being small, they're not very crisp and clear), probably because the technology wasn't there in the '80s to make such small decals very clear to read.

 

I wonder if I should look for better ones for the Canadian Hornet? The US one is too far along now...