A pair of Hornets -- 1/72

[opus999]

Busy weekend, so didn't get a whole lot done.  I wasn't going to pencil in the panel lines until I was finished, but I found I really needed them to get the decals on the sides aligned right. So I had a little time yesterday and penciled those in and a little time tonight to do a few decals. First, here's the decals:

 

 

 

The panel lines on that side (starboard) side came out pretty well, but they're a little dark on the port side:

 

 

But, they are easy to remove -- a little water on a q-tip and they come right off. So, I may be re-doing that side.

 

On the top, the lines are not constant because the pencil does not mark very glossy surfaces, and since the surface isn't totally smooth and glossy, it worked better in some places than others.  Which is OK b/c I only need guidelines right now and the salt weathering will cover a lot of the lines anyway.  When the final dullcoat is on, I will go over them again.

 

Edited April 8, 2019 by opus999
forgot a picture

[opus999]

Finally got the decals done on the US Hornet! I only had about 20 minutes every night this week, so progress didn't happen very fast. But, with an hour and a half late last night I was able to finish off all the little stencils. This morning I hand brushed aqua gloss on, which will protect the decals when I do the salt weathering.

 

These pictures don't really show the decals well, because they're so small, but they do show how glossy the finish is now!

 

 

 

Here are some close ups to give a feel for how many decals were involved (about 100!)

 

 

 

 

I've penciled in some of the panel lines, but as I noted before, not all of them worked because of how glossy the finish is.  It will work best after the dull coat.

 

I don't know how long to let the Aqua Gloss sit before trying my salt weathering.  I've read that acrylics dry, but don't really cure, so you can paint over them after they are dry.  I suppose the safe play is to wait until tomorrow morning, but I wonder if it would be safe to do the salt weathering late this afternoon? Any thoughts or insights out there?

 

In the meantime, if I can find the time, I have a little touch up on the Canadian bird, then I can Aqua Gloss it and begin the arduous task of decals all over again. :/ At least it will go faster this time because I have a template.

 

Of course, I won't be able to do any of this until the laundry is done, some of the yard work is finished and I've helped a couple of my kids with some Scout stuff...

 

 

[opus999]

Oh, yeah, my plan for the salt weathering is to put on a couple of slightly lighter coats, and then a darker coat. I've seen folks take the base color and add a little bit of white or black and use that, but I thought maybe I'd just use some lighter and darker grays I have in my supplies.

 

Most of the US Hornets in the 80's were quite dirty. Here is a good example that I'm using as a template (one of many templates, actually):

 

F-A-18C Hornet Aboard USS Ronald Reagan DVIDS123118
https://www.dvidshub.net/image/123118 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

That mottled appearance on the sides is from weathering, but also from paint patches from touch-ups while on cruise.  The salt weathering examples I've seen seem to capture this look very well, so that's what I'll do.

 

Also, notice that just behind the Rudder hinges, on both the inside and outside of the tail fins, there is some oil streaking or staining.  I will probably do this by putting a piece of tape along that panel line and giving it a light dusting of Tamiya smoke.  That will also help to accent the rudder without raised or engraved panel lines.

 

This next photo shows how mottled the top can be, however it is a bit cleaner than most I've seen:

 

F-18C VFA-81 in flight during Gulf War 1991
Senior Airman Chris Putnam, USAF [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Another good example:

 

US Navy 031026-N-9411J-009 An F-A-18A Hornet flies over the Western Pacific Ocean during flight operations
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Christopher L Jordan. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

This next one shows the oil streaking that is common on the tops of Hornets. After salt weathering, I will need to put another coat of aqua gloss on, and I will be able to use tube watercolor to get that effect.

 

VMFA-122 FA-18 Hornet in flight during Red Flag 12-3 1120309-F-KX404-075
Senior Airman Brett Clashman [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Finally, a good example of the oil staining that is common on the bottom of Hornets:

 

F-18C with SLAM-ER missile and AWW-13 pods in flight
USN [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Edited April 13, 2019 by opus999

[opus999]

Well, I decided to hold off until tomorrow on the salt weathering. In the meantime, I painted the Canadian Hornet's Landing gear doors and tail fins. Of course, after I painted the tail fins, I was looking at some pictures and saw they were dark gray on the inboard sides and light gray on the outboard sides.  I painted both sides light, so I had to go back and fix the inboard color.

 

 

I gloss coated the whole bird using Tamiya X-22 clear through an airbrush. I decided to let it dry until tomorrow before I start decals.

 

 

I also glued together the external fuel tanks, and I will need to sand those down before painting as the seams are pretty ugly.

 

I am at a loss about the searchlight that was on the port side in front of the cockpit on the CF-18. The only thing I can think of is to cut a circular mask and paint the searchlight either white or silver. Since I'm using a kit that was intended to be a US Navy Hornet, there are no parts for a searchlight. I don't like the white or silver circle idea because it will look a little cheesy. Or at least not very realistic. But I have no ideas beyond that...

 

I'm excited because I can do the salt weathering tomorrow, which is what I've been waiting to do for a couple of weeks!

[opus999]

Question for the evening: On a mid-80's Canadian Hornet, what insignia were on the undersides of the wings? The only picture I have that is dated from the mid-80's has two roundels on top, but I have no verified '80's pictures of the bottom. 

 

The pictures I found of the bottom usually have "CAF" and the "last 3" of the serial number. The Testors instructions have roundels both on the top and bottom, one on each wing (4 total).

 

The instructions (which stink) to the decals only show one side of the aircraft. Not the tops or bottoms. The decal sheet has two "CAF" decals. It says the a/c was from September 1983.

 

An internet search (so far) has turned up nothing.  Any ideas out there??

[busnproplinerfan]

From what I remember, the CAF and three numbers were always the only underwing markings. I don't see these much, even less up close. I do know every CAF/RCAF plane has had this under the wings. Never seen anything different on any CF-18.

[opus999]

19 hours ago, busnproplinerfan said:

From what I remember, the CAF and three numbers were always the only underwing markings. I don't see these much, even less up close. I do know every CAF/RCAF plane has had this under the wings. Never seen anything different on any CF-18.

Thanks!

 

Early this morning before work I had some time and found the Canuck Model Products website. Their CF-18 decals ("as seen in the 1980s") had the same on the bottom. Bummer that my decal set didn't include numbers!

[opus999]

Didn't get time to work much on either model yesterday, except at the very end of the day.  I thought I might get a quick salt weather coat in, but then I remembered that I had to paint the walkways on the stabilators.  For some reason, the decal sheet didn't provide them (and neither did the Hasegawa kit decals, strangely enough), so I had to mask and paint them myself.  Got some of the masking done last night and finished the job tonight.

 

First the US Hornet:

 

 

 

And the Canadian Hornet (with decals too):

 

 

 

I will need to put the decals on the stabilators of the US Hornet and aqua gloss over them before I can salt weather. So... maybe next weekend? (Hopefully sooner!)

 

I completely lucked out with the paint color. On the Canadian bird, it was just straight-up color matching and I found that MM FS36492 (not 36495!) looked like the closest match to the decals. On the US bird, I found I had a bottle of model master 35237 (I didn't want to spray the MRP 35237 on the aqua gloss for fear of Lacquer over Acrylic incompatability). Unfortunately, the Model master looked a bit more blue-green than the MRP. I totally guess with the mix and used 6 drops of Model Master 35237 (medium gray) with 1 drop of Model master gunship gray and it was about a perfect match! So much so that when I re-applied the used masking on the Canadian hornet (see picture above), I had a hard time seeing where the edge of the tape was.  I love it when things work out on the first try!

[busnproplinerfan]

I'll be watching this. In all my models, I still have no CF-18s. Did build ones years ago and used the wrong grey, was a blueish grey instead of a greyish blue. Was the old Hasegawa kit and that's what the instructions said. All I have left of it is one of the tails.

[opus999]

On 4/15/2019 at 9:35 PM, busnproplinerfan said:

I'll be watching this. In all my models, I still have no CF-18s. Did build ones years ago and used the wrong grey, was a blueish grey instead of a greyish blue. Was the old Hasegawa kit and that's what the instructions said. All I have left of it is one of the tails.

Great! Nice to have you along.

[busnproplinerfan]

I should build one, he CF-18s are on the endagered list, not many still flying. Lockheeds hellbent on us getting the F-35. Of course it's all political.  I want to make the prototype.

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

5 hours ago, busnproplinerfan said:

I should build one, he CF-18s are on the endagered list, not many still flying. Lockheeds hellbent on us getting the F-35. Of course it's all political.  I want to make the prototype.

Well, you could always also build an ex RAAF Hornet in RCAF markings, they will be around for a few years yet.

[busnproplinerfan]

5 hours ago, Romeo Alpha Yankee said:

Well, you could always also build an ex RAAF Hornet in RCAF markings, they will be around for a few years yet.

I don't know if they actually got them, they're the same vintage. If we got the F-35s, we'd have to start starting wars to pay them off.

Edited April 18, 2019 by busnproplinerfan

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

1 hour ago, busnproplinerfan said:

I don't know if they actually got them, they're the same vintage. If we got the F-35s, we'd have to start starting wars to pay them off.

Two RAAF Hornets were delivered to the RCAF just after Red Flag 19-1 earlier this year, I have seen the first (A21-053) repainted in RCAF markings just last week.  I believe it became 188053.

[busnproplinerfan]

At least if they're repainted they'll look nice for awhile, hopefully I get to an airshow this year and see it up close.

[opus999]

So I finally got to the salt weathering last night! I've been waiting for that for weeks now! The first thing my wife said when I was done for the night, was: "that seems a little extreme". Now, I hate it when I over do something and I trust her judgement, so I thought "uh-oh, I got carried away". But... keep in mind she hasn't looked at pictures of dirty Hornets (er... dirty pictures of Hornets? uh... wait... that's not right). Nonetheless, I had to recalibrate my eyes, and I'm convinced that it is still realistic. But, to make sure that you, dear reader, know what I'm going for -- in addition to the photos in previous posts -- I offer up the following to calibrate your eye:

 

F-18C Hornet of VFA-86 in flight over the Persian Gulf in 1998
Lt. Chuck Radosta, USN [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

US Navy 051012-F-5480T-003 An F-A-18C Hornet, assigned to the
U.S. Navy photo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Now, don't get me wrong, not all Hornets get this filthy. But, some do, and that gives me an opportunity to do some more extreme weathering than I am used to (but still not make it outrageous and unbelievable).

 

So let's get started! Here's everything I used:

 

 

A sprayer with warm, slightly soapy water, a mortar and pestle to grind the salt into various sized chunks (which, in the end I didn't really need), coarse kosher salt (which tends to be more uniform than sea salt, so I actually tried both last night -- I found that it really didn't matter), and a hair dryer (which in this case is one that my wife bought for me as a gift as a modelling tool. Probably because she was tired of looking for hers  ).

 

The process is quite simple. I would spray the model, getting it quite wet, and then shake the excess water off in the sink.  Then I would take pinches of salt and drop them on the surface. I ended up with this:

 

 

How much is too little or too much? I dunno. I've only done this a handful of times, but it seems to me that more tends to be better. Plus, it's good to have a non-uniform distribution. Also, I found the first couple of times I ever tried this technique, that if you don't get enough water on you end up with salt-grain-shaped splotches. For the second coat last night, I used a combination of sea salt and kosher salt, not that you can really tell in this picture:

 

 

When it came to painting, I took 6 drops of the base color (FS36375 for the top) added 6 drops of white and 1 drop of "wood brown" (all of these were Mr. Color Lacquers). I got the wood brown idea from a build log of an F4U on doogsmodels.com. In retrospect I should've left that out b/c the F4U was a land-based Marine plane and would've had more exposure to sand/dirt than my F-18. In the end it still looks OK, although it is a little too tan on the starboard side behind the cockpit.

 

Anyway, to this paint mix I added a bunch of Mr. Color leveling thinner. I didn't measure it, but it might have been 10:1 thinner to paint. Then, slowly dusted it on the model. I put on a fairly uniform coat, because the salt will provide the "randomness". Then, I ran the model under a faucet and washed all of the salt off after about 5 minutes of paint drying. Lather, rinse, repeat: I did this a second time in exactly the same way (except for some sea salt added into the mix as mentioned above).

 

For the 3rd go-around, I put the salt on in the same way, but this time I made a dark mix of 6 drops of the base color to one drop of black and a bunch of drops of leveling thinner. This time, I didn't go over the a/c uniformly. I tried to focus on areas that look dirty in photos. It came out OK.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And to copy one of the pictures I posted last Saturday, for comparison:

 

 

I'm pleased so far with how it's turned out. There are no photos of the bottom because I only did one coat before I was just too tired (it was late last night) and I need to finish it up today.

 

So, what's next?  Well, I have found in the past that letting it sit at least over night is best because there is a lot of water involved and even when you think it is dry, water come seeping out of nooks and crannies.  On top of that, it leaves salt behind when it evaporates. So this morning I had little spots of salt in corners and crevices that needed to be removed or else they would wreak havoc on my next gloss coat.

 

So, I will finish the bottom today and let it sit until tomorrow morning, when I plan to put a coat of aqua gloss on in preparation for the wash and oil staining. In the mean time, there are a ton of little details to take care of: Washing the landing gears and gear bays, painting the ordinance and the canopy, etc.

 

The Testor's instructions show the canopy on this hornet to have a red frame. I haven't found a picture of this, but I trust they did their homework (?). Unless I hear otherwise, that's how I plan to paint it.

 

 

Edited April 19, 2019 by opus999

[opus999]

More progress today...

 

The darker areas of the salt weathering were bugging me because the edges seemed a little too hard, making it look "spotty" to me.  So yesterday I mixed up some gray oil paint to match the hue (?) of the top color and did some dot filtering with it on the darker parts of salt weathering.  I didn't necessarily want to tone it down as much as soften it a bit.  I think it worked reasonably well.

 

Today I used my black and burnt umber watercolors to put on some oily streaks along the leading edge devices to match the streaks in this picture:

 

VMFA-122 FA-18 Hornet in flight during Red Flag 12-3 1120309-F-KX404-075
Senior Airman Brett Clashman [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

In the end, the stains I came up with were a little darker than I wanted, but try as I might, I couldn't really make them fainter. The great thing about watercolor is that I can wipe it completely clean and start over.  What I ended up with was probably closer to this:

 

Operation Inherent Resolve 150304-F-MG591-297
Staff Sgt. Perry Aston [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

So what I came up with isn't completely unrealistic, but it's probably a bit extreme.  So I'm a little disappointed in that, but I might still find a way to tone it down.

 

Also, I dull coated the aircraft, then used Tamiya weathering pastels to put dirt streaks on the wings and body, which I see in many photos. I also used the weathering pastels to dirty up the rudders, flaps and ailerons and followed up with more dull coat.

 

Glued the bombs together, did a wash on the landing gears and dull coated those, and painted the wheels and dull coated those. Probably another week of work before I can think of calling it done.

 

So without any further ado... here's how it looks right now (with the tail fins dry fit):

 

 

 

 

And with the landing gears dry fit:

 

[busnproplinerfan]

Those are like Detroit Diesels, only clean when at the factory .

[opus999]

I was able to salt weather the bottom of the US Hornet on Tuesday night. I made a mistake when I finished the top (weathering, dull coat, etc.) before salt-weathering the bottom.  I thought there was a possibility of the salt reacting with the finish, but I figured it was remote. Unfortunately, I was wrong.  Fortunately, it only affected a few small areas. See, when you salt-weather, there is a lot of water involved and it gets into the model. Over the course of the night, the water starts seeping out of seams and (amazingly) even out of puttied seams. Since it's salty water, it leaves the salt behind when it evaporates. With a gloss coat, it's just a matter of flaking it off with your fingernail.  With the dull coat, I'm not exactly sure what happened -- either it got under the paint, or it soaked in from the top -- but the salt was stuck tight to the dull paint and I needed a toothpick to scrape it off.  The salt water also affected the adhesion of the dull paint, because the paint flaked off very easily where it was salt stained.

 

Luckily, like I said, it only affected some small areas and those were fixed with a little dull coat, so you can't even tell there was a problem. But it is a good lesson for the future!

 

Anyhow, here's what the bottom looks like, with the pylons and fuel tanks that I salt-weathered this morning:

 

 

Hard to see in the picture but it looks sufficiently grungy in real life. The stains behind the main landing gears are characteristic of the Hornet, so I had plenty of reference photos.  I think I got the look right -- it matches a couple of my photos almost exactly.  I did the stains with watercolors and will probably go over it lightly with Tamiya weathering pastels once the dull coat is dry.

 

I started drawing the panel lines with a pencil.  It is going well, but it is terribly tedious.  It's bad for the back and neck too, because I am hunched over the desk for long periods of time. Here's how it looks so far -- the top is done except for the port wing

 

 

I also finished up the landing gears this morning by painting the oleo struts and assembling

 

 

I even got the little oleo between the nose gear tires:

 

 

When I dull coated the pylons and tanks, they darkened up, so I will need to lighten them up a bit with a dusting of light gray:

 

 

I did a little research this morning on Canadian ordnance.  Since my CF-188 is from the mid-80's I was hoping to find pictures of the sparrows and sidewinders from that era to see if they matched the US.  No such luck -- pictures of Hornets from the early to mid 80's are hard to find.

 

I really hoped to finish the US bird this weekend, but I have a list of about 25 things that need to be done before it's finished.  I'm on #7 and its going slow.... so... we'll see.

[Nikolay Polyakov]

Nice progress so far! The weathering looks very interesting. 👍

 

Cheers! 🙂

[opus999]

Took a couple hours today to take care of odds n' ends -- it's really getting down to the details now. I painted the ordnance. Primered them all and then painted the missiles white. Then to paint the stripes on the missiles, I put them in the chuck of my Dremel tool, spun them at a moderate RPM and touched the brush to the missile.  Works very well, but it can be tough to get the stripe width consistent. I haven't painted the seeker heads yet. On the sidewinders I learned that the seeker head is not black, but an anodized metal that turns various dark colors over time.  I am going to try and replicate that by painting the head gloss black and then putting a super fine mist coat of Alclad stainless steel over that.  I've found that very fine mist coats of Alclad can resemble anodized metal. Here's what I've got so far:

 

 

I didn't get to the bombs today. The Testor's instructions have them olive green. Pictures of Vietnam era Mk. 82's have a yellow stripe around the nose.  I couldn't find any 80's pictures to verify the Testors instructions (that is, no yellow).

 

I masked for Alclad around the back by the engines, and on the nose, where the guns are.  Here it is all masked up after I'd already sprayed a base of decanted Tamiya spray-can gloss black

 

 

The cans were a little tough to get looking right.  I painted them with Alclad stainless steel, then dulled them down a bit with a dusting of Alclad dark Aluminum. The color still didn't look right compared to my reference photos. I remembered that the Alclad jet exhaust had a bluish color to it, so I dusted that on very lightly and was able to match the color in my photos:

 

 

Now I look at it, that picture is kind of dark, so I will have to provide a better one later.  I'm wondering how I am going to dirty them up because the recessed detail is not very deep.

 

Of course, I had to have a couple screw-ups so close to the finish line.  First, despite putting the Tamiya tape on my skin a couple times to lower the tackiness, it still decided to pull up a couple decals:

 

 

And I goofed up the placement of the metal around the guns, despite checking it a couple of times, so there was some unacceptable overlap:

 

 

Luckily, masking the metal and painting the base coat on didn't stand out too much, like I was afraid it would:

 

 

Also painted the nav lights and the receiving antennas on the tail fins.

[opus999]

Well nuts.  I believe this is what is known as "short shot":

 

 

 

I would use the canopy from the one I did in high school, but it is so crazed from the liberal amount of glue I used back then, that I could probably never sand it all out:

 

 

Note that the crazing is only along the back of the canopy -- the stuff covering the top of the canopy is tape adhesive from sitting for 20 years with masking tape on it.  It will come off, I just haven't done it yet.

 

A brief internet search didn't turn up any aftermarket canopies. So, either I find a way to clean up the crazing on the old canopy or buy a ridiculously priced kit off of ebay.  Either way, I'm not finishing it today as I'd hoped.

[CT7567]

Not aware of any aftermarket canopy for the Italeri F/A-18s but since most if not all boxings included clear parts for both the single and 2-seat versions the odds are good you could find someone with a spare available (or you could buy another kit and build it as a 'family model').

 

The color codes for live explosives haven't changed since Vietnam but the US Navy and Marines adopted a thermal protective coating to their bomb bodies to reduce the risk of the ordnance "cooking off" in the event of a fire aboard ship (as had happened in separate incidents aboard both Enterpruse and Forrestal). 

 

While 'uncoated' bombs (USAF, or USN/USMC prior to adoption of the change) typically have only a single yellow stripe at the nose, the coated bombs typically have 2 or three closely spaced bands in roughly the same location.

 

Note that the coating has a visible texture but in 1/72 you can probably get by with rough brush painting a matte finish.

 

Also note, the coating and yellow stripes are applied to the bomb body section only, so the tail fins and adapters, nose fuse, and any other add-ons (e.g. Paveway LGB or JDAM kits) will have a 'clean' finish. Certain of these kits may also cover one or more of the yellow bands when fitted, so best to check for photos of a specific bomb type.

 

Background on the protective coatings:

http://www.insensitivemunitions.org/history/the-uss-forrestal-cva-59-fire-and-munition-explosions/

 

Tutorial on modeling the bomb finishes:

https://www.scalespot.com/howto/ablative/ablative.htm

[opus999]

Well, I'll be darned.  I was able to rehabilitate my old canopy. I sanded it with progressively finer sandpaper, starting with 400 grit (I think) and ending with 12000 grit.  Then I used the buffing wheel on the Dremel tool. Finally, I dipped it in aqua gloss.

 

 

There are some crazed spots left, but they would be covered by paint, so I didn't worry about them.

 

Trouble is, one side of the canopy has a really rough edge.  A little may be from sanding, but it was rough to begin with.  I don't know why.

 

 

I'm just not sure if I can make that look good using the "Krystal Klear" glue or not.  I've had limited luck in the past using that to fix little canopy "oops"es. I may have to get an old Testor's kit anyway like @CT7567 suggests.

 

So, I will paint this and try to get it to look decent. But if not, I'll get a new one.

[opus999]

2 hours ago, CT7567 said:

Not aware of any aftermarket canopy for the Italeri F/A-18s but since most if not all boxings included clear parts for both the single and 2-seat versions the odds are good you could find someone with a spare available (or you could buy another kit and build it as a 'family model').

 

The color codes for live explosives haven't changed since Vietnam but the US Navy and Marines adopted a thermal protective coating to their bomb bodies to reduce the risk of the ordnance "cooking off" in the event of a fire aboard ship (as had happened in separate incidents aboard both Enterpruse and Forrestal). 

 

While 'uncoated' bombs (USAF, or USN/USMC prior to adoption of the change) typically have only a single yellow stripe at the nose, the coated bombs typically have 2 or three closely spaced bands in roughly the same location.

 

Note that the coating has a visible texture but in 1/72 you can probably get by with rough brush painting a matte finish.

 

Also note, the coating and yellow stripes are applied to the bomb body section only, so the tail fins and adapters, nose fuse, and any other add-ons (e.g. Paveway LGB or JDAM kits) will have a 'clean' finish. Certain of these kits may also cover one or more of the yellow bands when fitted, so best to check for photos of a specific bomb type.

 

Background on the protective coatings:

http://www.insensitivemunitions.org/history/the-uss-forrestal-cva-59-fire-and-munition-explosions/

 

Tutorial on modeling the bomb finishes:

https://www.scalespot.com/howto/ablative/ablative.htm

Hey, thanks for this!  This is some great information!  I wasn't aware of the ablative coatings on the bombs, so this is something I am very interested in trying to capture.

 

Once I knew what terms to use, I found additional information at the Finescale forum, which didn't provide any extra information than what you provided, but did have some different pictures for reference: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/167611.aspx