F/A-18F 166620

[Stefan Buysse]

Hi,

 

This is the Meng F/A-18F.

I'll be building it as BuNo 166620, VFA-103's CAG-bird during many years.

I'll pick this particular option from the Furball decal sheet for several reasons: Ensign Jack Ernie's name is on the canopy sill and I think this particular paint job has the biggest size "skull and bones" that has ever been applied.

166620 was already the CAG-bird during VFA-103's first Super Hornet cruise back in 2006-2007. On that first cruise targets in Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan were hit.

The aircraft stayed VFA-103's CAG-bird for a good 10 years.

I have not taken the kit out of the box yet, but I know that the Meng kit allows for a choice of bard stacks or heat blankets. 166620 received the bard stacks at one time in those 10 years. I think this had already been done in 2012, but I'm not 100 % sure.

I'll look into it if it's possible to buid the kit without glueing the bard stacks in place, so that the option remains to change it back to heat blankets.

 

Cheers, Stefan;

 

[vppelt68]

Just two questions, what are the bard stacks and heat blankets? Do they have something to do with a Wright Cyclone high altitude performance? As you can guess, this is obviously not my own neighborhood in modelling  . V-P

[AntPhillips]

57 minutes ago, vppelt68 said:

Just two questions, what are the bard stacks and heat blankets? Do they have something to do with a Wright Cyclone high altitude performance? As you can guess, this is obviously not my own neighborhood in modelling  . V-P

 

I wondered that too, I think its probably to do with the differing type of ECS exhaust but I've never heard them called that, enquiring minds need to know 🧐

[Stefan Buysse]

Hi,

 

Yes, "bard stacks" and "heat blankets" are names given to the different types of ECS exhaust.

 

Cheers, Stefan.

[Bertie McBoatface]

What does ECS mean?

 

I don't think you find them/it on tanks.

[Adam Maas]

2 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

What does ECS mean?

 

I don't think you find them/it on tanks.

IIRC it's Electronics Cooling System, the new avionics fit required increased cooling and that lead to first the heat blankets (which are actually heat exchangers) and eventually the bard stack exhausts.

[AntPhillips]

5 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

What does ECS mean?

 

I don't think you find them/it on tanks.

 

IIRC the ECS exhausts are the vents situated on the upper fuselage between the tail fins. Someone correct me if I'm wrong 😉

[Bertie McBoatface]

25 minutes ago, AntPhillips said:

 

IIRC the ECS exhausts are the vents situated on the upper fuselage between the tail fins. Someone correct me if I'm wrong 😉

 

Oh I knew where they were. I just didn't know what they were. I'd assumed that were Engine cooling rather than Electronics. 'Bard stacks' and 'heat blankets' sound literally fantastic. I can easily imagine them as part of a Dungeons and Dragons scenario.

[Anatol Pigwa]

That is the spirit of a STGB, learning something new with each build. I did not know about the heat blankes and bard stacks either. Thank you for sharing with us this piece of insight.

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

On 1/6/2022 at 7:47 AM, Bertie Psmith said:

 

Oh I knew where they were. I just didn't know what they were. I'd assumed that were Engine cooling rather than Electronics. 'Bard stacks' and 'heat blankets' sound literally fantastic. I can easily imagine them as part of a Dungeons and Dragons scenario.

The E actually stands for Environmental from my reading.

[Stefan Buysse]

Hi,

 

I started building the kit and I quite like it.

After seeing a reference picture captioned "2012", I decided to go for the "bard stack" option. Kit parts A38-A39 and A36-A37 could in theory be left unglued so that they could be switched. But the A38-A39 option involves the heat blankets that are in the old Hasegawa kit as decals. These go around the parts, so one really has to make a definite choice.

I also made up my mind about the ordnance: 2 AIM-9X's, 1 AIM-120, the centerline droptank and an AGM-65.

I'm keeping it light so that the fancy droptank with the "Fear the bones" gets all the attention.

I did not add the pins in the pylons that will remain empty. There is something like such pins on the real thing, but they don't stick out that far. 

The instructions had me drill a hole in the AGM-65. I thought that one of the pins was going to go through that, but test-fitting showed that was not the case.  

 

While I was looking at photos, I saw a pretty cool one of 166620 as a tanker. Refueling pod on the centerline, and 2 droptanks under each wing. The outer droptanks were black ones without titles, but with the chevrons. Yellow on one side and white on the other.

I may enter a tanker (Hasegawa kit started ages ago) in this GB, a low-viz one.

 

Cheers, Stefan.

[Alan P]

A tanker would be something different, nice one.

[Stefan Buysse]

On 1/19/2022 at 10:56 PM, Alan P said:

A tanker would be something different, nice one.

Yes, I find that the tanker configuration looks very impressive.

I'll use the Fightertown decals to build the tanker from the first cruise, but looking at this site for references I saw that many of the squadron's aircraft were at one time serving as tankers.

VFA-103 Jolly Rogers Strike Fighter Squadron US Navy (seaforces.org)

 

One thing I was looking for there was the number of pylons fitted. I knew from the Fightertown sheet that one small outboard pylon was often left off during the first cruise, but now I noticed that at times the inboard pylons were left off. 

Here's one such photo of my subject aircraft. 

 

 

Cheers, Stefan.

 

[Alan P]

2 hours ago, Stefan Buysse said:

One thing I was looking for there was the number of pylons fitted. I knew from the Fightertown sheet that one small outboard pylon was often left off during the first cruise, but now I noticed that at times the inboard pylons were left off. 

Here's one such photo of my subject aircraft. 

Yes, I noticed this as well. Without drop tanks, the inner pylons are often omitted.

[Stefan Buysse]

Hi,

 

Well, I guess nobody would have wanted to see that this could happen with the Meng kit.

The rear fuselage on mine has the same kind of gaps that we know from the Hasegawa kit.

I don't know why , but it was very difficult to glue parts TF (upper fuselage) and BF lower fuselage) together. 

I had not performed a full dry-fitting because the lower part has these little turrets that accept pins from the upper part. I feared that if I snapped it closed during a dry-fitting, it might be hard to pry them apart again with snapping off one of the "turrets".

A bit of putty and sanding will be neccesary.

 

Cheers, Stefan.

 

[arfa1983]

I had no issue dry fitting the parts and pulling them apart again. They did need a little coercion to get apart again.

 

But I did glue them together before installing the cockpit/front fuselage assembly which was a bit of a mistake.

[coneheadff]

4 hours ago, arfa1983 said:

I had no issue dry fitting the parts and pulling them apart again. They did need a little coercion to get apart again.

 

But I did glue them together before installing the cockpit/front fuselage assembly which was a bit of a mistake.

Oh that's really hard. I dry fitted the parts together last night and went the same way. Until I noticed the problem. Glad I didn't glue the fuselage parts together. 

Sometimes it makes sense to follow the instructions 😁

[Wings unlevel]

On 22/01/2022 at 23:54, Alan P said:

Yes, I noticed this as well. Without drop tanks, the inner pylons are often omitted.

Similarly I’ve noticed that too in ‘researching’ (ie looking at photos online!) of loadouts for my build.

[Stefan Buysse]

10 hours ago, arfa1983 said:

 

But I did glue them together before installing the cockpit/front fuselage assembly which was a bit of a mistake.

 

Hi,

 

You can probably guess what my next problem is going to be.

 

I'll continue with this build and see what I can make of it.

If it is too bad, I'll put other decals on it and build another kit as 166620.

 

Cheers, Stefan.

[arfa1983]

2 hours ago, Stefan Buysse said:

 

Hi,

 

You can probably guess what my next problem is going to be.

 

I'll continue with this build and see what I can make of it.

If it is too bad, I'll put other decals on it and build another kit as 166620.

 

Cheers, Stefan.

Just cut the tabs off the side of the cockpit bucket and it'll go in with a bit of coercion!