Airfix 1/72 M.D.D. F/A-18 Hornet

[klr]

From the category of "someone's got to build this". I'm sure enough of us did build it back in the day, including myself in 1982. As I recall, I completed it in line with the box artwork, or at least as best I could. Given the kit was issued in 1981, two years before the type entered service, accuracy was always going to be questionable.

 

I am building a re-box from the late 1980s, one that has been in the stash for a very, very long time. I could have disposed of this kit on more than one occasion, but something always stayed my hand. Maybe it was because I remembered this as being a trouble-free build.

 

 

I am building the USN subject from VFA-102 "Valions", with the early low-vis colour scheme. Thanks to those who confirmed in the chat thread that this was correct.

 

The small strakes on top rear of each LERX were added early in the production run, and retro-fitted to the very earliest aircraft. Airfix did at least decide to go back and add them. Note how these parts (93 and 94) are oriented at a 90-degree angle to other parts, presumably  to squeeze them onto the sprue. They also have plain part numbers, instead of the italicised part numbers used from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s.

 

[stevej60]

Great to see an Airfix oldie here Kir.

[klr]

37 minutes ago, stevej60 said:

Great to see an Airfix oldie here Kir.

My recollection from 40 years ago that it was an easy build seems to have been correct, as I've already made rapid progress. Pics later this evening ...

[stevehnz]

I'll keep an eye on this too, I have the same boxing & hope to build it as the early Aussie machine I saw at an airshow here 35 years ago, the only time I've ever seen one. Best I get cracking on it.

Steve.

[klr]

Progress has been rapid. I started this a little over 72 hours ago. I will break this down into two posts.

 

One of the very few glitches in the kit engineering is that the cockpit floor is positioned too far back, but you might only realise this when trying to join the upper and lower fuselage halves together. I spotted this when dry-fitting the halves, and quickly removed the floor. A quick bit of surgery - change the front alignment hole to a notch - and I re-attached it:

 

Another dry-fit confirmed this position was good at both ends:

 

... but behind the wings, where the rudders were to be attached, the fit would prove to be less than perfect.

 

Because I could, I next attached the wings and fins to the upper fuselage, and the all-moving tailplanes to the lower fuselage. These are supposed to be moveable, but I wanted them in a fixed and predictable position. These sub-assemblies look like what you would get in a "quick-build" Hornet kit. At this stage, I also added the one-piece roof of the main undercarriage bays, and the main undercarriage legs, which fitted tightly. Maybe I should have left these off until later though, as they interfered with some clean-up work.

 

 

Edited January 16, 2022 by klr

[klr]

Joining the fuselage halves was unlikely to be completely straightforward. It rarely is, given the sheer amount of plastic that has to be lined up and kept in place. But it wasn't that bad at all. I also put the first coat of paint on the upper wings, and attached the nose wheel leg.

 

I also started to paint the undersurfaces as this point, noting that the lower starboard insignia should be applied before attaching the outer pylon.

 

I had to cut down the clear HUD part, which seemed far too tall. I also tried to highlight the display screens in blue, having consulted my references on early F/A-18 instrument panel layouts.

 

The assembled LERX units were not perfect fits, but the gaps were almost all on the underside, and easy to fill in. I had to check other instructions and references to confirm their precise orientation. It would have been very easy to position them too low at the front end. The canopy is only dry-fitted for now, but it is an extremely good fit. The tail pipes were also attached. They are very slightly too small. but this is barely noticeable.

 

 

The stores being painted. The Sparrow colours are as per "recent" instructions from the likes of Academy for "legacy" Hornets. The attachment holes on the fuel tanks are keyed, along with the pins on the pylons, to ensure correct orientation.

 

I am currently cleaning up a couple of areas on the underside of the airframe, specifically where the intakes meet the fuselage, and those joins between the wings and the tail planes. But it's straightforward work compared to certain other jets I've built recently (I'm looking at you Italeri ...).

[PeterB]

Well at least Airfix did provide the fences on the LERX eventually - more than Hasegawa did with my original FA-18A boxing!.

 

Pete

[klr]

9 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Well at least Airfix did provide the fences on the LERX eventually - more than Hasegawa did with my original FA-18A boxing!.

 

Pete

Ah yes, I forgot to mention: I've decided to leave those until I've painted and decalled the upper surfaces of the LERXs. The big black decals (walkway panels?) will determine the precise placement of the LERX fences.

[modelling minion]

Off to a very nice start, looks like you have managed to get a decent fit on all the main parts.

[gingerbob]

Welcome- somehow I missed this thread when it first appeared.  I've got two computers (an up-to-date [if there really is such a thing in computers] PC and an elderly Mac laptop) and they've both been doing the occasional- and different- glitching with Britmodeller.

[Bertie McBoatface]

The old kit seems to be quite a gold one. 

 

Great thread, very readable.

[klr]

Catching up. First, a quick note on the main undercarriage doors. Some of them - especially the larger parts 61 and 63 - don't easily fit in the open position. So I had to "straighten" the edges where they meet the fuselage.

 

Next, the drop tanks. These are longer, thinner and more tapered than the tanks supplied with other "legacy" Hornet kits. In this first picture, the tanks from Academy are across the top, those from Italeri (actually a Revell rebox) lower left, and an Airfix tank lower right.

 

In this second picture, the Airfix tank is compared with those from a Hasegawa kit, and it's the same story.

 

Apparently, during development, tanks with an elliptical cross-section were used, before giving way to tanks with the regular circular cross-section. But the Airfix tanks are circular as far as I can see, having assembled them. I've not found any pictures of Airfix-like tanks, so the most likely explanation is that Airfix just got them wrong. This is a bit of a problem. There is one spare tank in the Academy kit, which generously includes four. The Hasegawa kit has the normal three, the Italeri kits (I have both an original and the Revell rebox) have just two each. Were I to fit the spare Academy tank under the fuselage of the Airfix kit, I'm not sure what might replace the under-wing tanks on the inner pylons, to go with the pairs of Mk. 83 bombs on the outer pylons.

 

Anyway, back to the airframe. This is all but complete, apart from the arrestor hook, and the LERX strakes.

 

On closer inspection, the windscreen and canopy parts were not quite as good fits as I first thought.

 

Humbrol 147 (FS 36495) takes several coats, or at least my current tin does. I still have to paint the red edges of the various undercarriage doors.

 

As well as missing the anti-glare panel (see next picture), the Airfix paint guide also misses how FS 36375 "wraps around" the front of the LEXXs and the nose, at least in all the pictures I've seen of this early lo-vis scheme. Three of the US insignia decals are dark and one light, as three go over the darker FS 36375, and just one over the lighter FS 36495. But that was based on the specified paint scheme. My adjustment now means the darker fuselage insignia are going over this darker grey. Unless I look for replacements.

 

The FS 35237 anti-glare panel seems to extend as far as the gun port. Beyond that, it seems that FS 36375 should wrap around the entire radome, apart from the cream-coloured tip.

 

Edited January 20, 2022 by klr
Correct FS colour references

[CT7567]

On 1/16/2022 at 4:46 PM, klr said:

Ah yes, I forgot to mention: I've decided to leave those until I've painted and decalled the upper surfaces of the LERXs. The big black decals (walkway panels?) will determine the precise placement of the LERX fences.

 

To be fair, Hasegawa did add the LERX fences in their later boxings of the legacy Hornet - but I'm sure there were probably a few boxings of the A/B that based on the timeframe of the markings provided should've had them but were released before the tooling was updated.

[PeterB]

As far as I can figure it out the original Airfix release was, like the first Hasegawa one, the so called "FSD" versions which was a development prototype. At various stages during the development the wing leading edge had a "saw tooth" which was later removed, the horizontal tail had a notch where it met the fuselage which was filled in, the ailerons were short span but that was changed to larger ones with a so called notch, the "vertical" tails were small but were increased in size and stiffners added as they vibrated, there were initially several slots in each LERX but that was reduced to just one, and eventually after entering service the LERX fences were added - which Airfix and Hasegawa did in one of their later re-boxings. There were of course many other less obvious detail changes. As to the drop tanks the early ones were indeed elliptical in shape but were later replaced with circular ones.

 

All of these changes came about as a result of problems encountered during test flying, when there were airflow and stability issues and the tail surfaces were prone to vibration, or so both D&S and the "Aircraft in Action" books state. As I mentioned in another GB, this is the sort of problem you get when kit manufacturers race each other to get a plane on the shelves, even if it is a prototype that does not really represent the service version. Sometimes they issue a corrected version but they don't always cover all the changes. My revised Hasegawa F/A-18A seems to have most of the changes but not the LERX fences.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[gingerbob]

When you say LERX fences, do you mean the little rectangles that stick up on either side?  I thought those were on C/D, not A/B?  Or were they retro-fitted?

[modelling minion]

35 minutes ago, gingerbob said:

When you say LERX fences, do you mean the little rectangles that stick up on either side?  I thought those were on C/D, not A/B?  Or were they retro-fitted?

They were retro-fitted to the A/B as well.

[Pappy]

So much wrongness with this kit!!!!

 

I am loving the eccentricity of the build though, I hope you don't try to correct anything apart from poor fit, just build it as intended. This kit represents a snapshot in time for both the development of the real aircraft an the depiction of the Hornet in plastic form which is a unique perspective that the other kits don't have,

 

great stuff,

 

Pappy

[PeterB]

48 minutes ago, modelling minion said:

They were retro-fitted to the A/B as well.

My understanding is that the decision to fit them was made part way through the F/A-18A production run, late models being fitted on the line and early ones back dated.

 

Pete

[klr]

My enthusiasm for this kit has ebbed somewhat, but I am still going to finish it, and to hell with accuracy concerns.

 

Well, not quite to hell with accuracy. To get around the drop tank issue (see above) I decided to fit just one tank to the centreline, this coming from an Academy F/A-18D, which helpfully includes four tanks. The problem was, it was too "fat" to fit, which didn't surprise me. By this point, I had already painted and attached the pairs of Mk 83 bombs, something I would soon regret. I had also painted almost all the airframe by this point.

 

 

To fit the Academy tank, I had augment the Airfix centreline pylon, making it deeper by about 1mm. This gave extra clearance for the tank, but it was still touching the main undercarriage doors. My biggest concern at this point was what I was going to fit on the inner pylons. To cut a long story short, I ended up moving the bombs and ejector racks to the inner pylons, which was about as much fun as it sounds. This was so I could attach an AGM-62 Walleye to each outer pylon. The loadout references I found seemed to be consistent in that the Walleye (which was used until the early 1990s) was only carried on the outer wing pylons of the F/A-18.

 

I considered a number of other possible stores configurations. Mixing "iron bombs" with any sort of stand-off missile seemed unrealistic. I could have ditched the bombs altogether and changed to an all-missile fit: Harpoons or Mavericks inboard, HARMs outboard. I have two weapons sets (Hasegawa and Italeri) that each provide all of these, including the HARM pylon adaptors. But this will be the loadout on the Revell 1/144 F/A-18 that I am also building, and I wanted something different for each kit.

 

The bodies of the Sidewinders were painted FS 36375 (Hu 127), same as the upper camouflage, instead of the specified gloss white. I admit that I'm not sure when the base AAM colour changed from white to FS 36375.

 

So I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

Edited January 31, 2022 by klr

[gingerbob]

Looks like you're nearly there!