Dave Roof has offered to help anyone free F/A-18 reference material for this contest.  Please read his message below. ..........

Gentlemen,
For all of you in the Monogram F/A-18 building contest, I am offering my assistance. Just provide me with the BuNo of the aircraft you are modeling or the type (A or C), and I will get you specific information on that aircraft. I will also answer any Ordnance questions you may have.
For those of you who don't know me, I have been in the Marine Corps for 13 years and have been working with the Hornet for 11 of them. I have over 1100 photos of the F/A-18, many from Desert Storm and a few technical pubs on the aircraft, including the Weapons Loading Manual and NATOPS. I am an Ordnanceman and have extensive knowledge of the Hornets weapons systems.

Dave Roof

Steve Bamford
Monogram F-18....
Tue Nov 14 19:26:36 2000

Here's my opinion of the kit from the fun I had building on a 4 years ago fro a nephew.

The cockpit detail is very good...especially
considering the price of the kit.  It isn't exactly a Black Box cockpit but
it's quite decent....better in some areas than the Hasegawa kit.   The
detail in the Hasegawa kit is a bit too recessed in my opinion.....so I'm more
than content to use the Monogram cockpit with the reference photos in our
walkaround section to detail the cockpit. 

The Seat is plain....replacing it would be a good
idea if you elect not to include the pilot figure....especially if the canopy is
going to be left open.

Landing Gear are very nicely molded but in my
earlier example with the simple one page instructions the main landing gear
parts made no sense and I had to resort to using my 1/48 Hasegawa kit and
instructions as a guide.  The parts in my latest version are the same but
maybe the new multi-page instructions will further explain it.

Fuselage seam.  This area is where you haul
out your one pound tube of auto body filler.  the worst area is under the
fuselage forward of the wings.  I think if you pinch the upper fuselage
section here it will reduce the gap but you have to be careful not to have your
wing drooping down from this squeezing so be careful if you use the pinching
technique to save filler.

Horizontal stabilizers.  These are held
together by a thin styrene rod.  I ended up breaking this styrene rod the
last time I built this kit so this time I plan to replace it with a brass
rod.  The brass rod will be contained in a brass tube in the fuselage.

Boarding ladder.  If you want one of these
then the Eduard PE set #48048 has a very nice delicate boarding ladder in it
sets.  You can find scans of this set in the Instruction sheet
Library.  This set also includes the bracing for the vertical stabilizers
and a very nice little HUD unit as well as some other parts.

That's about all I can recall of this kit.

Steve Bamford
ARC night shift

Mike V
Monogram's F-18
Tue Nov 14 23:37:06 2000


I posted this a week or so ago, but here it is once more.

Just for starters, there are different toolings of Monogram's F-18. The original F-18 FSD (It has the solts in the strake, white paint with gold and blue trim), F-18A and updated (to original mold,but not a retool) F-18C.
I'll start off with the F-18A and list the problems that still remain on both kits.

Monogram F-18A:
-Vert. tails about 1/8" to short and don't have the current antennas
-Vert tails angle mounting is to vertical
-Canopy is to short in hieght and length
-Nose/Radone is to blunt, and requires reshaping
-MLG knee joints are solid!
-NLG strut side tension braces (forward of torgue links) are molded solid!
-Missing NLG light assy.
-Missing LEX fence
-C/L tank has correct length, but wrong shape and no wing tanks provided.
-Pylons are aweful in shape.
-Side fuselage pylons come fixed with FLIR Nav pods.
-Aircraft sits to "Nose" high.
-No CHAFF/FlARE forward of MLG wells.

F-18C corrections/updates:

-Vert tails extended about 1/8" and appropiate antennas added
-NLG light assy added
-Wing tip rail fences extended
-LEX fence added.
-RWR antennas/bumps added
-CHAFF/FLARE modules added
-New blank fuselage pylons
-Bleed air spill ducts (inside of LEX fences) molded closed
-Notched style nozzles added
-Decals are usable

The problems that still remain are:

-Canopy size
-Tail angle when glued
-MLG knee joist solid
-NLG strut side braces molded solid
-Pylon shape inaccurate
-Nose/radome blunt
-Model sits nose high.

Also, the slats and flaps for both version still remain in the up position. The good thing is the cockpit detail. It does build up nice in spite of its many problems.

Mike