1/48 Hasegawa F/A-18F

Gallery Article by Sodasorb on July 30 2020

 

      

This is my latest project, a 1/48th Scale Hasegawa F/A-18F Super Hornet. I used the fabulous Syh@rt decal set, 48-070 "F/A-18F Super Hornet BuNo. 165677, VFA-122-Lemoore NAS, 100 Years of Naval Aviation 1911-2011" to complete this model. I saw a photo of this particular Super Hornet and looked online to see if any company offered a decal set for this aircraft. When I found the Syh@rt set, I immediately ordered them and then set out to build this F/A-18 in this special paint scheme.

This particular Super Hornet was painted in a digital camouflage matching the U.S. Navy's AOR1 working uniform (aka "blueberries). This special scheme was one of many celebrating the Naval Aviation Centennial in 2011. This model took me close to five months to complete. I lost count of the amount of decals on this model but I can tell you it is A LOT.

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Sky@rt provides and extensive instruction book on decal placement and painting. Some sheets are common for both the Hasegawa and Revell Super Hornets and Sky@rt provides sections specific to the respective model manufacturer. There is plenty of extra decal material left over to make up for mistakes. This particular Super Hornet is a Block 1 aircraft and has the later ECS pipes between the vertical stabilizers. Since my Hasegawa kit had the earlier style ECS, I had to cut them out and used Eduard's F/A-18E Late ECS pipes as replacements. Eduard's color ejection seat harnesses were used as well. I assembled the main sections of the aircraft but left the horizontal stabs, slats, flaps, canopy and landing gear doors of the main section to ease with decal application.

I started with a base coat of MIG Acrylic Light Ghost Grey sealed with a gloss coat of Future. I applied the decals over the gloss coat in several sessions ensuring that the decals had properly set and dried before moving to the next section. A little MIG Acrylic Dark Sea Blue was used for touch ups. The decals were sealed with Model Master Acryl Semi-Gloss. This project took a bit of time but I think it was worth the effort and it is a welcome addition to my Naval Air collection. 

Sodasorb

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Photos and text © by Sodasorb