1/48 Revell F/A-18E Super Hornet

 "Camelot 200"

by John Jones

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Camelot 200, Rhino, 5.0, Ball.

This is my second article here, but so far as I can tell, this is a first for an article on ARC.  In my wanderings around this site, I've not seen an aircraft built in the landing configuration.  This was not hard to do, though, on account of the quality of the kit.  The plastic was just soft enough to be cut and shaped easily, and just hard enough to break away fairly cleanly from the wings.  The fit of the pieces was good to excellent overall, and the decals, especially the cockpit instrument panel.  More on that later.

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The trailing edge flaps were cut at the join between flap seal and wing, and new seals were made out of sheet styrene.  The seals molded into the flaps where then reshaped to form the leading edge of the flap.  The actuators for the flaps, not modeled in any particular detail, were just little bits of .015" styrene rod, intended mainly to brace the flaps in place.  The flap hinges were cut apart and glued back together in the down position (or in some cases just bent into position).  The leading edge slats were simply cut out and glued into their new position.

The landing gear were just as easy to make.  They were actually from the first F/A-18E Super Hornet I built (same kit, alternate decals), Camelot 211.  For the nose gear, the torsion link was cut off, then cut apart and repositioned, the axle assembly was cut off, the oleo shaft was cut out and a new one was made from a small piece of sprue.  Then the whole thing was reassembled.  The main gear was even easier.  The trailing arm was cut off and glued into the new position, the existing oleo shaft was cut off, and an extended oleo shaft made of sprue was installed.  The position of the main axle pivot link was adjusted too.  The wheel bays are also sufficiently detailed to make many of the more detail-minded modelers happy, including the linkages that open and close the gear doors.  I also built the landing gear that came with the kit unmodified so I can swap out landing gear sets, depending on how I feel like displaying the aircraft today or tomorrow.  I also made a crude hinge for the tailhook.  This was accomplished by cutting off the tailhook, drilling a hole through the hinge point, and bending a couple pieces of paper clips to serve as the crude yet functional hinge.  The plastic hook was then taped to the pieces of paper clip with a small piece of duct tape.  Don't worry, I camouflaged the crude construction by painting the tape and bits of paper clip the same color as the rest of the plane.  Speaking of which, the entire thing was painted in Light and Dark Ghost Gray, with gloss white and red for landing gear and wheel wells, and flat black for the tires, and flat black and gray for the Cockpit, interior canopy framing, and ejection seat.  The pilot figure was scavenged, and painted in Olive Drab, with a gray helmet and black oxygen mask and visor.  Apologies to Captain C. R. "Snapper" Wright if I got those colors wrong.  After the rest of the decals were applied, the whole plane sans the vertical stabilizers (painted gloss black and decalled separately, then drowned in three coats of Testors Glosscote) was covered in three coats of Testors Dullcote.  Then the Vertical Stabilizers were installed and the gloss black wingtip and horizontal stabilizer trim was added.

The instrument panel decal actually comes in two versions: power on and power off.  Naturally I used the power on version.  The instructions said to sand the plastic pane flat, But I had no way to do that so I just cut the decal into its constituent MFDs and instrument panels, and applied these to their places on the panel.  Seems to work just fine.  This decal's detail really took me by surprise.  The armament control screen is accurately depicted, as are the moving map display, engine control panel, HUD control panel, and primary and backup flight instruments.  I'm surprised they didn't provide a decal for the HUD itself.

All in all, a very fun build, with a respectable level of detail possible with a minimum of extra work.

John

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Photos and text © by John Jones