F/A-18C Hornet by Mike Grant | |
Brand: | Hasegawa |
Scale: | 1/48 |
Modeler: | Mike Grant |
AddOns: | Black Box Cocpit |
This Hasegawa 1/48 F/A-18C was
built for a U.S. Marines pilot to represent an aircraft from his squadron,
VMFA-115. When I agreed to do it I envisaged a straight-forward out-of-box
build, though it turned out to be neither. At this point the buyer contacted me with a very specific weapons load request, and I had to purchase SOL resin AIM-120s and borrow items from a friend's Hasegawa weapons set to comply. The 1,000lb bombs didn't come with the ablative coating so I used MiG-Productions' acrylic resin to stipple on the distinctive fire-retardant texture. Assembling/painting/decalling the weapons and pylons took 6 long evenings of work, I'd forgotten just how labour-intensive modern jets can be.
The model was painted with Polly Scale acrylics, thinned with Future/alcohol and lightened with 50% white. I did some dark grey pre-shading but very selectively, trying to avoid the circuit-board look which can occur when every single line is shaded. After a few coats of Future I painted the panel lines with watercolours, varying the colour between browns, greys and blues. I then airbrushed some streaks and post-shading, then applied further streaking with watercolour and a fine brush. I'd found a
set of Hi-Decal decals which included a VMA-115 aircraft and had duly
ordered the sheet, along with the accompanying set of stencil data.
I still intended to use the
HD stencils but they proved quite inflexible and, short of using a
staple-gun as a solvent, would not conform to even the slightest curve.
In the end I left most stencils off. (Had I bought a Hasegawa kit in
USMC markings I could have at least used the kit stencils but in my
infinite wisdom I'd bought a Canadian AF boxing of the kit) I did create
the walk-way decals, applying scuff marks and wear-and-tear in Photoshop
before printing them.
Photos and text © 2005 by Mike Grant October 09, 2005 |