The first in a "long" line of agressors, the desert scheme of the hornet is a stark contrast to its usual gray paint job. Presenting the McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) F/A-18 Hornet.
Fujimi has a nice little kit of the hornet with finely engraved panel lines and a good fit. Construction is however very modular with lots of sub assemblies required. This could potentially cause a few problems if you don't do some dry fitting first.
The kit includes decals for:
For this kit however I used Hi Decals 72-027 which includes decals for the Aggressor version and a cool RAAF version.
Not a huge amount to report here, I did cut out the flaps and slats to show them in the dropped position and slightly changed the angle of the elevator. I found this 'busies' the aircraft up a little without detracting too much from the paint scheme.
The kit also includes a small amount of photo etch which is used for the canopy rear mirrors. At the time I was having all sorts of problems with any kind of photo etch and this was no exception, mostly this was due to me using super glue on areas which only needed white (PVA) glue.
The canopy was displayed open but considering the lack of real detail in the cockpit I should have really left it closed.
A really interesting paint scheme this one and certainly took a fair amount of time with all the masking required for the various camo elements. The light gray strips on the leading edge of the wings were particularly difficult to mask as I had dropped the slats but they seemed to turn out ok.
Once the leading edges had been masked I spent a good few minutes measuring and using the mk1 eyeball to ensure both wings were the same, nothing looks worse than one wing being different than the other - and it only needs to be the slightest amount out to show up glaringly!
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