1/48 Hasegawa F-18F

by Andy Lau

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This is my second contribution to this great site, I always think that ARC is the best online school of aircraft model building.

I built this one basically OOB, with the exception of making the seat belt from Tamiya masking tape and buckles from a Lion Roar WWII Navy Seat Belt PE set.

The kit could be ranked as one of the top class ones, the details were very good, and the fit was nearly perfect, except that some filling and sanding were needed after joining the front part and aft part of the fuselage, this flaw was also reported by another guy who built this kit and had his submission was sent to ARC far earlier than mine.

I used Gunze Mr. Color to paint my model, this was my favorite over all other types of paints. I painted the canopy with smoke from inside, and was satisfied with the result. The kit provided decals for the red part, but I was not confident about applying decals on such large areas, so I opted to paint the red areas with H327 (FS11136), preshading was done to obtain a better realistic final look. Weathering was done with a light wash of artist oil.

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Total construction time was about 120 hours, and I am quite happy with the final result. The only drawback of this kit is that it's a little bit too pricy, as a tip, the Revell F-18/E,F are much cheaper and have simular quality.

Hope you like my model, comments are welcome....click on my name at the top of this article. 

 Andy

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Photos and text © by Andy Lau