McDonnell Douglas F/A-18E Super Hornet

Posted on 9/13/2015 in kit with tags US Navy

US Navy – VFA-27 Royal Maces NF 200/165860 (CAG's aircraft) 2004

Kit details

This morning, I received an email where it stated:

"The Museum of Flight is celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Boeing Corporation next year, and will be setting up a large, long running display highlighting 100 years of Boeing aircraft.  They have asked us, the modeling community, to participate by loaning models of Boeing aircraft for various displays throughout the year.

The biggest of those displays is a timeline spanning the history of Boeing aircraft.  This display will run for a full year, and any models in it will be in the display for a year. "

Attached there was a list of models that were not in possession of the museum and members of the community got to pick up what they had or what they could build in more or less two and a half months to loan to the museum for the whole next year.

Always ready to procrastinate and jump on the new shiny thing, I put aside the IMAM Ro.57bis (that was almost done!) and - lured by the dreams of glory of having my name on a museum plaque for a year -  I picked a 1:72 scale F/A-18/E Super Hornet from the list.

And of course I immediately went to the Skyway Model Shop and got a F/A-18E Super Hornet 'VFA-27 Royal Maces' by Hasegawa, a couple of resin ejection seats by True Details, and a PE details set from Eduard.

I want to finish this in the low visibility colors, so I checked in the instructions what actual colors should I use. According to the Hasegawa sheet, the interior is Grey FS36231, the upper surfaces are Grey FS36320, and the under surfaces are Grey FS36375.

Great.

Grey, grey and grey.

By poking around my color chart references, I found out that Tamiya has a couple of spray cans for the exterior (AS-25 and AS-26), but I wanted to be a bit better this time and use the airbrush for everything. Luckily for me, LifeColor has everything I need: LC-UA033 (Dark Gull Grey) for the interior, LC-UA027 (Dark Compass Ghost Grey) for the upper surfaces and LC-UA026 (Light Compass Ghost Grey) for the under surfaces.

So the plan is to get those colors and start putting together the cockpit.

Let's see how it works :)

To be continued...

This model appears in

  • 100 Years of Boeing (MOF Exhibit), at the Museum of Flight in Seattle WA, from Mar 1 2016 to Jul 1 2017 (event managed by NWSM)

McDonnell Douglas F/A-18E Super Hornet
The Super Hornet is an advanced version of the combat-proven F/A-18 Hornet and is produced in the single-seat E model and the two-seat F model
Scale 1:72
Modeler: Paolo Marcucci