Scale Aviation Modeller International – April 2019

I

n 2007 HobbyBoss

released the second

modern kit of the ‘legacy’

Hornet, after Hasegawa

was the only one available

for many years. I never built

the Hasegawa kit but after

checking out the HobbyBoss

Hornet sprues in my local

hobby shop, the kit looked very

good in shape, with nice panel

lines and good detail. Also, a

resin cockpit from Aires and

a decal set from Eagle Strike

were sourced. The build began

by removing some plastic

from the upper fuselage half

• behind and in front of the
  cockpit to make room for the
  resin cockpit. Some careful
  cutting and iling was needed
  to make the resin it lush with
  the plastic parts. When l was
  satisied, the parts were glued
  into place with CA glue, and
  the seam lines were illed with
  Tamiya putty and sanded lush.
  The two fuselage halves have
  the wings attached to them,
  and this means no seamlines
  have to be illed and sanded
  on the spine-to-fuselage
  connection. Next the nosecone
  assembly and jet intakes had to
  be installed. The intakes needed
  some extra attention to make
  them it properly, and in reality,
  this area held the only minor
  problem l had with this kit.
  But nothing some illing and
  sanding could not resolve! The
  laps and slats come as separate
  parts and can be posed in any
  position desired, and so these
  were all glued into place in
  the lowered position. Also, the
  boarding ladder is included, as

is a vast amount of underwing

hardware to choose from! The

vertical stabilisers were

glue in place next,

but the horizontal

stabilisers were left

of until after painting.

The masked windscreen

was the last part to put

in place before painting.

The landing gear was

built up from multiple parts

and is very well detailed. but

l added a few hydraulic lines

made from stretched sprue to

make it even more interesting.

Also, the Harpoon missiles,

belly tank, pylons, engines,

canopy and gear bay doors

were made ready for painting.

Black was used to pre-shade

Rene Van Der Hart builds the 1/48 HobbyBoss F/A-18C in the colours of VFA-147

ARGONAUTS

STINGER

APRIL 2019 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL

1/48

32

FE ATURE

BY RENE VAN DER HART

F/A-18C

1/48