1/32 Academy F/A-18C Hornet "Chippy-Ho"

Gallery Article by Lee, Seok Joo on Nov 13 2009

 

This is a 1/32 scale F/A-18C Hornet “Chippy-Ho” from Academy. I was very impressed by its brilliant and colorful marking, so I decided that I should build this model to celebrate my son’s birth. I hope he likes this plane instead breaking it. :-) 

The overall quality of this kit itself is very good and it provides the big eagle marking which are wonderfully printed by Cartograf. But in spite of its good quality, it is very difficult for me to apply the wide eagle marking on the narrow nose of the plane perfectly. Using decal setting solution – Mark softer from Gunze Sangyo,

I spent several hours applying only one eagle head decal on the nose.

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Besides applying the decals, there is no serious difficulty in each step of building this model. Overall fit is very good but around the air intake area, certain degree of filling and sanding are needed. I built this model just out of the box except an ejection seat (resin from Legend) and cockpit console (etching from Eduard). 

I painted using Gunze Sanyo lacquer paints and washed using oil colors. I weathered this model with the pastel chalks after applying decal.

This is my first posting here on ARC, and I hope you can enjoy it.

Lee, Seok Joo

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Photos and text © by Lee, Seok Joo