Subject: Re: CF-18 Model
From: "Submissions for ARC" <[email-masked]>
To: "Colin Harrison" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:29:11 -0800

Hi,
I just wanted to let you know your article went on ARC today.  Thanks again 
for sending it in.

Steve Bamford
Aircraft Resource Center
http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com

Live like there is no tomorrow;
Love like you've never been hurt.
Work like you don't need the money.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Colin Harrison" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 11:14 PM
Subject: CF-18 Model

Steve, thanks for running such a great site! Here's my first submission:

I started this 1:48 Hasegawa kit about 10 years ago, and got stalled mainly 
by a lack of a working airbrush. It sat mostly assembled for quite a while 
until I had the time to sit down and finish it. Oh, and bribe some friends 
with beer to use their airbrush setups. I’m glad for the delay, because 
along the way I picked up Leading Edge’s CF-18 decal sheet, which was a 
drastic improvement in size and colour accuracy over the decals in the kit. 
The Leading Edge decals do need a lot of patience, as I did have problems 
with breaking decals. The best remedy for this seemed to be to let the decal 
soak a little longer, and then literally float it onto the model surface. 
The elapsed time to completion also expanded my sense of craftsmanship and 
attention to detail, although my end results aren’t nearly as intricate as 
some of the work I’ve looked at on this site. Another positive was that it 
gave me a chance to correct something I passed over before. The pilot figure 
had an old school HGU-33 style helmet, and back when I started, I accepted 
this Life Support Equipment inaccuracy. Well 10 years later I couldn’t take 
it. One night I decided something had to be done, so with the pilot already 
glued in the cockpit, I put the helmet under the knife, shaved it down and 
repainted it for an appropriate Gentex style look. This is the first model I 
attempted to weather, and after checking some pics, decided that the grease 
and boot scuffs, with the odd bit of streaking fluid and some heavy gun 
exhaust seemed the best route to go. I also chose to hang something off the 
jet, and took a little liberty with the inert LGB on the left wing. I had 
already committed to a blue flightsuit back when I started it, so it had to 
be a training round to match. A funny thing happened as I glued the left 
pylon/fuel tank combo on: I had looked at pics from Combat Archer where 
CF-18s doing live drops carried the asymmetric load of a tank on the right 
wing and centerline, but no tank and 1 or 2 500 pound LGBs on the left wing 
pylons. The loadout made sense the instant I glued the left tank on and 
realized how much of the targeting pod’s field of view is obstructed by it. 
Doh! I can see for training purposes when jettisoning the drop tanks isn’t a 
popular option that the asymmetric loadout makes sense. Other than that 
minor detail, I know this isn’t going to drop jaws like some others I’ve 
seen here, but it’s the best one I’ve done and I like it.

Colin

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