This Super Hornet caused me lots of work until I got this article on ARC. The first reason is construction took more time than I estimated. And this is how construction went:

First thing to improve was the seat. The headrest has been enlarged, then cushions, some belts, the ejection handle and some other details were added to the little seat.

The kits HUD is hardly pleasing as it is crude and unrealistic as usual. So I made a new one using plastic sheet and copper wires. The result of this effort is a beautiful 2-slice-HUD.

The third thing regarding cockpit improvement was the canopy. Adding rearview mirrors and handles was not hard to do, but as I wanted the canopy adjustable (open/close) I had to do more extra work. Eventually the canopy is being held by two stripes made of resin (Montage Füll-Kleber, a 2-component resin glue, ideal for gluing and/or filling or even creating/shaping new parts!).

Click on images below to see larger images

The landing gear is not bad, but still there could be more details. First I carved the "knees" of the main gear to depict the joint. Then some rods (copper wire) were added. The lights of the nose gear were modified to make them look clear (drilled by hand, filled with clear glue).

On the nose of the Hornet was just an indication of a muzzle. So little holes were drilled using the tip of a circle. After the holes were big enough a little stripe of sandpaper was threaded into them and the holes were carefully sanded to shape.

The stabilizers were originally attached to the lower fuselage. They were cut off and re-mounted by using toothpicks as axles.

Then there were some areas on the fuselage which required filling and sanding. The most important ones are the air brake and the bad-fitting intakes. I never figured out why the inside of the intakes have only about 1/3 of the real length. I guess that's why they made such a tiny fan - just to compensate the lack of depth.

I used the decals from the kit. They’re okay, but unfortunately at that time I didn’t have Sofix (or Future) to prevent them from silvering on flat surfaces as you can see in some pictures. The whole model was lightly wheathered using flat black paint thinned with water.

The construction, including many smaller and some bigger modifications, took about 7 months. I was happy when I finally completed construction and I was pleased with the result (it’s not Hasegawa but it’s enough Super Hornet for me). But then came the second reason why this project was so time consuming. It took much time and many efforts until I got the pictures looking more or less the way I wanted. And then a disaster happened! I lost all my data on my PC, including all articles and all pictures of all of my models! That's the third reason.

Now after I took new pictures and wrote a new article, after much more work than I thought it would take, this project is at last completed. Well, at least the model didn’t crash…

Deun