MAW Decals

1/72 F/A-18 Leatherneck Charlies & Deltas

Sheet Number: 72MAW002 (C), 72MAW001 (D)

Reviewed by  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

MSRP: $11.99 each Thanks to MAW Decals (www.mawdecals.com) for these review sets. The Aircraft The F/A-18 is the F-4 of the 21st century. It's already evolving, with the Super Bug (E and F models) coming off the assembly line in St. Louis. I've heard that Boeing has a goal for the F/A-18 production. 5058 units. One more than the Phantom. It's been sold to a lot of overseas customers (Finland? Canada? Switzerland? Malaysia? Who'd a thunk it?!) But these decals deal with the United States Marine Corps. The Decals These decals are high quality. They should be; MAW has them printed by MicroScale. I was going to do a side-by-side comparison between the MAW decals and the Cartograf decals included in the Italeri F/A-18 kit. But even at 12X there really isn't a discernable difference in printing quality. So what sets these decals apart from the other dozen or so available sheets for 1/72 Hornets? Love. The guys at MAW Decals apparently have contacts within the Hornet community, and it's a labor of love to insure their decals are as accurate as possible. The decals are not done from some hackneyed PR photos; they're the markings of recent operational aircraft. You can only get this kind of info by talking to the aircrew involved. And I suspect there are several glasses of adult beverage consumed. We all make sacrifices for our art, right? Here's what you get on the sheets.

The inside of the instructions consist of a left and right-side view of each of the aircraft. Combined with the top and bottom views from the back, there is no problem figuring out which marking goes where on the aircraft. There's also a chart giving 12 possible weapons loads for the F/A-18. This is information which is hard to find, and unless you served with a unit flying a particular type of aircraft, it's just not out there. But they give these to you. Brilliant! Here's one. Application I built an Italeri 1/72 D model Hornet, straight OOB. I'm glad MAW included good color info with their sheet, as the info Italeri gives doesn't cover USMC aircraft, and there are some differences. After a coat of future, I put the decals on. I added the Slime Lights from the kit, and now kinda wish I had used someone else's as the color's not quite what I expected. All decals went on with no problem. They're thin enough to follow contours (even the rough spots I failed clean up completely) but thick enough to stand up to some handling to get them positioned. I sprayed Pactra Acrylic flat over the decals, and everything flattened out beautifully.

Conclusion These decals cost about $4 more than similar sheets. If you're going to spend $40 for an F/A-18, and then another $10 for detail items, you want to spend the extra $4, because you DO get what you pay for. Good decals, thoroughly researched, with excellent instructions, and interesting subjects. Final Note: There has been a correction insert issued for the "Leatherneck Charlies" sheet. It has the BuNo for the VMFA 251 aircraft and the intake warnings for the VMFA 212 bird. If you bought this sheet from MAW, you have been sent this errata sheet. If you bought it from a distributor, see the MAW web site. Thanks to IPMS/USA and MAW decals.

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