Hasegawa

1/72 F/A-18F Super Hornet "VFA-102 Diamondbacks CAG"

Kit Number: 00827

Reviewed by  Walt Fink, IPMS# 2447

MSRP: $30.95 This kit is a re-release of Hasegawa's Super Bug, but sports a new set of markings; typical of new-mold Hasegawa toolings, the kit has recessed panel lines, no flash and accurate moldings. Having built Hasegawa's earlier first-generation F/A-18C kit, I can tell you this tooling's better by a country mile. The kit's options include three 480-gallon fuel tanks, two AIM-120 AMRAAMs, two AIM-9X Sidewinders, and an AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR pod. The interior tub has decals for both front and rear instrument panels and all four side consoles, and the seats are fairly plain. When assembled, the overall effect is good if not super-detailed. The addition of some nice aftermarket seats would really enhance the cockpit. The fuselage forward of the wing LEX is made up of left and right sides and a lower pan to which the cockpit tub is attached; this three-piece assembly fits into an aft fuselage section which is split into upper and lower halves. Each intake is a two-part assembly which then fits onto the sides of the aft fuselage. All these parts fit pretty well except for the starboard intake trunk, where a fair-sized gap resulted toward the tail --- I sanded all the seams smooth which didn't take much effort ... the kit fits together pretty nicely here.

The forward-to-aft fuselage seam by the engine intakes is hard to get to. Likewise, when I fit the wings to the fuselage, I tried to match the upper surfaces as close as possible and discovered that left a fairly poor matchup on the lowers that's hard to access for puttying and sanding. Since most of this mismatch occurs on the bottom and I don't intend to exhibit the model upside-down, I filled and smoothed the seam as best I could and said, "Good enough". The horizontal stabs fit into neoprene grommets enclosed in the fuselage so can be left off until final assembly. I began painting the model by spraying the wheel wells white and then masking them off and applying the two-tone gray TPS scheme.

The landing gear is very nicely done and is really sturdy when assembled; all the wheels have ejector pin marks on the back side of the tires --- an annoyance to fill and sand, but necessary. Ejector pin marks also mar the underwing pylons. The instructions call for attaching the wingtip missile rails after the kit's painted, because of the small electroluminescent panels out there which are represented by decals. (Also known as snake lights, formation lights, whatever your fancy.) In my opinion, it'd be better to attach the missile rails to the wings prior to painting, cut the formation light panel decals in half and apply them with all the other markings, thereby not taking the chance of messing up the paint job with cement. There are a lot of add-on small bits including pitot tubes, antennae, underwing flap hinges, and the like. Some are pretty small and need care in handling so they don't squirt out of your tweezers' grasp and become snacks for the rug monster. The Cartograf decal sheet is one of the greatest features of the kit ... it's beautiful and gives a lot of flexibility when it comes to painting and finishing the model. There are markings for three VFA-102 aircraft, but only the CAG option has the red-and-white Diamondbacks markings on the upper fuselage. The elongated red triangle can be painted and white diamond decals applied, or the entire markings, including full-fin decals, may be used. While building the kit and deciding on how to proceed when I got to the painting stage, I opted to paint the red areas, as I wasn't sure the decals would fully conform to all the small curves. This allowed me to leave the fins off and paint them separately. The Diamondbacks' color isn't Insignia red, and in photos appears to have a maroon cast. Since I use acrylics to paint my models, I decided to try utilizing their inherent transparent nature and airbrushed regular red over the gray finish. This gave the deeper red color I was looking to achieve, rather than a brilliant true red. For comparison's sake, I took a picture of the painted model compared with a sheet of "true" red decal trim film. The "pizza box" fairing on the upper nose is the cover for the AN/APX-111 Combined Interrogator Transponder (CIT) antenna array. The instructions don't call it out, but the box art clearly shows it to be darker in color than the rest of the fuselage. The decals worked great and fit precisely, as is the norm for Cartograf products, and give full stenciling and missile markings. Among the options on the sheet are all the various screens and vents (such as the diamond-shaped ones just forward of the exhausts) ... I elected to use a black wash on these to pop out Hasegawa's excellent detail instead. The clear parts are nice but the canopy has a couple seam lines down its middle which have to be sanded and polished out. Hasegawa's provided a real honest-to-gosh support for the canopy so the builder can pose the thing open and not have to try and jury-rig a way to hold it up. When I attached the windshield, I noticed that it hit the HUD mounted on the forward glareshield. Well, I'm out of parts, so I guess I'm finished. The end result is a good-looking model built right out of the box, despite the usual crop of cat hair in my paint. A well-thought out and well-engineered kit which will likely be re-released down the road with more colorful markings as more Navy and Marine Corps squadrons come up with special schemes. Thanks, Hasegawa and IPMS/USA, for letting me review this kit.

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