1/48 Revell F/A-18E Super Hornet  

by Alan Williamson on Oct 6 2003

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History 

The new F/A-18E Super Hornet tactical aircraft is set to form the new backbone of the US Navy carrier-borne units. It has already been in service with VFA-122 training squadron at Lemoore since November 1999, and by 2002 should go into service aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The F/A-18E is a radically new design and is much larger then its former F/A-18 counter parts. The modifications include more powerful engines, greater fuel capacity and longer range as well as the new lager and more modern cockpit display and the new APG-79 radar. The F/A-18E can carry much heavier loads concluding eight tons of armaments and tanks together with ECM pods on 11 external hard points.  The F/A-18E has a top speed of over Mach 1.8 and with in the next few years the F/A-18E will replace the ageing F-14 Tomcat on board all US Navy Carriers.

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The Kit 04515 

This is a relatively new kit for Revell Germany being released in 2002, however I think that it is a revamp of the Italeri F/A-18E and if so the Italeri will probably be the better choose for the cheaper of the two kits.  My thoughts are that it would have to be the worst kit I have ever brought form the Revell Germany Company.

Construction

I built this kit OOB except for the Ejection set, which is form Verlinden. The cockpit in this kit might as well be thrown in the bin it is made up of decals, I used it because I could not find a substitute, mind you apart from the cockpit the rest of the kit is passable but for the price its very passable lol. The wings and fuselage have reasonable detail but I found a lot of putty was required when joining the fuselage halves together and the wings to the fuselage. The landing gear are the same set up in the way they are assembled as that of the Italeri FA-18A kit, this is why I believe that this kit was ones made from Italeri. Speaking of the landing gear I found that the rear landing gear just would not sit in the place proved, they seem to go spread legged making it extremely hard to construct the landing gear doors. I tried on many occasions to get the rear landing gear to sit right but it just would not work. But over looking the cockpit and landing gear the rest of the kit builds up ok.

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Painting and Finish 

Well as if the construction of the kit wasn’t bad enough I had a lot of painting problems, I used Humbrol gloss black for the tails which I sprayed first. Once dry I masked them up and sprayed the top and bottom of the fuselage in Model Master paints but were the over spray of the gloss black was form the tails I found that the model master paints started to react in a crows feet reaction. Both types of paint were enamels so Iam stumped as to what cause the reaction weather it was the thinners I don’t know. So I had to lightly sand the paint off once dry on the spots that reacted, and then re spray the area a gain.  This proved to be successful. Then I sprayed on a model master gloss clear over the kit before applying the decals, once again the paint reacted this time I used different thinners than previous.  So I had to again lightly sand the paint back on the affected areas and re paint the model third time lucky nothing happen to the paint. However when it came time to apply the decals I found that the decal solution, which I have used, many of times on other kits caused some of the paint to react so at this point I gave up most of the decals were on so it wasn’t like I could repaint the model again seeing as I couldn’t at the time find replacement decals. So if you look close enough you can see some of the crow’s feet reaction. The model with decals represents F/A-18E VFA-14 “200” CAG NAS Lemoore, CA, USA April 2002.

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Conclusion

On a scale one to ten I give this kit a five. 

Alan

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Photos and text © by Alan Williamson