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Reviewer: Trevor Boxall  (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted:  22 November 2008

Aircraft History

The F/A-18A Hornet, as most people know, was derived from the unsuccessful Northrop YF-17 Cobra lightweight fighter venture in competition against the Lockheed (General Dynamics) F-16.  But very few people know one unflattering statistic for the first generation Hornet in that it served the shortest frontline service in the US Navy of any modern combat US  aircraft, such were its inefficiencies and developmental problems for carrier based operations.  This obviously had a bearing on the type's service history which saw it relegated to a number of roles, including the Aggressor squadron at Top Gun.

After McDonnell Douglas and Northrop were announced as winners of the US Navy Air Combat Fighter program the F/A-18 first flew in late 1978.  It was a completely new aircraft and shared only general outline similarities with the YF-17, being larger, more powerful and incorporating a much stronger structure and undercarriage for operations on carriers.  With more advanced avionics than its great rival the F-16, the companies touted the Hornet as a true multi-role type aircraft.  This was enough to persuade Canada and Australia into purchasing the Hornet to replace large fleets of older supersonic aircraft in their inventories over the F-16.  Orders were placed by both countries before the aircraft had even finished flight testing, although at the same time Northrop were showing off its land-based F-18L version which was similar in size to the F/A-18 but with a redesigned structure and higher performance.  F-18L export sales were unsuccessful because the Hornet customers found that the F/A-18 had lower risks and was already in full scale development for the US Navy.  

Two basic variants were thus produced, the F/A-18A single seat and TF-18A (later renamed to F/A-18B) two-seat version.  The F/A-18B was in the main unaltered, save a bit of fuel space, to the F/A-18A variant, so its equipment and combat capability was essentially identical to the single seat variant.  Canada was the first and largest first generation Hornet customer and designated the aircraft the CF-188 in service.  The Canadians also pioneered the use of "fake" cockpits painted on the underside of their Hornets, with the intention of disorientating an opponent in Air Combat Manoeuvres.  

From land based operations for the RCAF & RAAF the advantages of the multi-role type soon became apparent but in the US Navy the F/A-18 was showing some severe shortfalls.  It was failing to a large extent to meet its radius and weapons load specifications - both of the aircraft it was supposed to replace in the F-4 Phantom and A-7 Corsair could carry greater loads over longer distances.  The Hornet also possessed one of the lowest approach speeds of any modern combat fighter, but was unable to utilise this asset unless it had the minimum of any ordnance load.  In 1982 one US Navy squadron recommended the Hornet program be suspended until these shortfalls could be overcome, especially that shortfall associated with range.  Since the A-7's and F-4's had to be replaced, cancelling or suspending the Hornet would leave the US Navy short of modern combat aircraft so they decided to put the aircraft into production without solving these problems.

Only three export customers purchased the first generation Hornet in Canada, Australia and Spain which of course did not have the same problems as the US Navy as their Hornets primarily operated from land bases where some of these shortfalls were not really an issue.  These problems, however, did stop other countries from purchasing the Hornet with Switzerland, Kuwait and Japan all reneging on initial interest in the aircraft.  By 1995, the US Navy had already retired nearly all of its F/A-18A/B models from carrier-based service.  

In 1990's Top Gun instructors gradually retired their A-4's and F-5s from service in favour of F/A-18A Hornets (and later the B and C variants) to better simulate aircraft such as the MiG-29 and Su-27 in the aggressor role.

The Kit

I have had this kit sitting in the unbuilt stash for a number of years now and I believe it was first released in the mid 90’s.  It is however, simply a reboxing and reissue of the F/A-18A Hornet kit by Fujimi with the aggressor paint scheme.  The Fujimi kit has been out in the world for probably the best part of another decade before the release of this version.  I am not sure whether this kit can still be sourced other than through areas such as ebay, but I remember it was a fairly expensive kit at the time I bought it.

Inside the box there are six sprues containing 115 light grey parts which include engraved panel lines and surface detail.  There are sink marks, ejector pin marks and a little bit of flash to contend with, probably as a result of the reissue of a well used mold.  The parts are contained in a plastic bag and the small separate clear sprue containing six parts is bagged separately.  Additionally there is an etched fret in this kit for some extra detail in the cockpit.

Instructions

These follow the usual Fujimi format which is not too much unlike Hasegawa in many ways.  It features a brief history on the aircraft along with the mandatory modelling information in Japanese and English.  After this there are nine assembly steps and the usual colour information multi view diagrams for decal placement as well.  Painting information from the Gunze Sangyo range are called out through construction and FS numbers are also quoted for the final examples.

Construction

Let’s start in the cockpit, shall we :-)  And this is as sparse as is Hasegawa with barely nothing more than a tub, seat, stick and instrument panel to fill it up.  Thankfully a couple of etched parts including mirrors and HUD are supplied, but the cockpit can do with a fair bit more sprucing up to make it look nice under the later affixed canopy.  A decal is supplied for the instrumentation in the cockpit.

The fuselage is broken down into several pieces so the cockpit is installed in the forward area and this proves to be straight forward and not difficult.  The rear fuselage section is a bit more fiddly to put together and then align with the forward component.  But with care and patience it is not too difficult to line up the two main fuselage sections.

As is often the case in Hornet kits the fit of the intakes and trunks were nothing short of atrocious needing a hell of a lot of effort, test fitting and trimming, which is best actually said as carving, to achieve a decent fit in the end.  Even then, sanding and filling was the order of the day to achieve a blended fuselage and intake area.  I can’t help but think I didn’t quite achieve this as well as I would have liked.

The wings are split in the usual upper and lower halves and overall are a straight forward fit, although the leading edge shoulder needed careful positioning.  A small gap is evident at the wing roots which needs filling but the tailplanes fit quite well.  The twin tail fins are not quite a flush fit and although the instructions are correct in which part goes on which side, I had to test several theories out first as the fit indicated they might have been the wrong way around.  So out with the sandpaper and filler at the fin to fuselage section as well to blend in smoothly.

The undercarriage, canopy and other major parts of the aircraft did not present any real problems other than just being careful and patient about fitting the parts.  The kit includes weighted tyres which is a nice touch.  If displaying an open canopy a boarding ladder from the etched set is provided and can be attached but I opted to leave this off as it looked a bit too fiddly for me.

Even though this kit is the adversary version for the Top Gun program, it is the original Hornet kit released by Fujimi which means it retains all the stores options from that release.  Of course none of these other than wingtip sidewinders are really appropriate to use, however, you do have the choice of various AAMs, drop tanks, bomb racks and target pods in this kit.

Colour Schemes

There are three Hornet adversary schemes to choose from which include the Flanker style blue-grey and white scheme as featured on the boxart, three-tone sand and brown desert scheme and another three tone blue-grey similar to the Flanker style.  Those two non-Flanker style schemes were worn by F-5 Tiger aggressors before being replaced by the Hornets.  

I chose the Flanker scheme but soon realised that the colours mentioned by Fujimi are pretty damn inaccurate.  In fact, I think this must have been about the time when the Flankers colours were thought to be something that was later determined not to be the case as when this kit was released the Flanker was still a bit of an enigma as far as the West was concerned.  A bit like the MiG-29 Fulcrum which when it first came out many thought had a two tone green scheme, which was only due to photographs.  The real colour was later revealed.

But of course I digress!  Ignoring what Fujimi recommended as colour for the Flanker style splinter scheme I went for FS 36320 dark ghost grey; FS 15414 Intermediate Blue and FS1509 dark blue for the splinter scheme with white and light ghost grey undersides.

Decals

The decal sheet is a big disappointment for a variety of reasons.  They are not the most sharply printed, they are matt and there is a complete lack of stencilling.  I am not quite an expert on the Aggressor version, but I do presume that in spite of the colour scheme there would still be a fair bit of stencilling for this aircraft.  I also think that the NAVY and some other decals were made for the other versions of this kit, or at least the inaccurate colour scheme quoted by Fujimi as they do not show up against the painted background of my aircraft.  Other than that the decals conform to the model surface without any real problems at all.  However, I can’t help but think that an aftermarket source would be best for the aircraft I wanted to depict.

Accuracy

There are no real issues I can see as far as accuracy of the outline and profile of aircraft are concerned.  The model measures up very well to dimensions of the F/A-18A Hornet almost exactly to scale and captures the look of the aircraft very well.  I just have issues with the paint scheme and decals as I said above.

Conclusion

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