hpetiers

got some work done on the seams, all of them on the assembly so far have been dealt with: [ and on the bottom side of the fuselage, not too bad: and I have also assembled all the moving surfaces of the wings: then continued dry fitting some cockpit parts. the seat was just assembled to compare with the resin version from Aires: and as others have already found out, the canopy does not fit due to the seat sitting 2 mm too high: with the new seat I also need to do something, but the conflict is smaller: the new seat itself fits without any further adjustments: I added a Tamiya F-16 pilot in the seat, everything fits almost without any cutting or sanding:

hi gents, indeed I am making good use of the fora so far, the trick here really is dry fitting to make sure that you are not going to be surprised when parts are glued. After all had dried I could finally mount the fuselage top and nose, this time with no stress in the plastic: around I just need to fill small gaps: the elevator connection is really sticking out from the fuselage too much, need to sand that down still: also at the cockpit things align pretty much ok: I read some things about the nose, it should have a constant radius in the side view, Revell has made a bit of a kink in it. With sanding sticks I have tried to make the radius more constant: before glueing the wings together I decided to add the outer wings an see how things fit: Also here is seems that the hinge mechanism is 2 mm too long, causing a gap: also the lid on the hinge does not fit without taking away material, the manual does not mention it: so out comes the cutters: now it starts to fit better, I need to take 2 mm off of the outside hinge lip:

hi Chris, that is why I think a forum like this is so useful: no need to go through the same learning curve if you can share tips. thanks for your encouragenemt! hi Don, I am not sure but like you (i think) I have the Afterburner Decals set for the Tomcatters and the Gunslingers. the Tomcatters were a nobrainer until I realized that there is no decals for the lining on the fuel tank. Luckily I can still go on for a while until I need to make up my mind. I am quite sure you also experienced some fit issues for the forward and upper fuselage. If you fit the upper part on the lower one, and try to align 1 wing root... ...then you end up with an upper fuselage around 2 mm too narrow: of course you can pull the upper part outward, but then the part gets quite a bit distorted. On top of that you will note that between the forward fuselage and the LERX extensions there will be quite a gap. I came to the conclusion that the lower fuselage is 2 mm too wide...Now what? You guessed it: out comes the saw again! basically cut the whole inner structure in half to make the assembly flexible enough to push inward. then after pushing the top inwards, I strengthened the whole with a styrene strip: after which I decided to mount the forward fuselage. see here no gap! no gap between the inlets anymore: also strengthened the rest and added a hole for my stand: after a considerable amount of sanding the lower LERX part to make it fit: now the upper and lower parts fit without stress: and can be glued together make sure that the LERX lower surface lines up with the upper surface of the lower fuselage: now the upper fuselage can be mounted....thought for some time I might not get away with this, but it looks like I did!

today I completed a bit of a milestone: finished the intakes so that the fuselage can be built up further. I have no idea how one would be able to paint the intakes after they have been assembled. all seams filled! after the paint has dried, I masked the intakes and the wheel bays: like dmthamade already posted, also here I had to scrape the lower wing gutters wider with a chisel: so these are the parts that need to go together, I have primed the surfaces that will be closed in later: mounted the splitter plates of the LERX separately from the lower wing, this eases cleanup considerably: and then, with sweaty hands, mounted the lower wings to the fuselage: also here the parts need to lign up where the wings and the intakes meet:

Hi dmthamade, so i found your build, thanks for sharing your experiences on this build. I can relatie to all of your fit challenges. Funny to see how you succeeded in fitting the inner intakes, there is more ways that lead to Rome! How do you plan on painting the insides of the intakes gray in wonder? Note that revell does not give you any indication here. if you have not mounted the upper wings yet, I advise to remove the splitters of the small exhausts of the LERX from the bottom wings and glue them under the top wings first. It's much easier to clean up the seem this way. For what it is worth...

Hi dmthamade, i was completely unaware of your build, Thx for the tip! Will follow your progress closely.

Hi dmthamade, pls inspire us with a photo of your end result if you want, looks like you had fun with this one too!

Hi Iain, i have waited long enough for this kit to come, that is probably why i want it to succeed so badly. So far all corrections have been unnecessary, revell should have done a better job of course, but they are solvable. so 1to1scale, i Cannot judge the trumpeter kit since i have only read about its issues but never actually built it, it is the cost that won me over so far. i foresee a future in which the revell kit does not sell well due to its poor buildability for the larger community, resulting in an even lower selling price. In that case i will buy a second revell kit...of course based on what i know at this moment. So no i am completely committed to making this one and the hopefully future F version a success, which is also a good reason to log the progress of my doings.

hi gentlemen., thanks for the encouragement. By the way the sawing into the fuselage turned out not as bloody as it looked, the whole construction was quite stiff so it was easily put together again. So all in all not undoable corrections, but most of them quite unnecessary really! Speaking of unnecessary corrections, did some work on the model after the Easter holidays when I stumbled on the shape of the stabilizers. top one is in the right position, with hole and locator pin aligned. Bottom one is aligned, based on the curved shapes of the stabilizer and fuselage. This way the whole stabilizer is at least 5 mm too far to the front! Other way around: mount the stab as indicated by Revell and you end up with a huge gap which must not be there...sigh! Looking at photo's I can only conclude that te fuselage shape is not correct here. Nope not going to correct that! Thinking about adding some strip to the stab, let's see. btw see where I indicated with a cross where I will add a plastic bar to hold the plane in the air, like it is doing a deck landing with landing gear and tail hook lowered. I do not trust that all-plastic landing gear for one centimeter! Yet another one: the tips of the tails and of the stabs are not sharp, but end like they have been cut off. Stabilizer has been sanded sharper in the photo, tail is still blunt. Come on Revell, this kind of inaccuracies is really unnecessary! And yes I am still enjoying this build!

hi Starfighter, I can relate to your feelings, this is why I had a good look at the rear end of my project tonight. and hopefully with the permission of mr. Melampy´s awesome book about the super hornet, I can show you what it is about the distance between the engines: so Mark, call it mad, call it overconfidence, but I´m sure that in your business they have a scientific word for it...I decided to put the engines closer together. So our came the iron saw and I started to... this gave me 2 mm in width reduction between the exhausts. Some part of the engines had to go in order to be able to clean up the newly made cuts: then the whole was glued together again after tidying up of the seems. to align the bottom plate parts I clamped a piece of styrene strip on the inside: I think I got away clean with it! just some gaps to fill now. though it is just a few mm's, the difference is easy to see And yes, still enjoying this kit!

Gentlemen, what grumpiness on this forum! Believe it or not I am having quite a lot of fun with this kit. Is it a stupid mistake to enigneer the insides 1 mm higher than the outer shell? of course! but if you take that for granted the parts are not that bad (yet) and the surface detail is quite good. And I have come to the conclusion that the height mistake is consistent over the whole length: So like Mark already posted, also the cockpit needs work: The canopy will conflict with the HUD, it is easiest to win this mm in the instrument panel. here the panel before: by splitting up panel in between the screens and putting it back together again, most of the issue is solved. HUD and canopy frame made black to show: also behind the ejection set you end up with a 1 mm gap on the outside. By reducing the rear wall this is easily solved: oh yes, and do not forget to reduce the same mm of the ECS exhausts. This is not depicted in the manual: call me what you want, but I also reduced the foremost bulkhead, while not depicted in the manual: I scraped a bit of plastic from between the intakes to fit the front hull, which I glued to the front halves: some small clean up of seams.. and then everything fits quite well. Later I discovered that the centerline fueltank will completely make this seam obscure, I would have been easier off. also smoothened the intakes with Miliput. this is the seam on the inside of the intakes, it takes a bit of work but it is doable. I am glad by the way that I mounted and smoothened the intake plates before the intake tunnel was complete! still need some sanding paper to smoothen the inside corners:

hi Mark M, yes this is no Tamiya but having started the Heller/Airfix E-3 Sentry in 1:72 until I started this one, I must say that this is an easier build, I am enjoying this one really. Once you overcome the stupidity of the inner parts 1 mm higher than its outer skin, then it something that can be solved. Thanks Markjames for the encouragement, I have to agree that once completed, the gear bay is the most elaborate of any kit I ever built. having put also the sides onto the structure, I wish I had sanded the sides of the front and rear faces of the wheel bays a bit more to ease the mounting of these plates, but in the end it has come together: around the wheel bay there is now just a small gap to deal with: also the bottom plate between the intakes now almost fits without a step, I think just a little more sanding of the surfaces of the intakes will solve this.

hi mark, indeed it seems that this kit has the 1 mm issue over the whole length of the body, and not just the engine compartment. I will show photo's later but they confirm your statement. after having built up the intake duct it is time to mount the bottom plate. in order to fit it, the inner structure needs to be cut through, otherwise the hinges of the wheel doors on the wheel bay will foul! the front plate of the bottom needs to go in between the intake plates. the picture below shows why this is so difficult to align afterwards: by aligning the intake walls to the rest of the structure first, I managed to solve this fit issue. after the mounting of the wheel bays the assembly looks like this. by sliding the bottom plate from the aircraft's back to front I managed to maneuver the plate in between the hinges. notice how the intake insides do not connect to the bottom plate yet. it requires some stress and glue to align them: between the wheel wells all fits well: now everything must be glued. the clamps look more dramatic than it is, just a little force needed to be applied. glue everything from the back to the front: an hour later and everything is fixed, now the intakes can be clamped and glued against the bottom plate:

Last week I managed to do some things again. I checked some of the outer panels without the wheel bays built up. It turns out that everything fits quite well without any of the internal parts causing conflicts (of course after having taken 0.5 mm off of the tops of the bulkheads as well as the ECS internals on top of the engine). So for those who want to build this model with the wheels up, you might as well leave all the wheel bay parts out. After the base coat I spayed the intakes and the parts of the wheel bays white, followed by a Flory Models grime wash. Because I had been warned already about the bulkhead sticking out from the nose wheel bay, possibly conflicting with the canopy, I tried to dry fit the parts. As it turns out, if you sand all parts square and true, and shave just a bit off the diagonal sides of the bulkhead, everything fits again. the same goed for the air intakes: I fitted everything up front and sanded the glue surfaces square and I was pretty much okay. After some alu on the first fan blades and some gunmetal on the exhaust, I was ready to assemble the lot together. The part with the last fan blades needed some sanding of the outer surfaces, otherwise they would not with into their slots. other than that, the intake tunnel came together without gaps. The hole pattern in the intakes have been completely filled and sanded, I am thinking about making a decal to replicate this. The whole pattern was in the wrong orientation anyway. The grey separation has been taped off here, I needed some photo's to figure it out since Revell does not give any guidance here. intake tunnel right before close up: engines dry brushed with alu: and with some clamps and glue the intake tunnel is assembled, without gaps!

hey Starfighter, btw love your work! and yes the split goes right through the mesh. Not sure how to restore this yet, might make a decal and print it since not showing will really be a miss. and yes I will also gently sand the canopy frame too, the canopy itself will not need any sanding with what I can see now. From what I can see of all the work they put into the wheel wells, I think Revell should be applauded for trying such accurate and complex inner structure. However all these parts, including all of them contacting the outer skin parts and the intake trunks at the same time, results in quite a few cases of what they I think call in mechanical engineering: being a statically over-determined construction. Everywhere where a part is slightly off it will put pressure on the rest of the construction. So this requires tidy work, lots of flat and square sanding of where there needs to be glued on surfaces with seam lines, and dry fitting. I built Revells AN-225 just recently and once all glue surfaces are cleaned up it fits like a glove. But if you don't, the tolerances are tight enough to cause immediate fit problems. I hope that fit issues I read about before can be prevented with the same strategy, we will see. Yes Mark, as you are one step ahead of me, I can already conclude that this bottom panel that I removed will not fit just like that in between the intakes. I am planning to wiggle it in between after applying some warm air with a hair dryer. I keep you posted on how stupid of an idea that was!

thanks for the encouragement! Just trying to dry-fit as much as I can to prevent issues later. made some progress, mounted the insides of the intakes because I wanted them definitely flat and aligned and seemless. This comes at a price though, the bottom panel of the hull will not be able to be mounted anymore. I will show later that I took a piece off to make everything fit again. Strangely the manual says nothing about the diagonal color separation between the intake's white and the grey at the very beginning of the intake tunnel. luckily there is plenty of photo reference material. not sure yet how I will restore the very fine mesh in this panel... aligned the intake panels and filled the gap: then Tamiya primer in airbrush: here is the lower panel that I separated. Better to repair this seam than in the intake panels: I was already warned that all parts need clean up. The afterburner ring is not this kit's finest piece. the 2 mounting tabs must be shortened considerably else the engine halves won't fit together: all parts for the lower hull in primer: and specifically for DonH: right before priming I checked the camel hump with the canopy. I did not take so much off the spine in that area, I think I will solve this difference in some light sanding in the canopy: Some panel lines and rivets restored, not done yet: \ I opened also the hexagonal intake ducts and checked if the ECS exhaust panels was properly lined up: I am coming to the conclusion that I will accept this hump! Seems that the square shape of the hump is not so much a problem right behind the cockpit, but the problem is where it becomes too angular in the panel behind it.

hello builders, already since Revell announced in 2016 the F/A-18E Super Hornet in 1:32 I have been looking forward to its arrival. Then it became 2017, nothing. Then 2018, again nothing. During Euro Scale Model last November in Holland I asked one of the Revell people what was going on, there was apparently some challenges with the molds. Then, after a wait of 3 years, I was one of the first to buy it when it hit the shelves. in the mean time there were already some photo's going around of a model at the Spielwahrenmesse where people noticed some inaccuracies in the shape, which were recently enforced by builders, on top of which there was various fit issues. Yikes I thought, have I now waited so long to find out I must spend 1.5x the money for the Trumpeter kit (that also has issues)? Nope, after having dryfitted the parts that gave others the fit issues, I concluded that with their lessons learned I could probably correct them and complete a build, share some my findings and hopefully solutions as I go. And of course I can only thank Mark and vladHVAC to have shared their startling first experiences on the net, I hope to deal with some of the issues they experienced on time. Looking at the manual, where they indicate that parts need to be cut off for half a mm, I can only conclude that this has not been Revell's finest, but after some dryfitting and testing I am not sure yet if this model is deserving the criticism that it gets. We shall see, shall we? this is the model at hand: one of the most eyecatching features that causes discussions is the shape of the spine, just behind the cockpit. Many find it too flat and I would have to agree. Because this is the most radical change I decided to start with correcting this. Looking at the F-18 C Hornet of Academy, you see indeed a much rounder form. With some plasticard I made the shape of the spine: if you now put this template onto the spine of the super hornet, then you clearly see the difference. Also the Revell spine tends to become more square going aft. I think that a constant radius would be looking much better and realistic: With which I do not claim that the spines of Hornets and Super Hornets are the same of course. Now I think that with some sanding the spine can easily improved. Before I do that I have to reinforce it on the inside with some Miliput 2 component filler: btw see that I also split up the ECS exhaust between the tail to align each part more properly with the outer skin. Next step is sanding. With a sanding stick I sanded the shape of spine into a constant radius: After this, I compared both sides. On the left the original spine, on the right the corrected one: Again half an hour later I made everything symmetrical again. you can see that I sanded right through the plastic. The color difference makes it easy to check for symmetry: After an hour and a half's adventure the result is seen below. Still not the same as the legacy Hornet but I think much better. The radius is consistent and the top of the spine curved: next step is to restore the panel lines!

hi mustang 1989, no it did not. The pilots have been made in CAD and I had them 3D printed by Shapeways. I made a bunch of them. Takes more time to paint than to design!

hello to all model aircraft builders, this is not exactly a large scale plane, but judging by the time it took to complete it, I might as well have built it in 1:32. Anyway this project started as a flight deck diorama which is nowhere near finished, but at least I managed to complete my E-2C Hawkeye on the catapult of the USS Dwight D Eisenhower of 2009. The model is from Revell in 1:144, modifications are 3D printed propellers and crew, dropped flaps and custom made decals. I will not bore you with all the in progress pics (which used to be on photo bucket, you know what happened with those...), here is the result of more than 2 years on and off work. Hope you enjoy it!

Hi Alan, I am very happy that you like them and thanks for sharing your enthousiasm. Those 3D printed parts also blew me away when I first saw them. Can't wait to see the end result! I am happy to Have helped you out, Good luck with finishing your project. Cheers, hugo

Hi alan, thanks for stopping by, I hope to read about your progress on your project! Too bad my own is temporarily parked for now because of me and the family moving to another house, had to pack up all my hobbystuff and disassemble the paint booth. I did start to glue some parts together on the Hornet though! This is one project I will finish sooner or later, question is....when?

Hi Clumsydude, may I be the first one to congratulate you of the stunning result. Your patience really payed off! On to the next four year build I would say!!!

Hi Jim, it must be very difficult sometimes to keep up the pace and the energy to finish a large project like this I reckon! I hope that my unexpectedly fast progress of my carrier deck in 1:144 might bring you some inspiration? Too bad it kept my attention off of modelling some nice 3D print designs...oh well! http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234989057-aircraft-carrier-deck-1144/page-5 keep up the good work! hugo

hey Clumsydude, it there is truly no better way to appreciate a filthy carrier deck than to make it yourself, congrats so far on the result!

Hi Alan, you can on the Shapeways website. I published my models on: https://www.shapeways.com/search?q=klekotech&type= Shapeways will print them for you and send them to your house.