ALF18

I heard a rumour from a fairly reliable source that it might be before Christmas. I also can’t wait. I flew Tutors for 1,600 hours over a span of more than 5 years. ALF

Ouch! Chuck, I saw Mike M. in Ottawa a few days before his surgery, and I saw how much it affected his ability to function (not to mention the pain). You're perfectly correct that it's a good approach to consider that others are living far worse things - that's a sign of a healthy attitude! Time will heal. A guy with your skills cannot be kept away from the bench forever. Speedy recovery, my friend. ALF

Oooh! Better hurry up before an 'accident' happens with somebody vacuuming... Cool collection. ALF

This is an incredible job. I don't know how you do it, making the gear retract. I mean, sure, I see how you did it - but the incredible patience! Good job. One of my friends flew the Luftwaffe G models at Luke AFB (Phoenix) Arizona in the early 80s. He was a Canadian CF-104 pilot, who was on exchange instructing at the time. He took me out to see the jets on the flight line, and they looked beautiful in their polished natural metal with USAF markings. Yours will look fantastic, I'm sure. By the way, the lights on the side of the engine intakes that you're worried about making flush are not formation lights - they are just standard red and green navigation lights. ALF

What can I say, Pig? Colour me super impressed. I am salivating over every detail, and I completely understand why this is a long-term labour of love for you. You're a better man than I, taking the blame for your IP blasting the canopy on the adjacent T-38. I remember the first time taxiing in the back of an F-5B, watching the front canopy dance around and threaten to detach itself with every bump. The pilot (my father) just laughed and said it was the most Mickey-Mouse arrangement he'd ever seen. I wish I could afford to pay you to make a 1/18 F-5A for me... but that would be priceless, just like this model, and I don't know I'd live long enough to appreciate it by the time it's built. Keep it up, bud! The end result will be totally worth it. ALF

What colour are those metal rings at the far back end of the fuselage? They should be a dull silver, very similar to the screens just ahead of them. The exhaust nozzles are a lot darker (gunmetal), but those rings are more silver. ALF

The anti-skid strips and cockpit are looking amazing. I take your point about screens being on, but the flaps are powered by hydraulics, not electrical power. To have hydraulic pressure, at least one engine must be running, or the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) has to be running in maintenance mode. The APU in maintenance mode can provide either AC electric OR hydraulic power, but not both at one (selector chooses which one it can provide). If you want to leave the flaps up, you can claim the engines were just shut down... ALF

Oh, and for the flaps... Hornet trailing edge flaps and ailerons will bleed down after hydraulic power comes off (i.e. when engines shut off), if they were not already down when shut down. Those are good reference pictures. The leading edge flaps will stay where they were when shut down. Generally, to prevent problems when starting and resetting the flaps, pilots will select flaps down (either half or full) just before shutting down the engines, and the leading edge flaps will go to 12 degrees down. The trailing edge and ailerons will droop 42 and 45 degrees respectively when set to full. So - if flaps set to UP/AUTO prior to shutdown: -leading edge will stay up, flush with wing -trailing edge and ailerons will droop over the course of an hour or so to the fully-down position. If flaps set to HALF or FULL prior to shutdown: -leading edge will be 12 degrees down -trailing edge and aileron will end up fully down within about 30 minutes of shutdown. In other words, it's rare to see a parked Hornet with the flaps up. Leading edge maybe, but trailing edge and ailerons will droop quite soon after shutdown. Sometimes, when loading missiles onto the fuselage stations, techs will push the flaps up with their backs to have better access, but they will slowly droop again afterward. ALF

I agree with Chuck (as I usually always do - he has amazing skills)! Sand the edges down, and maybe reduce the pebbling a bit. The example he's shown is actually very dark for a Canadian bird, and the American C you are making definitely has a very dark anti-slip surface. In other words, I think the colour is spot on, but the thickness and texture is a tiny bit overdone in scale. ALF

I know exactly what you mean about endless deployments and family sacrifices. Hats off to you and others who have lived this as well. I'll have to look into that anti-slip stuff from Mig. On Canadian Hornets, the anti-slip panels are often faded and indistinct, unlike the one you're modelling. I just scribble some soft pencil on the area, wet my fingertip, then rub it until it's uniformly darkened. I use the same technique to apply hydraulic oil stains and other greasy stains to the surfaces. What I love about this technique is that if I overdo it, I simply take a pencil eraser and erase it, then try again. In this pic you can see how it looks when finished. I do the dirtying up before applying the gloss coat on the matte paint. You can also see the colour PE in the cockpit. I think the Quinta/Red Fox ones look even better. I built this kit for another pilot's son (a former instructor and Snowbird), who flew Hornets in Cold Lake recently. ALF

All military service is worthy of respect - we all know just how much we sacrificed to live that life. I say 'live the life' because it is a life, not just a job anyone does, and all roles are important. I must say there are many military jobs I wouldn't want to do, and I consider myself privileged to have done what I did. I'm curious - has your Eurofighter pilot friend also flown Hornets? What does he think of the comparison between the two? I'm loving your attention to detail on the exterior. This is a fantastic kit, and a good modeller can really do it justice (like you). The weathering in the gear bays is looking quite realistic, as are the screens. I suspect they are simply the ones moulded on the kit, but nicely painted. I did a cockpit with colour PE on the same kit. I think yours looks better. ALF

Nice job so far. The cockpit looks great. The D model comes in two flavours: two-stick pilot trainer, or night attack with WSO in back. The pilot trainer has a control stick like the front cockpit (like in the reference pic, showing the black rear instrument panel from the model next to it above). The night attack version would have a joystick on each side console, that the WSO uses for weapons aiming. That version is not intended to be flown from the back, and the backseater is a true weapons operator, not a second pilot. I found a good picture on a DCS forum site that shows the left console controller, and the fact there is no pilot control stick in the back on that version: https://forum.dcs.world/topic/200160-fa-18d-usmc-night-attack/page/2/ I flew CF-18 A and B Hornets for 10 years in Canada, and I followed the upgrades closely with the C, D, D night attack, then E, F, and G variants closely. Anything with a centre-mounted control stick in back is a pilot trainer, not night attack with the specialized avionics and joysticks on the side panels. For the displays, unless AC power was available, they would be dark (i.e. off). AC power is only available when at least one engine is running with its generator on, or when external AC power is connected on the left side of the nose. They do look nice when they're all lit up, though! I love the big Academy kit, and I have some of those Red Fox instrument panels for three kits I have to build soon. I'll be following this, to refresh my memory on the details of the build. If you have any questions about details, etc, you can send me a PM. ALF

Nice job. My father flew CF-104s, his favourite aircraft. I like your bomb load, typical but tiny and ineffective by today's standards. Dad used to call it ''delivering pizza in a Cadillac'' referring to the poor capacity of the aircraft to deliver effective weapons, but how much he loved flying the jet at low altitude. ALF

Good move to have the speedbrakes closed. My father used to fly them. He told me that they were always closed on the ground when parked (some sort of automated action, I believe). The only time they could be opened with the engine off is if external hydraulic power was applied by maintenance personnel. ALF

Now, I'm struggling with the fuselage join. Talk about terrible fit!! I'm not sure how much can be attributed to the kit itself, and how much is due to having glued the interior stuff together nicely. In any case, it matters not. I will be using tons of putty on this one! Starting from the front of the nose, with CA glue. Why is ALF complaining, you say? Well, look at what's happening underneath. Now for the tope rear fuselage. A look at the lower rear fuselage. Nothing is simple on this one. Taking a short break - gluing the fuselage took me a couple days, and will need a bunch more work. I'm going for a swim the apartment complex's pool while I look for my motivation to continue on the intakes. ALF

Sure enough, when I install the intake tubing, then try to dry-fit the outer parts over top, the fit is truly atrocious. I'm going to glue the fuselage halves together first, then play with this some more. I'm starting to lose sleep over the poor fit. Here is the culprit: the thick ridge around the intake trunking, as well as the overall height of the trunking above the fuselage side. Speaking of losing sleep... Before I glued the fuselage halves together, I had an overnight flash. Some people obssess about their lives and relationships at 3 am... I think about my latest model. Here is what I thought about. This is the nose gear bay, assembled according to the kit instructions. Have a good look at the little sockets at bottom left. I had a dim memory of something being not quite right when I built this kit the first time, several years ago, but at 3 am it kept evading me, until I remembered. The little sockets were intended to receive the side tabs on the nose gear strut! Here is what the strut assembly looks like. The little horizontal tabs at the top of E10 are what is supposed to go into the little holes in the wheel well as shown above. Then, still at 3 am, I remembered that I had to chop off the lower halves of those receptacles to receive the horizontal tabs. The instructions make no sense, having the modeller install the gear struts after everything else is assembled, in this step. The only possible explanation is that it's intended for the modeller to ensure there is a gap in the little receptacles that would allow the tabs on E10 to fit into them... but that is NOT clear in the instructions. There is no way the little tabs could be forced into the slots after the whole thing is assembled. I thought about it some more, and came up with a solution. Here is the offending area. The sides of the wheel well are glued onto the centre part, so all I had to do was undo the front of one side, slip the strut (not assembled yet, just part E10) into the slots, then glue the side back in place, being careful not to get any glue in the holes for the wheel strut. Then, I could rotate the strut up into the wheel well while I assembled the rest of the model, and finally glue it all in place at the very end. In went the strut, then I clamped and reglued the wheel well. Luckily, the Tamiya Extra-Thin glue made it easy to remove the wheel well, pry it open, then reglue it all.

Next troublesome fit - the nose wheel well. The kit's plastic is somewhat recessed, giving a possible clue as to where exactly the wheel bay should go. The problem is that it doesn't fit snugly into these recesses, and could be glued in at multiple angles and in many little variations of positioning. Dry fitting to see... Aft portion of the nose wheel well. I finally applied some glue, and will try this. Next step, after it solidifies, is to see if the two fuselage halves fit nicely with this part in this position. If not, I'll use more Tamiya Extra-Thin glue to unseat it and correct the positioning. That's one thing I like about that glue. It can be used to undo a small mistake. Next, cockpit glued in place. Now that the cockpit is in place, I decided to work a bit on the intakes before gluing the fuselage together. Remember I mentioned that the kit parts are not numbered? Not all of us are as smart as Neo and will refer to the sprue drawings at the beginning of the instructions... Well, I noticed that there were two very similar parts. The upper one, dry-fit on the fuselage, is the one for the T-33. The lower one is for the F-80. You can see that the T-33's is longer, the extra length for the rear seat. I tossed the two short parts into the bin. BTW, both the T-33 and F-80 parts fit very poorly into the fuselage side. Out of curiosity, I tried both, and neither fit well! I assembled the intake trunking, and ended up with this assembly. I have some trepidation about how it will fit though... ALF

Seats installed, along with the right-side cockpit wall. Now the instrument panels too. Sorry for the fuzzy pictures. It's a very grey day here, and natural light is very muted. Dry-fitting of the cockpit into the right-hand fuselage half. Yes, the seats are buried rather deep into the fuselage. In reality, they can be raised a bit more, but in the T-33 I always felt like I was inside a deep pit. Visibility from the back seat forward was almost nil. Landing from the back seat was difficult, requiring me to look out the sides in the final stages with the nose raised in the air. I did a lot of dry-fitting of the cockpit, seeing how it should be installed. There is a small ridge that it's supposed to sit on, but the fit isn't clearly one way or another. Next kit I build (too late for this one - this is all history I'm posting now) I will glue the fuselage together, then insert the cockpit from below. That should avoid the huge fit problems I have with the fuselage join! Aft part of the cockpit, showing the small ridge on inside of fuselage. Front view of same dry-fit. Tailpipe. Sheesh. Seems the ridges (one that's chopped, and the other thicker portion toward the rear) both prevent the rear fuselage from closing properly. I hacked away at the tailpipe to avoid this. Here you can see I chopped off the thicker part at the bottom (aft) of the tailpipe assembly. Next, the nose wheel bay. ALF

Interesting! I considered doing that, and have gone so far as to dry-fit with another of the same kit. Unfortunately, it's too late for this one - in my next update you'll see that I've passed that stage already. I have 2 others to build in this scale, and this one will be a steep learning curve for me. My plan is to make two for myself: one from Cold Lake, where I flew them, and another from the conversion training unit where I learned to fly them. I have resin cockpits for both of them. I like your idea of joining the fuselage halves together first, then inserting the cockpit. There is indeed a huge hole underneath that makes it possible. I'm sure a lot of the fit problems I have been having are a result of the way I glued the cockpit in place on one half first. ALF

Here the left-hand cockpit wall is installed. You can see that the front silver thingie (technical term) on the lower wall has its rear half broken off. Brittle resin, of course. It's also clear how the rear seat rails have come loose. When dry-fitting the front seat, I noted that the gear handle assembly interferes with the seat. It's actually a good thing that the rear portion of it has snapped off. Now to add the resin footrests to the fronts of the seats. ALF

This is one part where I have to be patient. I did some dry-fitting of the seats into the rail assemblies. Those assemblies (you can see them on the cockpit floor, with the solid backs) are tricky because there is no clear guide for where to glue them. That is true for much of this kit. No such thing as locating pins, and sometimes not even a ridge to give a clue. The instructions are not super clear either. I've assembled the nose gear well (top left), painted the wheels (background), and finished the pre-assembly of the side panels (left and top right). Why the patience? Because I have to glue one thing in place, wait for it to dry solidly, then do the next step. Otherwise, it falls apart like a house of cards. Right after this picture, I glued the left sidewall into place, and started to fiddle with the seats. When I did that with the rear seat, I found that the silver part at the bottom of the left side wall interfered with the seat. I jiggled it into place, and promptly broke the seal on the glue holding the two rear rails in place. Grr. Those silver parts look like they're supposed to be the landing gear handles. Yes, one of the worst possible places for a landing gear handle ever. To add to the problem, the gear sometimes had a nasty habit of collapsing if the handle was not clicked properly into place in the down position. That's why, after selecting gear down, it was standard procedure to do a 'shake test' by jiggling the landing gear handle to make sure it didn't pop up and out of the down position. More soon, as things dry and become more solid. My biggest concern right now is how will the tub assembly fit into the fuselage. I see some ridges as guides, but the width of the tub will be important. If it is too wide or too narrow (i.e. if I've installed the side panels slightly wrong), then it won't hold or might cause the fuselage not to close properly. ALF

HAH! Your definition of comfy... I guess they were better than a bed of broken glass - barely. Maintenance didn't have extra cushions for us in Cold Lake - I guess we weren't spoiled like those Comox softies! This model is not for the faint of heart. Fit is pretty terrible (working on the fuselage join right now) in some places. ALF

Thanks! I haven't changed a bit since then... lol. Thanks ALF

Fixed the problem with the snapped-off ejection handle. I used some small-gauge wire. My first attempt, I cut off a small length of the wire, then started to bend it. I realized that I needed tools to do that, so I got some small tweezers, squeezed... and the little bit of wire flew away somewhere, and probably will only be found when I'm done this model. My second attempt, I did the bending while the wire was attached to the spool, compared the radius of curve and length with the existing part, then chopped. A little CA glue, and the seat was ready to be finished off. Only some small touch-ups required, including the silver on the belt buckles. More soon ALF

Cockpit coming along. I've put together a lot of the PE on the side walls, and chopped the resin canopy lock/unlock assembly from its blocks. I used Lumocolor permanent markers for the black colour of the toggle switches, the red of the guarded switches, and a Pilot brand metallic silver pen for the silver switches and buttons. I bent the PE for the map cases a bit open, to enhance their 3D appearance. Here's the canopy lock/unlock assembly. Only the front seater can lock and unlock the canopy, which is a good thing. Well, with a small hacksaw, I managed to rid the seats of their blocks fairly easily. I did manage to knock off one of the ejection handles, though, so I'll have to scratch-build one. ALF