EA-18G Growler- Completed

[chrish]

I figured I could refine a few things while I was in the plastic butchery mood, I thinned the (bleed air?) vents. and opened up the bypass openings in the Rhino intakes. Started adding p.e. to the kit, (always an event fraught with challenge and heartache) 

Here's the vents before I scraped and sanded them to a less Panzer appearance;

and after;

fitting the Rhino parts and opening the bypass slots;

and a bit of photo etch...driving me nuts already (like it was designed to do)

Back to "work" now

Thank you for looking

[chrish]

Chugging away merrily on my EA 18 

I'm calling it progress.

For those interested, I've test fitted the Aires exhaust nozzles (closed) to the kit. The kit part is on the left, the Aires part is on the right.

Looks like a pretty good fit so far 

Jumping around (as usual) in the construction sequence, I also sanded off the raised formation (slime) light locators which, I thought were kind of crude...just me?  Once I did the inboards (which shouldn't be there at all) I liked it so much I decided to do the outboard as well. That  work being on the vertical empennage, I may try making the frames later from some sheet styrene in  .005" or .010" thickness.

I went a bit to deep in one spot, Tamiya filler to the rescue

  

[chrish]

Still playing with the super bug, I made some slime light frames and began plumbing the gear bay. The few pictures I found of the bays were overwhelming so I went with a kind of mass of pipes everywhere just to make it look busy and cluttered, my biggest concern was keeping the bays symmetrical with each other.

Thanks for looking!

[themongoose]

Really looking good! Those main wheel bays will be sharp. I think the simple side panels in the cockpit make a world of difference. Looking forward to your next update.

[chrish]

Thanks for looking and the comment!

Appreciated!

I fought with the Trumpeter fuel tanks and pylons to get the seams erased due to misaligned alignment pins (ain't that some irony?) When I got to the weapons, wanting to mount a load on this kit of jammers, air to air and air to ground ordnance, I found the missiles were suffering from the same problem (alignment pins) but being ahead here...I had in my stash a resin set of AGM 88 Harms, which after careful examination turned out to be less detailed than the Trumpeter parts...

Plan B. I have a lot of left over parts from Academy's F/A 18 C- D kits which were built without weapons.

I dug through a kit and found the AGM 88's and AAMRAMS (all weaponry now accounted for) a test fit of the Academy missiles to Trumpeter pylons was a happy time...Almost a perfect fit of the AAMRAMS and a perfect fit of the AMG 88's saving me hours of work with sanding sticks and scribing lost detail! 

Some pictures:
I sanded the Jammer turbines to a more prototypical thickness, they were almost square as cast.

working on the electronics package (I'm sure that ram air duct should be NACA shaped scoop...oh well.

what happens when you keep "resin upgrades" too long, they get surpassed by plastic parts! The Trumpeter pieces are far better detailed than these.

The Academy missile on the Trumpeter pylon, saving a lot of work!

Thanks for looking

[chrish]

I have spent an enjoyable few hours adding clutter to the gear bays and Eduard detail sets to the ordnance (There would have been a lot more Eduard details needed with the Trumpeter weapons)

The dark gray parts are Academy 

I figured the Trumpeter coaming/ instrument cover looked "kinda goofy" so I made a casting of the Academy part which I'll attempt to fit to this project

copy bending the lead wire to keep things symmetrical (as symmetrical as I can)

All that wire now installed, hopefully it'll look ok under paint and wash

The nose wheel bay getting the same kind of treatment with annealed steel wire and a bit of gizmology in the way of hydraulics metering valves etc.

I think I can now start gluing some things together...?

Thanks for looking

[LSP_Kevin]

Superb work, Chris!

 

Kev

[chrish]

I don't know if I'm procrastinating getting on with the build or just fussy. I built a Trumpeter 1/32 F 18 E a few years ago (2007 it was out of the box) and the horizontal control surfaces have been a issue ever since by not staying on the model, to the point I look over at it now up on the shelf and the horizontal stabs. are sitting beside it having fallen off again.
I came up with this idea, it would've been easier without the resin exhaust upgrades because the exhaust pipes are much bigger in diameter taking up room inside the model. In any case, my idea was to nest 2 brass sleeves  telescoped inside the model and another brass tube glued into the horizontal stabs. This is the result of that work, having completed the right hand side (other than sanding it to the shape of the fuselage curve)

[Azgaron]

Nice work with the plumbing and the brass tubes!

 

Håkan

 

[chrish]

Thanks! The brass rods in the stabilizers go in about 1/4 inch so should (hopefully) be much better than that "almost but joint" Trumpeter provides.

I've found a few places where the outer layer of plastic seems to be de-laminating from the rest, I've seen this before but never on a mainstream kit, here's what I mean

I've circled the problem area in pencil

 

Another thing I noticed (thankfully because it would've been easy for me to miss! While opening up plastic to add the Eduard photo-etc grilles I was looking at the vents on the lower front fuselage wondering how I'd do them....then it occurred to me , on the legacy Hornet these were gun bay gas purge vents and the G doesn't have a gun...would it still have the purge vents? A search of the net proved they don't have the gun or the vents. Problem solved and putty over the existing molded vents...Oddly though Eduard provide the p.e. vents and gun parts for the replacements, I wonder why? 

removing plastic to do the vents I do need;

the gun bay vents, not needed it seems;

Thanks for looking

[chrish]

Continuing on with a momentum not heard of before in my hobby room, the Super bug is beginning to take shape, not quite an airplane shape but still...

First off, anybody know where these blade antennas go? I must have lost the sheet that came with them or cross kitted them while fondling another kit?

Early on in test fitting I discovered there was need for a shim of .010" between the front and rear parts, that's the white bit visible on the bottom joint, the top will need it as well. Othwewise a not bad fit, so far...

 

Joints made and sanded and polished out.

The lower fuselage half had/ has a distinct curve/ warp to it away from the upper 1/2 which left me thinking I'd better not glue/ fill the joint at the Rhino intake to fuselage plastic just yet, as things can change once the two plastic parts are joined at the front and filler might exacerbate the fit issue later.

 

The view head on after fitting the Rhino intakes to the Trumpeter plastic.

[themongoose]

That’s some good looking seam work!

[chrish]

Thanks for looking in/ keeping me company!

I've managed to get quite a bit stuck together and seams sorted out after being stuck together.

I painted and built up the tail pipes

 

What happens when rescribing lost panel lines...and going past the stopping point

Might as well do it on both sides...why learn from the first mistake!

test fitting of control surfaces before gluing

[Azgaron]

Progressing very nicely!

 

Håkan

 

[chrish]

Thanks Hakan!

During dry fitting I found the wings had more aerofoil than the fuselage stubs making it necessary to bend the wing to match the fuselage, as well, the tabs that locate the wings to the fuselage are too thick and too wide, only very slightly but enough to cause fit troubles. I scraped the tabs a little thinner, trimmed a bit of each end and deepened the slot (raised the slot actually) to allow the upper wing half to move upwards and get the join as seamlessly as I could, ignoring the instructions (Mr T would have you join upper and lower halves before fitting to the fuselage) but, that wouldn't allow clamping in the right spot to get the tight joint needed.

Here's the bottom view of the upper wing, by not joining the wing halves I could monkey with the fit.

The top view, glued and seam filled

The worst fitting parts so far, the wing flaps top/bottom joint has a step along the seam. I could've avoided filler I think, if I'd used CA to glue the components.

 

Trumpeter seems to think a simple butt type joint is ok at the wing fold, they give you a great piano type hinge for a folded wing but nothing for a unfolded wing. I have (since this picture) cut and fit a piece of .020" plastic to fit in the relief area and reinforce the wing joint.

 

Thanks for taking time to look