1/48 Hasegawa Blue Angels F-18 by JJ Guerra

1/48 Hasegawa Blue Angels F-18

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Here are the rest of the pictures of my 1/48 Hasegawa Blue Angels F/A-18. It took me a while because the original camera I bought was a piece of junk. I finally spent the extra money a got a decent digital camera. The model has had to be touched up a few times since I finished it, but it’s still in pretty good shape.

I used the kit cockpit with the Eduard Detail set. The MFD’s were done by partially drilling out the screens, painting them green and then filling them back in with Future to give them a glassy look. The Blue Angels use a stopwatch mounted on the instrument hood to time their maneuvers. For this I used one of the bomb sway braces and painted it white.

The seat is from Verlinden and is really a work of art. This particular jet was used in 1989 so use of the NACES seat included in the kit would have been inaccurate. The helmet is the one included in the kit with the pilot’s head drilled out.

Anyone who has built this kit knows that the landing gear is outstanding The nose gear got a thinner wash, a small Verlinden “Remove Before Flight’ tag, and went together nicely. The main gear gave me a little more trouble. Because they are metal they really restrict the modeler from working with them. The Blue Angels fly with only 8,000 pounds of fuel and no ordinance, and thus ride very tail-high on the ground. I tried for weeks to try and replicate this look but finally gave up.

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Another problem I had with this kit were the intake ducts. No fan blades are given and the intakes look very unrealistic as they simply lead into the empty body.

The final difficulty was finding a yellow paint that matched the decals. I did not want to use the decals given for the wingtips and tailtips, so the hunt began. After about 2 months and 20 types of yellow, I got lucky. On a trip to Home Depot I decided to try a generic “Safety Sign Yellow”. I tested it out and it

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was a PERFECT match. It gave me a few problems due it thin consistency, but nothing major.

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The helmet is a momento from my days as a Midshipman.

Hope you enjoy.

J.J.

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