F/A-18A Hornet
VFC-12 "Omars"

by Brian Marbrey

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Building Hasegawa's beautiful Hornet is no easy task, but it's detail is much better than Revell's F-18.

After getting a little burned out of building the same 'ole TPS colored Hornets and Tomcats, I decided to try my hand at a VFC-12 bird. The inspiration for the model came from my trip to NAS Oceana back in March of this year. VFC-12 had switched hangars since my previous years visit, so while I was visiting with VF-103, I walked down to VFC-12's end of the barn.

I won't go into the construction of the kit, but for the most part the kit was built from the box except for the addition of the Black Box F-18 cockpit.

Painting a bird in this scheme is a time consuming task in itself.

I think I spent around 12 total hours painting the camouflage pattern, not to mention masking time. VFC-12's Hornets have a hard edge camouflage scheme, and I had never done a scheme like this before. So, after getting a great tip from Jarrod Cunningham, I put my trust in his advice and flowed with it. How I painted the scheme was pretty simple.

To start, I painted the entire aircraft Model Master Light Ghost Gray. After letting the paint dry for a couple days, I took a mechanical pencil and drew in the camouflage patterns for the Soviet Flanker Blue. Using Silly Putty as a mask, I tacked the Silly Putty around the outside of the camouflage pattern, and sprayed in the darker color. This is an old masking tip, and it works great!

The darker color I used was Soviet Flanker Blue, from the Model Master II line. After the Flanker Blue dried, I then masked off the tops and bottoms of the wings and the tail end of the bird so that I could paint the areas which required Dark Ghost Gray. The last thing I painted was the flat white on the nose, followed by the tip of the nose which is painted Radome Tan.

Of course, several coats of gloss lacquer were applied, and after the gloss dried came the decals. The decals were courtesy of TWOBOBS, and went on with absolutely no problems at all.

Weathering the aircraft was done using a Bic Ink Rollerball pen which was run through the panel lines selectively, and wiped toward the back of the plane using damp tissue.

The "splotchy" looking effect caused by ground crew walking on the plane was done by taking the dirty tissue used from streaking the panel lines and blotting it on the walkway areas. An acrylic black wash was then applied to the wheel wells, and wheels to highlight some of the details.

Finally, several coats of flat lacquer were applied, and after drying, the canopy, windscreen, and lights were then attached.

All in all this was a fun project, and I look forward to doing more fleet adversary birds. I hope you enjoy the article.

In memory of ENS Jack Ernie-
"Skipper! Remember me with the Jolly Rogers!"
ENS JACK ERNIE VF-17,VF-61,VF-84,VF-103
"Fear The Bones"

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2003 by Brian Marbrey
Page Created 02 August, 2003
Last Updated 17 March, 2004

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