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Starting to look a little more like an airplane finally!!! I love this part, decals are my favourite. Its looking like it rolled out of the factory at the moment all shiny and new. Those yellow rudder tips are a bitch to get around all those bumps and flarings - thank goodness I decided to paint the rudders black and only have to deal with the yellow tips, they included the entire black rudder as a whole decal piece (I can just imagine the nightmare). @derex3592 You are making it really hard to resist that set of Enterprises! Looking great so far.

@derex3592 I was planning on the VFA-103 skull and crossbones squadron to go with all my other F-14s eventually and to sit next to my Macross planes. I did think of the new Top Gun movie and that did partially influence my decision to start the F-18 finally. What markings do Maverick's plane have in the movie?

@arbit The colour matching is recent, after my F-16 where I was a shade off on my greys, the decals I used almost disappeared into the paint. I vowed never again especially with all these tactical greys schemes. The trouble is I love using Tamiya paints for their ease of cleanup, but they don't have FS color equivalents and I always have to mix them. I'm starting to use Mr. Color paints which are matched to FS colors, but they are lacquers and the clean up sucks. I've finally finished the topside and unmasked the cockpit. I'm going to use the canopies as masks to protect the cockpit, but I thought I should finish up the HUD before I put the windscreen in place. I thought I'd actually try to put the double plate of glass this time as I usually cheap out and only put the single plate. I think it worked out well. I have since fixed the slightly rough edge between the black of the canopy sill and fuselage - this has always been a problem for me. It doesn't look so ragged in real life, unless I take a magnifying glass to it. I forgot what a pain it is to remove that center seam on the canopy, sand, repolish back and coat with future. Its now awaiting some proper drying time and finishing the canopy to seal in the cockpit to clear coat the entire bird in future to await decals. Its so new... its going to be hard to dirty it up a little. Most of my references for this plane isn't that dirty, its not like the old Hornets or F-14s that were just abused and neglected. @Focslain When I discovered Tamiya yellow masking tape, it opened wonders for me. Its specially made to not pull up Tamiya acrylic paint which is one of the most delicate of surfaces. I'd highly recommend it - though its not cheap. Additionally, whenever I do use masking tape, I always stick it to my jeans a few times to get rid of the initial stickiness first before sticking it to my painted surfaces. I'd also suggest thinning your paints a bit before brushing them on to allow them to "self-level" before drying to hide the brush marks.

Yay! Finally a little progress after so much cutting, putty and sanding to correct the fit. Nice to have the Federal Standards chip book to mix paint colours. I usually go a shade lighter for scale and allows for post shading - however my FS 36375 sample seems to have this weird purplish tint that I didn't reproduce, I made it towards the blue side of things as FS 36320 has a strong blue hue to it that I didn't want it to clash. I think I'll try that black decal idea for the canopy interior - thanks.

Lucky you @Nerd-linger Same situation here, got shipping notice 24th, then "Arrival at outward office of exchange" on 25th where it's sitting, and nothing. What's worse is I have another package from the 17th stuck at "Posting/Collection" with no movement at all - argh! I just hope they don't lose it among the avalanche - maybe the bright side is with all these packages, they don't have enough man-power to screen for customs & duty?!

Thanks! I have 3-4 Hasegawas (but I think they might be on the back burner after my experience with the F-18F) and I have 2 FineMolds (one boxed and one part of that original magazine subscription). I'd like to try this GWH, so is this the best 1/72 F-14 (regardless of price) or is the FM still better than this one? How about the Academy? I don't mind paying for a well detailed/engineered kit.

Wow!!! @joscasle simply wonderful. Perfect amount of weathering. So inspirational. I wished Tamiya scaled down that beauty into 1/72 scale. Might have to bite the bullet someday and get that kit. You've really brought all the details out! Thanks for sharing.

I'm shocked as well, my SSP from NY were just shipped out EMS. They were picked up too right away and arrived at the outward exchange office. I'm in Canada and I think its still ok. However I ordered YF-19 DX from Mandarake which was posted to EMS on the 17th and it hasn't even been picked up yet - argh! How much of a delay is EMS in Japan nowadays?

@electric indigo Hey do you mask the inside of the canopy as well or do you just let the outside color show through inside frames? (my laziness might be showing through :P) Usually the inside of the canopy frames are black and the outside is the camo colour right? Luckily a lot of US aircraft is black on the inside and black on the outside.

OMG! Starting to finally look like a plane... I love painting and decaling, but I hate the prep work beforehand - however without the prep, the painting would suck.

@derex3592 Ouch! I feel your pain - yes so glad that happened before the decals. Been there buddy, you're making me want to build my Star Trek kits (found a Tamiya & Mr. Color pearlescent white paint too) @electric indigo Another smooth as silk perfect paint job!!! Wow, I will try your pre-shading this time (if I ever get to that stage!) - I've always used post shading, but I love how subtle your pre-shading is looking. Thanks for the kind words of encouragement and misery is company so strangely I do feel better. Back to the grind sanding now (although I am trying to cut out the flaps, ailerons and slats to break up that huge wing surface a bit - I think I'm a sucker for punishment :P)

I HATE SANDING!!! POS kit... Definitely do not recommend, no intake trunking at all, I had to build an internal ramp to smooth out an area that would have been so hard to sand flat and flatten the back to have a surface to spray black on instead of just seeing into the plastic guts of the fuselage and no room to put in the full length of the afterburner interior (had to cut those down way too short to fit into the fuselage. Also horrible way to attach the main wings to fuselage assembly, tabs but nothing to tab into structurally, just glue holding against gravity! Also, I made the mistake of thinking I could just alter and make the Aires F-18 Hasegawa resin landing gear wells work with Hasegawa F-18F kit - you can't without tons of surgery, I ended up grinding down the forward gear bay till it was paper thin and the footwell of the cockpit and I was still short, I ended up slicing the wheel bay and making it much shallower than intended to fit both the cockpit and landing gear bay into the forward fuselage. This has been hell almost in the realm of my Bandai VF-25 transformable kit. Definitely not an easy build that I thought I would dip my toes back into the hobby with. It felt like there was more putty and surfacer than there was bare plastic!

Beautiful Electric Indigo, your builds are always so clean! I'm having a bitch of a time with my Hasegawa F-18F, so over-engineered, too many parts that all have to align just perfectly - so much sanding and filling for me that its not fun at all! Definitely do not recommend this kit. Unfortunately I bought it a while ago when it was a new tool around 2006 (sucker for the skill and cross-bones) - I think there are a lot of better Super Hornet kits in 1/72 now a days.

Hey Derex3592, I usually go with Flory's Wash and mix up the greys from their line of white, grey & black. I used a light grey, grey and black. If I weather, I just smear ground up graphite (mechanical pencil shavings) with a smudge stick - but you have to clear coat afterwards to protect it. I haven't chose to do that on these VF-1s yet.

Looking great Lolicon! What kind of thinner (lacquer thinner, emamel thinner, mineral spirits, varsol, acrylic thinner, iso alcohol, ethy alcohol)?

If I were to modify anything on the toys, the foggy sparkly canopies on all the VF-31 are a much bigger annoyance to me (why can't they all be like the VF-31A Kiraos?!) but I'm too chicken at the moment. I'd worry that some of the black would come off as well as the white on top, that black looks painted on. Yes as mentioned earlier I use Flory (water based clay washes) from now on, they are just so easy and I don't have to worry about them reacting to anything underneath. I mix a few shades of grey with the white that comes with Flory set. I usually use a light light grey for all the panel lines, then a darker grey for some panels that move or gets removed, then black for the vents or flaps - the varying panel wash gives the toy some life. I only did the panel wash, no shading or pencil/graphite weathering like I did on my older Yamacadia VF-1s or VF-25s as I haven't decided on whether I want to clear coat it yet. I like the Bandai plastic finish and it pretty much has all the markings (even a bit over kill for me) I would want. If I weathered it, I would need to clear coat it to protect it, plus the older toys needed the protection to cover the decals I added and I hated the glossy finish the VF-25s had so it made sense to do those - but I had always worried about the clear coat scratching off or yellowing over time. I'll take a picture tomorrow of the top side in better light during the day.

Yep, the good ole' days. I still have a bunch of 1/100 transformable valkryies from that era (with the metal hinge, landing gear and rubber wheels). Good memories but I doubt I would ever build them now with so many great kits out since then.

No I didn't - it doesn't bug me enough yet... I can't imagine I can find a proper white font decal in the proper size to fix it without it looking odd or catching my eye. I think the cure is worst than the sickness. Maybe if a corrective decal sheet came with Roy's I might consider it (if I can actually get a pre-order whenever that's going to happen), but I'm not buying Kakizaki.

Hahaha.. thanks for the tutorials. Well the trick is dunking the tires into a mug of hot water, they just slide right on! (THANKS Nerd-linger) I'm going to dip them in a mug of hot water to take them off from now on - it was unbelievable how easy it was with hot water (maybe it was harder for me being up in Canada so my basement work area isn't that warm - those of you in warmer climates might have a much easier time. I did use an airbrush and masked around the area with yellow post-it notes, only using tamiya masking tape just around the edges as I was told by Lolicon that the Bandai Tampo printing could be lifted by the tape so becareful to not let any tape touch the printed details (thanks so much for that tip, I would have swore really loudly if that happened). I used Tamiya acrylic gloss white as that's the only gloss white I had - I would prefer a lacquer or enamel gloss white if I had some as they are more durable and better suited to sticking to the metal. What a difference the white landing gear makes!

Started to get back into modeling again in this self isolation break. Thought it might be good to get my feet wet again with a real world aircraft, the 2006 1/72 Hasegawa F-18F kit. Main takeaway from this is that my eyes are certainly not what it used to be from the last time I built anything real, I'm constantly putting on my glasses, taking them off and wearing those magnifier lenses and armed loop - hate getting old! I did decide to upgrade the kit with some photo-etched parts, resin seats and hacked away to replace the landing gear well with F-18A resin landing gear wells (unfortunately they don't have F-18F specific wells) so please excuse the inaccuracies to the plumbing ;P

Had a little time to finally paint the landing gears white - what a difference it makes. Most importantly, I found an amazing silver chrome that's in the form of a marker, its called Molotow Chrome markers, its simply the best silver ever (better than the X-11 Tamiya Chrome marker). Question for those of you that have taken off the rubber tires - how the heck to you get them back on again? The back ones are a bitch to get back on and I've already almost twisted/damaged the hub/axle a little bit and I am afraid to take it further. Please I need your insights.

Yep same here in Ontario, its a crap shoot. Sometimes its $60-100 per package (nasty surprise), sometimes its nothing. I find better luck with EMS though. Couriers (FedEx & UPS) is guaranteed to have Customs, Brokerage, Import Fees applied though.

Uh, and I thought I was the only one that didn't complete the squad or had multiples. (from the armchair it sure felt like I was the only one!)

Oh darn it, I thought it was one of the more obscure ones. Oh well, I don't really need it - so I guess that's good.

Any VF-31C available for a decent price? I wasn't going to collect the entire squad, but getting one here and there for the armored or super packs, I find that now I'm only this one short. So if a VF-31C comes available for a cheap price, I might as well complete it. It was never a really popular model was it?