Like it or not, the Super Hornet is here to stay, succeeding one of the best naval fighters of all time, the F-14 tomcat, & continues the lineage from another legendary McDonnell Douglas carrier borne  fighter, the F-4 Phantom. 

            This is the 4^th Super Hornet sheet, & it follows the typical format of 4-view, full color line drawings, small color reference photos of the actual aircraft (14 in this instance), & several paint manufactures product numbers for each of the colors needed.  The sheet also has a brief history of the unit.

             The decals are divided onto two sheets, the first being the “standard” size sheet which contains the larger decals, & a second smaller sheet that has the common markings & a complete set of formation lights. The decals are sized for the Hasegawa kit.  Notice how much of the red areas are represented by decals, leaving the modeler really only having to paint the spine & canopy of the aircraft gloss insignia red.  The 50^th anniversary decal is a multi-piece set, with a solid white underlay, a middle layer with all the red details, & a black detail overlay.  The solid white underlay assures that the red will not change shades when applied to the grey surface of the model, which might change the shade slightly. It is also important that the modeler place this decal in the correct position, since its placement will affect the decal as a whole.  Notice how close the 5 & the 0 are in relation to the forward formation light.   

             This sheet also illustrates the recent trend by units to make the modex of the units colorful “show bird” the same as the units numerical designation, i.e. VF-103’s show bird’s modex is 103, & VF-213s show bird’s modex is 213.

             Interestingly, this aircraft actually went to sea in this scheme, as this link illustrates: http://www.news.navy.mil/management/photodb/photos/051111-N-3488C-017.jpg.

             Recommended for fans of naval aviation & modelers who wouldn’t mind a splash of color in their sea of grey painted models.

            Your editor would like to point out that these markings are in one of the Hasegawa 1/72 boxings if you like to work in the smaller scales.

March 2006

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