As with other kits, first step is the cockpit. Well, there really isn't much cockpit with this kit. Just a floor with built in seat and pilot shape. Guess they figured that with something this tiny, a cockpit wouldn't be seen. Probably, they are right as the market to which this kit is aimed wouldn't be too concerned with that. However, I know that kind of detail can be done as I have several 1/200 ships that have well done crew member figures.

Anyway, the cockpit area was painted dark gull grey and the cockpit glued into the bottom fuselage section. You may have to fiddle with it a bit as the position that 'feels' best has the pilots face up against the anti-glare shield. I put glued mine a bit further back. Then the fuselage halves were glued together. I didn't use any nose weight as I don't think it is needed. The fit is....   well..... not that great.  There are great gaps under the wings and quite a bit of overlap in the nose area. Thanks to the softness of the plastic, correcting the nose isn't a big deal. You will need filler for the wing gaps though and some sanding sticks to take care of the fit problems just behind the wings. 

Next, the intakes were glued in place. Fit is OK, but it seems that the intakes are too short to fit right up against the bottom of the LEREX.  Same with the splitter plates. Either they are too short, or the fuselage bottom is too tall. Regardless, the end result is that the intake bits either fit at the top or the bottom, but not both. I chose the bottom as the best compromise.

During this operation, I filled the wing pylon mounting holes with superglue and sanded it smooth. I'm doing a display aircraft that is devoid of these things. It also makes building the kit quite a bit easier. At this time, the centerline tank was glued together and smoothed out. Next the vertical stabilizers were glued in place. Again, the fit was so-so, but better than the fuselage halves.

Because of the decal scheme I was using, now was when the kit was painted and decaled. First, the underside was painted FS 36375 light grey using Aeromaster enamel paint. When dry, the canopy was masked with Bare Metal Foil and the upper surface was painted FS 36270 using Gunze acrylic paint. When all that was dry, the entire airframe was given a couple of coats of Future in preparation for the decals.

This was to be one of the CAF special paint scheme aircraft. I used Cutting Edge sheet 144-3 for the 1996-98 3 wing display aircraft. It is a really colorful scheme mainly consisting of a huge maple leaf on the upper surface. With much anticipation, I started with the big, red, maple leaf. It went on without too much fuss, though it appears to be just a bit too large, a fact I came to notice with several other parts of the sheet. I also ended up with it a bit crooked, so had to do some touchup a bit later. The rest of the decals went on without too much fuss, though the blue outer tail decals and the false canopy decals are decidedly too large for the kit. Not sure where the glitch lies. Either the DML F-18 is off scale (the recommended kit according to the decal instructions), or the decals were not shrunk down enough. Interestingly, the splitter plate decals were too small!! Having gone through all this, I would recommend spray painting the outside tails and the splitter plates. You are given separate decals to put on the painted surfaces if you choose to go that route. I wanted to finish it rather quickly so took what I thought would be the quick way and paid for it.

Trimming the too-big parts of the blue tail decal left the edges ragged. Having to fix that and the maple leaf, I bought the recommended paints, both by Testors; Guards Red and True Blue. When I touched up the various ragged edges, rips and tears, I was not surprised to find the paint to be slightly a different shade than the decal. Matching paint to decals is difficult enough, and when one uses a brush vice air brush, you get yet another color difference as brush painting generally produces a darker shade than air brushing.

Once all the decals were on and the various touchup painting was done, the wheel wells were painted white and once dry, the gear glued in place. Next, the wheels were glued in place.  The gear doors were then cut and installed. Then the decals for the doors were applied. They were too big and when dry, the insides had to be touched up with white. The next bits to be added are the small plates on top of the wing. These had been painted red and the decals put on them prior to gluing them down. Actually, tacking them down is a more apt description as they are glued right on the big maple leaf decal. Finally the centerline fuel tank was squeezed in between the gear doors and the too-small afterburner cones were glued onto the tail section and touched up. 

The kit was then oversprayed with semi-matte clear acrylic and then the masking taken off the canopy. Voila! A 1/144 CF-118A!         

What to say about this kit. The end result certainly cannot be mistaken for anything other than an F-18 Hornet, but there are a number of subtle shape differences that DML just didn't get quite right. Maybe it isn't fair to compare this kit with those in larger scales. Maybe there are aspects of design for these little tykes that don't easily translate over from the larger kits. Maybe the designers just didn't know enough about the real plane to make their kits more true to the prototypes. I don't know the answer. 

I do know that this kit had fit problems that are almost impossible to correct. However, the target market, younger kids spending pocket money, really doesn't give a care about fidelity of scale or shape, they just want an F-18 to play with. In that respect the kit works well. For those of us who are used to having kits look almost exactly like the prototypes (call us Jaded if you will), then this kit falls short.

Equally disappointing was the decal sheet. While I have no complaints as to its completeness, fidelity of color or registration, I'm not sure why it ended up being too large for the kit for which it was allegedly designed. There are two possibilities here. First is that Leading Edge just missed when they scaled down the sheet. Secondly, that the DML F-18 isn't really 1/144 but some scale close to it. I'm not one of those folks who drags out a ruler to make sure that all parts are perfectly in scale. I'll leave that to others who revel in such things.

Overall, it looks neat when done and I'm glad I built it. However, it wasn't the piece of cake I was thinking it would be and seeing the problems I had with it, it will be a while before I build another.

March, 2000

 Review copy courtesy of me and my wallet!!