Fightertown 48-005: VFA-103 F-18F

This is one of Fightertown’s earliest releases, providing markings for the World Famous Jolly Rogers during and after their first combat deployment in the F/A-18F in 2007.

The decals are sized for the Hasegawa kit. There are a few decals, such as for the black trim tail stripe and the fuselage “vagabond” band on the forward fuselage on the hi-viz CAG bird that might have a few fit issues if used on the Revellogram kit. These are early model Super Hornets with the original exhaust vents and thermal blankets on top of the fuselage, so those decals will have to come from the kit o be painted on by the modeler. Decals are printed by Microscale.

The sheet has options for a total of 6 aircraft; the colorful CAG jet in its widely recognized black and yellow markings over the standard gray TPS finish, and 5 line jets in the standard TPS colors of light ghost and dark ghost gray with gunship gray vertical tails. Each jet has a left and right profile drawing, along two overhead & one underside drawing for decal placement and painting. The instruction sheet also has 27 color photographs of the actual aircraft as reference photos to highlight the differences between them. The last page also has a listing of ordnance loadout configurations if you want to arm up your build.

There are enough decals provided to completely mark the CAG jet and one of the 5 line jets. The Battle E shown is only to be applied if the modeler is building the jet after the unit returned to home station. They were not on the aircraft during the cruise. There are small skull & crossbones provided for the external fuel tanks for each aircraft, since the modex number is part of the decal.

The subjects covered are:

1. F/A-18F 166620 as the CAG jet. The 200 modex on the nose & wing flaps along with the squadron designation on the spine are black shadowed in white, which are two-piece decals on the sheet. All the other common markings are black as is both sides of each vertical tail. This aircraft has three bomb silhouettes under the windscreen as mission markers.

2. F/A-18F 166621 as the CO’s jet. Noteworthy is that the name under the pilots canopy is of ENS Jack Ernie, as dictated by squadron tradition.

3. The 4 remaining line jet options are nearly identical to each other, with a few differences. 206 has the larger skull & crossbones on the tail. 202, 204, & 210 have the smaller skulls. Each jet has different mission markings under the windscreen. Just follow the instruction callouts.

April 2020

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