Revell 1/144 F/A-18C Hornet "Chippy Ho! "
By Bruce Simard
Good evening, folks. In this installment, we will drag out one of my favorite models, the Revell 1/144th F-18C. A few of you might have had to suffer with my ranting and raving about this kit previously. Suffice it to say, I really like this kit. So I won't subject you to another round of the same issues. But in the meantime, I had also found MYK Decals from Japan. These folks are a definite boon to the 1/144th Modeler. Lots of gorgeous decals from WWII to the present day in water slide type, at decent prices. So this has also pushed me to try to complete more models. LOVE those colors!
One of the schemes I had always liked was from about 1995. This was from VFA-195, "The Dambusters" (Of Korean War fame) as part of Air Wing 5 forward stationed at Atsugi Naval Station. They had painted an F-18C with a giant Eagle's head around the entire nose. Plus they had painted the talons on the top of the external fuel tanks. Their call sign was "Chippy" from what I understand, so this was painted down the side of the avionics hump as "Chippy Ho". (it sounds like a good story, anyway !) The big scale boys had these markings for quite a while in 1/48, and even down to 1/72. Of course 1/144th scale was left out. But fast forward a few years, and now 1/144th is becoming an accepted scale, so..along comes "Chippy Ho" in 1/144th !
I immediately tracked down their website and emailed them for copies. Tremendous folks to deal with. Although now you can get them through eBay just by searching for 1/144th military decals. Whichever way you want to do it, it will be well worth your time and money.
When I decided to build the Hornet for this project, I also decided to attempt to add a few small items to enhance the finished product. Nothing really major, but sometimes the small items can make a huge difference in the appearance of the completed model.
I used ordinary kitchen foil cut and pressed into the proper shape to represent the intake and exhaust covers. I added tiny strips of foil to these painted red to simulate remove-before-flight tags. (And NO, the printing is NOT on them!) These tags are installed in quite a few places as one can see from the photos. Because I had reworked the cockpit area to enhance its detail as much as possible, I used a fine toothed razor saw to cut the canopy open along the split line. The forward pitot probes were scratchbuilt from surgical steel wire, with small bits of etched brass used as their bases. Because this F-18 is a "C" variant, the 6 antenna "lumps" were made from epoxy and blended in to the appropriate locations. The landing/taxi light on the nose gear is from MV Products railroad headlight lenses jewels.
The base was just a small plaque picked up from a local art supply store, sanded, polished, and stained to my choice. Then I paint the upper center is painted a concrete color, and I simulate the expansion joints with pencil lines.
This was an extremely fun project. And now I finally have my "Chippy"bird in my collection. As far as whether or not I did the bird justice, that's up to the readership. 'Till next time, Gang....Semper Fi !