F-18 Hornet WIP
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@okayasugf - hunt up the NATOPS (which I think you’ve got already?) and use the overall dimensions from there. Then take your details from the RoG kit instructions…you can also do things like read dimensions for the wheels off the sidewalls of tires, if you find a good picture or reference…and you might be surprised at just how many “exact” dimensions are out there, without being readily accepted or realized.
OTOH, model companies DO take liberties with some dimensions in order to make working production molds…but not as much these days as in the past.
I also scale details from “known” other parts that I can find a spec for - like the size of a marking, forex. You can find the diameter of a National making and use it to make a scale “ruler” to measure other item in a drawing…I did this to scratch build a MAD boom for a 1/48 PBY-5 model I built…I used the decal sheet instructions drawing to figure out how long it should be.
BTW - the nose of your jet seems a bit short in your latest…which hasn’t been the case. Not sure why this should be…but you may want to check.
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@okayasugf - one more thing - check those instruction sheets on the shape of your pylons…the ones on stations 2 and 10 are not the same shape as the ones on stations 3/4/8/9. They are smaller, and more trapezoidal, not shoe-shaped.
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@okayasugf Hello,
it starts to look really nice !
Here is some proposals of update :
Again, please do not take as a reference printed matters, guides or scaled plastic model reference…
They are always so wrong, and you can’t really know at first what is acceptable or not in these references.
Radium
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@Radium thanks for the suggestion, i had planned to do that because animations wouldnt work if i didnt haha.
@Stevie i’ve tried finding the wheel dimensions before but honestly very image i’ve tried finding isnt as detailed on the wheels. Thats why i had to eyeball and still not sure if i got the scale right, i did use this natops for the scale of the whole model
https://info.publicintelligence.net/F18-EF-000.pdf -
@okayasugf look at your F/A-18E now… do you see why we must only work with photos and never with blueprints ? ️
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@Radium haha yes, absolutely right on this one, i had to move the vertices without any axis to make it look real, and it gave good result
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Hello everyone, front landing gear door are done!
this part was new for me haha but very fun to do. Next one would be rear landing gear doors. -
@Stevie can you elaborate on this point, you mean the last pylon from both wings is different?
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@Radium - that’s actually a pretty nice graphic!
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@okayasugf - yes - the stores stations are numbered 1 though 11 from left to right, as viewed from the pilot’s seat/POV. The outer two are not the same pylon as the inner four, or the centerline. The outer two are SUU-80, the inner four are SUU-79, and the center one is a SUU-78. They are all three different shapes.
If you look over the instruction sheet from the RoG kit it will show you the difference in the shapes.
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@okayasugf - you may find some VERY good shots of tires (and the rest of the jet) in this book -
https://www.reidairpublishing.com/books/the-modern-super-hornet-guide-2nd-edition
This is one of the better references I’ve seen, short of having a real jet to look at!
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@Stevie Just made a comparison with the landing gears. Very huge difference.
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@Stevie sorry i cannot afford that, but i did find this book at my local online ebook store
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Hi everyone, back with another update
pretty close to unwrapping this monster haha, taking alot of time to get it right.
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@okayasugf - That’s not a bad one either!
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@LIGHTNING35 - Yes. The Super Hornet main gear are beefier, yet a bit simpler mechanically. The nose gear strut is also a bit taller, I think…but the tires are the same size, as I recall.
I didn’t really start to notice some of these kit problems until I put a couple of my earlier 1/72 D and F kit builds side by side…then the errors really showed up. The F kit was a good example in shape, but clearly under-sized overall. And they had clearly recycled the landing gear from their A-D kits, so the F model was also low-riding!
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@okayasugf - that’s more the shape of the respective pylons…you could go a bit thicker and taller, though. The SUU-79s are a bit more like barn doors…check those RoG drawings again!
…and the D&S book!
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uvmapping started, sorry for long delay -
@okayasugf - here’s a pretty good depiction of a SUU-79…yours are still a bit pointy.
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starting the texturing of the jet! Major milestone for me