F-18A Hornet "U.S. Navy"

Ron Garcia
I accidentally put this with the Hasegawa F-18C comments (which I haven't finished yet). Oops!

After finishing Monogram's ancient F-18 I moved on to Hasegawa's F-18. It's been sitting in my stash since it first came out. While a big improvement over Monogram's kit, I found this F-18 way more difficult to build.

The control surfaces were super fiddly to put together. I felt like I needed an extra set of hands to hold everything in place while trying to puzzle it together.

There were surprising gaps that required more putty than I thought they should. The worst were parts C11, C12 (perhaps a result of my difficulty in attaching the flaps and ailerons - but I don't think so) and C17. Sandwiching both K28 parts at intakes was very tricky as well.

When I build another, of which I have two more, I'll insert the vertical tail fins first then carefully glue parts B14-B19 so that they're touching the fins. After they set a bit, I'll remove the fins for ease of painting.

The end result was a very nice looking kit but it took some patience to get there. I thought it would fall together, but it was a tricky build. Better looking than the Monogram kit, but way more work to get there.