Hey All,
Hope everyone had a great 4th!
I recently scored the Hasegawa 1/48 F/A-18A Hornet (P24) on eBay and am going to build it as a Blue Angel. I have the CAM decals for the 1987/2001 season Blues.
I do have a coupla questions:
- I plan on showing the leading edge and trailing edge flaps extended. Does anyone know what color the surfaces are behind these parts? Blue??
- Also, I was going to build the air brake up…is the underside of this part white?
- The decal sets that come with the kit are, of course, for fleet birds. They contain tons of data or information decals normally found on the fleet Bugs. Do these also go on the Blue Angel Hornets? Or, do you just use the decals that come with the CAM Blue Angel set?
- Last question: The kit instructions show the edges of the wheel well doors as being painted red. I believe the Blues do not add the red around the edges, and the undersides of the doors is just solid white. True?
If anyone knows the answers, I’d sure appreciate the help. I plan on building the No. 5 Blue Angel from the 1987 season, as this was flown by a friend, (then) LCDR Wayne Molnar.
Thanks for any and all help, John
When I get home, I’ll check… I have the 1987 Blue Angels program from an airshow in Texas…Should have some photos, and I believe I even have LCDR Molnar’s autograph. Hey I was a sophomore in HS then…and a geek.
I got my lucky media flight with Blues in Houston during 1988 season, and, as everyone is sick of hearing my questions on, am trying to model the plane I was in, F/A-18B, No. 7. I, too, have the CAM decals and they are great to look at on the sheet. Just remember, look at any photo of these jets and you’ll hardly find a stencil anywhere except inside access doors. No red around the gear doors or flaps. White inside bays. Blue under leading edge flaps. Mostly black cockpit. At least, in the bird and in the year I was there. I noted it because I was so used to painting gray ones. Seat was certainly black all over with light khaki padding. Headrest black leather. Semi-gloss. I also remembered that on the leading edge extension, which you step on before stepping down onto the seat while boarding, there was very rough non-skid surface, but I don’t recall if it was blue or black. Two black handles on the rear cockpit canopy framing are large and prominent. I know, because I was hanging on to them with a death grip much of the time to keep my head from smashing the canopy. (It happened to me once in an F-4 and I thought I’d broken my helmet in two, as well as my head.) That decal sheet looks pretty thorough to me. I’ll be disappointed if it’s not opaque. Let meknow how your build progresses.
Tom
The CAM decals are great. They are not translucent like the Monogram Blue Angels kit.
OK, Here we go. Inside of speed brake bay and door is white. Inside of all gear bays is white. Inside of all gear doors EXCEPT the small one attached to the nose gear retraction strut are blue, the one on the strut is white. None of the doors have the red safety border. Area under slats is blue when extended. Aircraft do not carry any of the maintenance stenciling. Just what come on the CAM sheet.
Hope this helps.
Hey Sharkskin, why don’t you post some pics of you and the F-18?
A) I don’t have a scanner and b) the only remaining one is with my mother, which I keep intending to copy. The Navy promised to send me certificate of flight and the official photo the PR guy took, but I never got it. My pilot, a Marine capt., did, however, sign off my log book with 1.1 hr. of dual instruction in F/A-18B, and I was most proud when he wrote in .5 hrs as Pilot in Command (and he was kind enough to leave out that I blacked out at 8g on the pitchout on the RTB overhead. My biggest loss is my F104 and F-4 photos, which went with the fire, but I just got word some F-4 pix exist in negative. So there you have more than you asked for.
Thanks ewc2003, sharkskin, Dragonfire, and eagle334! This really helps alot! Ya know, I was watching the Discovery Wings Channel on Sunday, and they had back to back documentaries on the Blues and the Thunderbirds, and I saw that the Blues pilots do not wear g-suits or oxygen masks when they perform (which I knew), but the Thunderbird pilots wear both (which I didn’t know). Just an interesting bit of air show trivia!
John
I seem to recall writing this the other day, but when I asked Blues pilot why they didn’t wear G-suits, he said it was because it ruined the crease in their flight suits. The real reason, I was later told, is that the inflation of the G-suit makes your thighs about twice as big around at high-G, and with the stick between your thighs, it can significantly restrict stick travel, which is not desirable at all doing all that close formation maneuvering. Obviously, with the side stick in the F-16, there is no such problem. And, G-suit, for all its bulkiness, only gives an average of one extra G of protection from blackout. Which, in combat, can be the difference between life and death.
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