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One Super Hornet

Painting/Decals/Weathering
Applying paint to the Hornet was pretty straightforward. To begin the process a pre-shading layer was sprayed on. Flat black was used as the pre-shade color and it was sprayed onto all the major panel lines and various other places at random on both the upper and lower surfaces. Next the entire model was given a coat of light gray followed by a coat of dark gray on the underside. The only hard point when applying the base coats was the transition from light gray to dark gray at the nose of the plane. I looked at several reference pics but couldn't find a decent example so I masked a slight curve just aft of the nose cone to transition between the colors of the upper and lower surfaces. I think it turned out ok. Next came masking off areas for detail painting. First up was the anti-glare paint in front of the canopy that received a coat of dark gray and then came the landing gear bays. After masking over the gear bays with tape an x-acto knife was run around the opening to reveal the bays. Then a coat of flat white was applied to match the landing gear. The exhaust nozzles came next on the list and received a base coat of Testors Aluminum followed by a coat of Tamiya Smoke. Once everything had dried a coat of Tamiya Clear was applied to prep for decal application. A wash of burnt umber oil was applied to the landing gear bays and the landing gear to simulate hydraulic stains. The canopy was masked and painted separately but received the same paint applications as the topside of the aircraft.

Decal application was straightforward but not without problems. It seemed as if the decal sheet was setup to decal only the port side of the aircraft because some of the decals with writing in italics could only be placed into their correct position on the port side (the slant of the letters was wrong for the stbd side). The unit decals located along the spine of the aircraft are nearly invisible because of poor coloring of the decal. Also, two port side decals were provided for the 'Danger Jet Exhaust' decal that's located at each intake. Testors decal setting solution was used on some decals to help them conform to raised detail.