CF-18 Hornet #720

Ron Garcia
I bought these decals around the time they first came out way back in 2005ish. I kept waiting for Hasegawa to rerelease a CF-188 but I could never find one. When Kinetic released their CF-188, I bought it just so I could finally use these decals.

This decal set is not for the faint hearted! It took me three long sessions over three days to finish applying them. The instructions are very detailed but it was still very tricky to correctly apply them. I spent much time trying to figure out exactly where some went.

Painting the kit just so the decals would look right was also a beast. Good luck putting the four forward cockpit decals on without having to go back and fixing the demarcation line between the orange and grey sections. I got it very close by cutting out the four decals as close to the markings as possible, taping them together, cutting out the now one piece assembly, attaching that to another wider piece of tape, and then using that as a mask for the paint job. Like I said, close, but I still had to touch it up after the decals were applied.

Other than the fin decals, which were very thick and cracked on some of the raised details, the decals were very thin and in register.

One very strange issue occurred that I never encountered with decals before. Since some of them were large, there were the inevitable air bubbles under some of them. I managed to get most out, but the next day there were a few places that still had a few bubbles or areas that didn't settle quite right. I did my usual fix of piercing them and using Micro Sol to get them to settle. However, the bubbles just moved like an air bubble in a water bed. In fact, I could move most around as if there were no adhesive underneath. The decals still stuck well enough, but the adhesive is so light that even a wet or dry finger or a low tack post it note will easily pull off sections (ask me how I know).

Anyway, if you have patience, you will be rewarded with a great looking model on your display shelf. Recommended, but only if you are 1) patient, 2) have great masking skills, 3) patient, 4) have good painting skills, and 5) did I mention patient?