MAW Decals

1/48 F/A-18D Late Lot Nose w/IFF antenna For theHasegawa kit

Stock Number: 48-R013

Reviewed By  Andy Renshaw, IPMS# 35806

MSRP: $17.99 Website: www.mawdecals.com The "legacy" F/A-18 , which covers the A-D models, has seen its share of upgrades and modifications as it became the workhorse of the USN and USMC, covering both attack and fighter roles. As the aircraft was carried forward into the 21st century, subtile external changes betrayed the improved avionics, IFF, radar, countermeasures, and navigation packages within the aircraft. Hasegawa’s F/A-18 kits are all toolings for earlier aircraft before many of the updates and changes appeared. As with many kit manufactures, they reuse the molds, add some new markings, and claim it as one of the "later lot" Hornets. If you want to do an accurate "late lot" hornet, there are several small changes that need to be made to the kit. This is where the MAW-Decals line of resin details comes to the rescue! Set 48-R013 provides all the external airframe parts to build an accurate late lot F/A-18D as currently used by the USMC. Within this set you get: Resin replacement nose with IFF antennas, and other changes. UHF Antenna. GPS Antenna. Nose gear doors. Decals replicating the revised vents. Small instruction sheet. All of the resin is of top quality, light grey in color, and completely blemish free.* Every casting was finely molded with no apparent air bubbles or short castings. The resin gates are all in easy to remove places and don’t mar the part surface or cause undue cleanup. * Note: My initial nose casting had some very fine pinholes over the entire surface. A quick email to Creighton at MAW-Decals had a replacement part sent. The replacement was flawless. Outstanding customer service from MAW-Decals! The first telling feature is the IFF blade antennas directly in front of the windscreen. One could scratch-build these items using thin metal or plastic, however a bit of time would be needed to properly align all five blades, which are not parallel to each other! Also there are some changes with the vents and a few "bumps" on the nose. MAW-Decals provides a complete nose replacement that incorporates every change needed forward of the windscreen and is a direct replacement for the kit nose, so no surgery needed. The scribing detail is actually crisper and more refined than what is provided in the kit, which is a added bonus. A quick note about the fit of the nose. For those who have built the Hasegawa F/A-18 kits, you know that the nose is separate, and in two halves. The best way to ensure a nice fit is to glue the nose halves to the fuselage first, then fuse the nose halves, filling any resulting gap along the top and bottom of the nose instead of having to deal with any "step" on the fuselage sides. The resin nose appears to have been mastered from the Hasegawa kit nose, thus its just a tad narrow at the join where it would attach to the fuselage, and the dreaded step appears. In the test fit picture, I show all the assembly pushed to one side, so what you see is the total step if the nose is perfectly aligned on one side. Its not very big, and can be mostly eliminated by centering the nose on the fuselage, which will divide the error between the two sides, and during final finishing draw in a nice panel line to hide the step. However for those who demand perfection, it looks like a few swipes of the micro-saw inside the landing gear bay between the fuselage side and the overhead of the bay will remove enough plastic to squeeze the fuselage sides in just enough to match perfectly. Other parts included address the other external changes, such as forward landing gear bay doors and various antennas. All of these items are either direct replacement for kit parts or simply placed in the proper location on the airframe. One significant detail on the later lot Hornets is the revised vents, being of fine mesh instead of slats. MAW-decals provide the simplest and most effective method of replicating these through decals replicating the mesh. This requires you to fill in the vents on the Hasegawa fuselage, and then apply the decals when you apply the desired markings. Other than cutting off the resin pour plug from the nose, this is the most "work" required with this conversion. Use this set in conjunction with several of MAW-Decals other resin sets and F/A-18D decals to make an outstanding Hornet. For the single-seaters, there is also a set with the same modifications for those versions as well. I highly recommend this set, and its already in the process of finding its place in my next F/A-18D build (which also uses some other MAW-Decals products). Thanks to Creighton Henthorn at MAW-Decals for the review sample and great customer service replacing the defective part.