Academy F/A-18C Hornet
Construction Review Part Five
Forward Fuselage
and Fuselage Assembly

by Dave Roof

Academy's 1/32 scale F/A-18C Hornet may be ordered online from Squadron.com

Here I will cover the assembly of the forward fuselage half and attach it to the aft fuselage section.

Forward Fuselage

Photo 1: This is a photo of the left side wall inside the cockpit. There is a fairly large ejector pin mark here. Instead of trying to fill and sand it smooth, I simply covered it with a piece of .005 plastic cut to shape. I painted the side walls Tamiya NATO Black, and gave them a drybrush of FS 36375.

Photo 2: Here is the cockpit and nose wheel well assembly placed inside the fuselage. Due to the locating pins, and the tight fit, no glue was needed here.

Photo 3: The forward fuselage section assembled. The upper nose section is a separate piece and fit perfectly.

Photo 4: The aircraft I'm depicting has the mesh gun gas vents, so I used the appropriate piece provided in the kit. Again, this part fit with no problems.

Photo 5: The F/A-18 is coming together! The two fuselage sections went together with no problem and only a little filler was needed.

I'll cover the rest of the fuselage components, as well as the main landing gear in the next installments.