Part 1: First Look

MSRP: $81.95 Web Site: www.dragonmodelsusa.com 232 Parts; 6 Sprues (1 clear); 1 Small sheet of photoetch; 1 bag of white metal parts (landing gear); 1 decal sheet and instruction book. This is a limited reissue of the F/A-18D kit. If you are familiar with this kit there is no need to read on. However if this is your first look at this or any of the F/A-18s that Hasegawa has done, (Other than the F/A-18E Super Hornet) then by all means read on. Just for the grins and giggles of it I pulled out the un-built F/A-18C kit that was sitting on my hobby shelf just to do a side-by-side comparison. Really, the two kits are exactly the same as far as what you get in the box. Only the instructions, decals and canopy differ. However, you get to use more of the parts in the F/A-18D kit since it is a two-seater variant of the F/A-18C so you have twice as much going on in the F/A-18D cockpit. The kit is made up of 232 parts on 6 sprues. The plastic is your basic brittle, shiny, gray plastic that is typical of the older Hasegawa models, I know that sounds like a slam but it's not. It's just that in some of the newer kits the plastic seems a bit different than the older ones. The sheet of photoetch that Hasegawa provides is interesting to me in what they chose to put on there. Just a few interior parts but no seat belts. But the seat belts are molded into the plastic on the seats. As far as the detail goes for the cockpit, it looks pretty good out of box but certainly not a show stopper. If you really want to get the details you will need to get an after market kit. The detail of the exterior looks fairly nice with crisp panel lines. However, there are some panel lines that are kind of shallow or soft in spots. Hasegawa molded the fuselage and upper wings together all in one and the plastic on the wings gets a little thin out towards the tips creating some imperfections that will need to be cleaned up. Also on the tops of the wings are some rather unsightly mold marks that will need some attention as well. The decals look to be in perfect register and are crisply printed. There are 2 birds that you can model, MR/00 of VMFA(AW)-332 "Moonlighters," and WK 01 of VMFA(AW)-224 "Bengals", the later having tiger stripe decals for the rudders. A first glance at the white metal landing gear looks good. I really won't know more about that until I dive into the kit and start working with them. Check back in for a progress report.

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