History Brief

Much has already been published regarding the F-18 Super Hornet series, and therefore I will not add to the discussion. However, a great source of information may be found on Wikipedia.org, or modeling web sites. Also "The Modern Super Hornet Guide, The Boeing F-18E/F and EA-18G Exposed" by Jake Melampy, and offered by Reid Publications is an exceptional reference with its many color photographs of the aircraft's details. I used that publication for this build as well as for my earlier Revell F/A-18E and Hasegawa F-18E/F/G model projects.

Thank you to the Eduard Company for sending this detail set for review, it is always a pleasure to see what your new products bring to the scale modeling world. Thank you also to the IPMS Reviewer Corps staff members who do the hard work in getting us modeling products to review, the reviews posted, and the news spread to the world.

The photoetch fret arrived in excellent shape in a sealed plastic package with the distinctive Eduard knight logo. The fret is 2.75 x 1.6 inches on polished metal with color-etched laminated details. Side consoles and instrument panel parts are provided for either a F2H-2 or F2H-2P. I worked up the –P version for this review.

The Kits

These are Round Two’s re-release of the Lindberg company’s re-release of three old Pyro molds that appeared under many guises, such as the Nina was once boxed as a Barbary Pirate and the Santa Maria appeared as the Mayflower. They were part of a series of kits called “Historic Sailing Ships” that included twelve ships, many actually duplicates with different names. When first released, the kits were of a standard box scale, but “The Ships of Columbus” are touted as being 1/144. In reality the three ships varied in size yet the kits have all the same dimensions, so the scale issue is “iffy” as each ship has a hull about 4.5 inches long.