Good afternoon all!
Well, Canada Day is fast approaching, and that means that it’s time for me to start my birthday build (yes, I was in fact born on Canada Day 
). I was recently in at Wings and Wheels Hobbies in Toronto acquiring some food for my stash when I decided to enter their basement discount section. Hidden away, completely hidden from the public, stands even now a pristine stack of 1:72 Canuck Models CF-18 kits. At $26, they’re a steal, and I knew immediately when I saw the subject I had to build it.
In 2015, the RCAF’s CF-18 Demo Team (a sort of companion aerobatic team to our better-known Snowbirds) unveiled their special paint scheme for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, The Hornet, a very modern fighter, was repainted in a similar manner to the schemes that camouflaged Spitfires and Hurricanes of old. It’s a beautiful aircraft, and surely was well-received by both aviation spotters and modellers alike.
It’s six years later, and now I’m going to bring this fantastic machine to 1:72 scale thanks to Canuck Models, a Canadian company which produced waterslide decals for Canadian aircraft.
But first, a bit of backstory for this kit, as I find it’s quite interesting.
Canuck Models was a major player in the world of Canadian modelmaking throughout the 2010’s, producing some top-notch waterslide sheets to help us syrup lovers make Canadian subjects. Canuck decals are the standard I want my own to attain one day, as they are fantastic. As a matter of fact, they give Cartograf a run for their money.
Unfortunately, making waterslides is a tough business to be in, and towards 2017-ish it seems that the time was right for Canuck to take a gamble (I’m just basing this assessment off their Facebook posts). Canuck partnered with Minicraft (the company that owns Academy) to create a brand new model kit which they would sell, that being the 1:72 CF-18 Hornet in the Battle of Britain scheme. Let’s take a look at what you get:
As you can probably tell by looking at the sprues, this is in fact Academy’s 1:72 F-18 kit, reboxed with the new Canuck decals and instructions. I never thought I would praise an Academy kit, but this looks solid! Very good detail for the scale.
Unfortunately, this kit, which was a pretty bold business venture, seems to have been one of the causes for Canuck’s shutting down. Apparently distributors messed up, Hasegawa released a similar kit at the same time, etc etc. It’s a shame, really, because Canuck was a major aid for Canadian modellers, and I think it would have been great if they had continued to rebox kits like this. Alas…
I’m quite excited to do this build! As you can see, it’ll be a part of the Great Canadian Campaign, so I’ll occasionally discuss this build there as well.
Cheers!
Dennis
