I really want to build a Canadian forces F-18 from cold lake. As far as I know the CF-188 flown out of cold lake are F/A-18A. I was wondering if there are any large differences between the A and the CF-188. I’m having a hard time finding the Kinetic CF-188 at a good price (shipping can be killer). However I found a decent price on the kinetic F/A-18A aggressor. Aside from having to buy decals for Canadian markings, is there anything major I would need to do to make the F-18 aggressor a CF-188?
Excuse my ignorance on the subject, I don’t do a lot of planes like this but Cold Lake is somewhat close to me so I want to do one of their birds
I’m sure someone with more smarts than me will dig into this but here’s what I’ve found.
Our birds were apparently structurally identical to the F/A-18 even including the folding wings. When the competition was running to replace the F-5s there was talk of a “de-navalized” variant being built for us, but it never came to fruition. So we just bought stock Hornets.
We did add a great big bajillion candle power spotlight and that false canopy tromp l’oeil.
From what I’ve been reading, all the other changes and upgrades up until now have all been with things like avionics and what have you that won’t show up in a build.
You might just want to scour some reference photos for things like antenna placements and what have yous depending on the vintage you’re building.
Cool that’s what I turned up too, but wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something!
When I read about the fake canopy I almost spit out what I was drinking with laughter
I like that the spot light was to play games with Bears (the big screamy Russian turboprop kind, not the big screamy brown carnivores)
Here’s an ancient IPMS Canada thread that gets into the nitty gritty of the Hasegawa kit.
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After seeing the pictures of bears my friend in Alaska keeps seeing in his back yard, I’m thinking the Canadians better keep good fences around their birds - a bear could tear them up! And playing with the (Sov) Bears was the shnizzle back in the 1970’s and 80’s.
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