RCAF CF-18 HORNET COLOR SET

Canadian Hornets in shades of gray

Canada took the McDonnell Douglas Hornet into service in the first half of the 1980s and gave the aircraft its own numbering. They wore a tactical gray finish meant to blur the outline of the machine against the sky and against the ground, and one famous refinement: a second, false canopy outline painted in black on the underside of the fuselage, so that an opponent in combat would lose track of where the aircraft was actually heading.

The three bottles cover the shades FS 35237, FS 36375 and FS 36118. The first two make up the two-tone combination of the fuselage and the flying surfaces; the third, markedly darker, belongs to details such as the areas around the cockpit, the radome and that painted false outline.

The paints come from a range focused on the accuracy of period tones and are supplied in 10 ml bottles. They are thinned with water as well as with the manufacturer's own product and behave best in an airbrush, where they can be sprayed into a very fine layer without trouble.

With modern gray machines the result is decided above all by what comes after spraying. Panel lines, traces of exhaust gases and worn areas on the wing separate a model of an aircraft in service from a smooth plastic mock-up. The set gives you the basis for that work.

The national markings on these aircraft went through a change from colorful to subdued, barely noticeable outlines. If you are building a machine from the later part of its service, expect the difference between a marking and the surrounding area to be only in shade and in sheen. That is exactly where it pays to have all three tones to hand, because subdued markings are mixed from them and not from black paint.