Metal Landing Gear for 1/18 BBI Hornet is Here!!

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rschaap
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Metal Landing Gear for 1/18 BBI Hornet is Here!!

Post by rschaap » Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:54 am

Over a period of months and long discussions with Teebird about the sagging landing gear on the pre-Sidewinders versions of the BBI F/A-18 Hornet (This has been brought up by other members and the topic was touched on by Pizzaguy a while back). Teebird and I decided to do something about this issue. I knew “Scale Aircraft Conversions” in Texas made metal landing gear for the 1/18 scale F-14 Tomcat, SBD Dauntless and the FW-190 aircraft so we decided to contact the company. I spoke to Ross from the company about possibly making a replacement set of main gear that would retract for the BBI Hornet. He told me that he would need a set of donor gear to see how feasible it would be to produce. Since the gear on my older Hornets were already sagging from too much deck time we decided that the best bet would be to disassemble one of the Sidewinders versions. Unlike the older versions this model is glued together and not screwed together like all the others, therefore I would not recommend taking apart a this version at all. The Sidewinders main gear is superior to the older version which were made of a softer plastic. After a lot of work cutting, prying and cutting I was able to remove the gear. I sent the set to “Scale Aircraft Conversions”. A decision was made to make the F/A -18 main gear and on March 1st the gear was ready for release. Here is the photo and link to Scale Aircraft Conversions. I am working on a step by step tutorial on how to install the landing gear to assist in the installation.

Image
Website

http://scaleaircraftconversions.com

F/A-18 Landing Gear
http://scaleaircraftconversions.com/mor ... ch&KIT=786

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YT
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Re: Metal Landing Gear for 1/18 BBI Hornet is Here!!

Post by YT » Sat Mar 02, 2019 12:31 pm

Great items at a reasonable price! Well done.
"There are some people who disagree with me, they are wrong." --Gen George S. Patton

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Re: Metal Landing Gear for 1/18 BBI Hornet is Here!!

Post by slogan » Sat Mar 02, 2019 6:03 pm

Yes, thanks for making this happen.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity

rschaap
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Re: Metal Landing Gear for 1/18 BBI Hornet is Here!!

Post by rschaap » Sun Mar 03, 2019 2:16 pm

Anyone who owns a pre-Sidewinder version of the BBI Hornet (Golden Dragons, Jolly Roger, Marauder and Blue Angels) will eventually suffer from sagging main landing gear if they leave their Hornet in the gear down position. Three of mine suffer from that condition and this is perfect for those of us who decide to have our Hornets on the tarmac. The price of the gear makes it worth while since these birds just keep going up in price. I'm glad Teebird brought it to my attention and we were able to come up with a reasonable solution.

rschaap
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Re: Metal Landing Gear for 1/18 BBI Hornet is Here!!

Post by rschaap » Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:06 pm

This was just re-posted by xddave about the white metal landing gear that "Scale Model Conversions" (SMC) offers for the BBI Hornet. One of the concerns brought up was that white metal is soft. The white metal gear I've bought in the past from SMC has held up incredibly. I have a few Hornets with sagging gear and I am in the process of swapping out the gear as soon as I do some detalling. Here is a statement from SMC about using white metal.

"One advantage of white metal over styrene plastic is strength. Metal parts will not warp under the weight of a built model regardless of the size of the aircraft, no matter how many years it stands on display. Another advantage of white metal is the way it holds up under "working" conditions (drilling, scoring, sanding, etc.), as it is much more dense than styrene plastic and has a much higher melting point. Being quite malleable, it can be bent without the fear of breaking & a useful characteristic when it comes to final alignment "tweeking". Note: our white metal contains no lead."

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