Metal landing gear for 1/18 scale BBI F/A-18 Hornet

Vietvetson

Enlisted
Jul 9, 2013
105
14
18
San Bernardino, California
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.

Metal Landing Gear
http://scaleaircraftconversions.com/moreinfo.cfm?FROM=search&KIT=786

Website
http://scaleaircraftconversions.com/homepage.cfm?sr=1