Afterburner Decals 1/48 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Upgrade Set Decal First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Afterburner Decals is back with an interesting upgrade set for the Hasegawa 1/48 Super Hornet kits. This set provides detailed multi-function displays (MFDs) for the standard kit as well as for the Steel Beach upgraded cockpit. These decals are designed to lay over three-dimenional details to provide that eye-popping depth and detail missing from other systems. This set also provides side consoles, seatbelts/shoulder harnesses, placards, and sub-panel details for the front and rear (F/A-18F) cockpits. This set also has the red edging for landing gear doors, chaff and flare cartridge loads, chaff/flare launcher details, and much more. In short, this set provides you with that key detailing around the airframe without the tedious work to get it there.

Take a close look at the decal sheet. The sheet is printed by Cartograf and the printing is very well done. What's more, none of these decals require the modeler to stack multiple layers of markings atop one another to recreate artwork. This trend by some other decal companies of producing multiple-layer decals is unfortunate as it puts the burden on you to do the work of what should have been done by the decal maker.

There are sufficient markings on this sheet to super-detail two F/A-18F Super Hornets (or two F/A-18E single-seaters with more cockpit spares left over).

My sincere thanks to Afterburner Decals for this review sample!