Hi Dave

Well I didn't exactly buy my F-18E but I have / am putting together 2 of them. Of course being involved with Airpac im not exactly neutral but here go's anyway.

I put together 1 Pre-production F-18E and a production sample F-18E.

Quality: good the fit and finish has improved from the Pre to the production and the models they are selling with the rivets are very nice. I wanted one of the painted ones but Eric sold them at BITW before I could get my hands on it lol.

Fit: good, flight surfaces all fit well. When you take it out of the box and put it together things fit well and line up, as they should. I had to clean up some of the boltholes that aligned the front and rear. But all the airplanes for sale that I have seen were right on.

Wing mount: Pretty STD Skymaster, Two Aluminum channel with Two blade spars per wing. Skymaster has upgraded to a thicker spar with all their airplanes. With some of the bigger releases coming out soon Mr. Lin decided to up size the spars. The 5-40 screw that hold the wing in are tightened from the top. ( Makes it much easier )

Servos: Stabs 8611 JR, Rudder Multiplex Super fl, Flap 8611 JR, Aileron 3421 JR.

Fuel tanks: I put in some extra tanks to bring my total up to 140 oz. With a Simjet 3000 we can fly for around 9 min and have 35 oz left.

Strength: Very strong and light. Our first F-18E weighed around 30 lbs dry. On my second flight (we had the cg to far aft) I ran out of fuel on a go around and spun it in from 100 ft' totaly my fault; Not good doh! Anyway I was able to fix it and get it flying in a week. There was some seam splitting in the nose area and quite a few cracks in the bottom filled up with ca and Hysol and went to town. The F-18E we took to Fl jets and BITW is this same airplane. You can see it fly on the sks video of Fl jets 2005. Thats me by the way the very tan big guy, and of course Scotty decides to take video when I decide to fly and it's the first flight I have had a FL Jets 2005 all weekend ( I was support crew that weekend ) Anyway that’s my excuse for the wild take off lol.

Flying: Best part! This plane is solid, very fun to fly, can fly fast, and slow. Easy to land once you get used to how it bleeds energy on final.

Video of it flying http://www.hawaiijets.com/aircraft/f-18/F-18E-fun.wmv

The new one has the scale speed brakes on the lex. Our new one has it installed using Hitec 5245's have not flown it yet.

Pictures by Jill C. some recent flying Me and my friend Tim flying some F-15 F-18e formation.