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Leading Edge Models' Canadian CF-18A "Millennium Hornet"

By Michael Benolkin

The folks at the Royal Canadian Air Force's 410 Squadron have become somewhat of a legend within the aviation community as they come up with one breath-taking commemorative paint scheme after another. I thought they had reached the limits with the beautiful scheme celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force. I was mistaken. For the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, 410 Sqn created the Millennium Hornet Scheme.

The great folks at Leading Edge Models have been keeping up with the RCAF and their unique paint schemes. They just released the Millennium Hornet as set 72.22 (1/72) and 48.22 (1/48).

This decal provides all of the markings for the swirls and swoops for the upper surfaces of the aircraft, the intricate artwork on the outboard surfaces of the vertical stabs, and the various national markings and maintenance stencils to complete the Hornet. Also included is the false canopy that goes under the nose of the aircraft.

On the large sheet, Leading Edge does something different - they provide 'color chips' to help you match any of the colors on their sheet. This is a handy innovation, though you shouldn't have to bother with any of the blues and grays in the designs with paint. Those are complete in the decals.

What you will have to do is paint the Hornet an overall Light Gray (FS 36375), most of the top of the aircraft and vertical stabs in matt black, and portions of the wing and lower vertical stabs (outboard surfaces only) a pale yellow. The downside here is that no FS number is provided for any of the colors (except the light gray), so you're on your own to match the yellow.

When I heard about this latest release from a friend, I immediately ordered a set. I am extremely pleased with this sheet! I found my set at the Flightdecs website.

Too bad nobody developed a turn-of-the-century celebration scheme for the F-16 Fighting Falcon, (with apologies to LucasFilms) a Millennium Falcon would have been really cool!

I purchased my Millennium set from FlightDecs.