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EA-18G Growler

History

The EA-18G Growler is a U.S. Navy airborne electronic attack (AEA) aircraft that operates from an aircraft carrier or from land-bases. The Growler is a replacement for the U.S. Navy EA-6B Prowler aircraft which entered service in 1971.

The Growler is the most advanced airborne electronic attack (AEA) platform in the world today. It is a variant of the F/A-18F Super Hornet. The mission of the Growler is to provide tactical jamming and electronic protection to U.S. military forces and allies around the world. The Growler has more than 90% in common with the standard Super Hornet and the Growler's flight performance is similar to that of the F/A-18E/F. This enables the Growler to perform escort jamming as well as the traditional standoff jamming mission (Radar jamming and deception). Growlers can now accompany F/A-18s during all phases of an attack mission.

Most of the dedicated airborne electronic attack equipment is mounted in the space that housed the internal 20mm cannon and on the wingtips. Nine weapons stations remain free to provide for additional weapons or jamming pods. The added electronics include AN/ALQ-218 wideband receivers on the wingtips, and ALQ-99 high and low-band tactical jamming pods. The ALQ-218 combined with the ALQ-99 form a full spectrum electronic warfare suite that is able to provide detection and jamming against all known surface-to-air threats.

The EA-18G can be fitted with up to five ALQ-99 jamming pods and will typically add two AIM-120 AMRAAM and two AGM-88 HARM missiles. Growlers also use the INCANS Interference Cancellation system that allows voice communication while jamming enemy communications. In addition to the radar warning and jamming equipment the Growler possesses a communications receiver and jamming system that provides suppression and electronic attack against airborne communication threats.

The Kit

The Hasegawa 1/48 scale EA-18G Growler VAQ-130 Zappers, Kit #07390 comes in a large box with a gorgeous photo on the box top cover of the EA-18G Growler you are going to build. In the box there are 11 medium grey sprues, 2 clear sprues, along with an instruction guide and one decal sheet. Right off you can tell this is going to be a lengthy build.

Construction

Building the Hasegawa EA-18G Growler was an out of the box build, except for the PE seat belts I added to the ejection seats. Overall, construction for the kit is straight forward just following the illustrated instructions. The parts fit for the kit was good, but even with a good parts fit there was a fair amount of seam filling and sanding required.

Construction began with the cockpit that went together nicely accept for one part. The hood (part V5) that covers the Electronic Warfare Officer's (the guy in the back) instrument panel would not fit. I had to use my Dremel Tool to grind off some of the plastic inside the hood. Once that was done, the hood fit perfectly. The kit provides some excellent decals for the instrument panels. Those decals made the cockpit look very realistic.

Another problem arose building the nose gear. The illustration that shows you how to build the nose gear is very poor. I could not tell from the illustrations where or how the parts were supposed to fit together. So, to find out how the nose gear parts went together I went to the Web―Prime Portal.com to be exact. Prime Portal has some excellent walkaround photos of F/A-18E/Fs. From the nose gear photos I was able to see how the parts went together. By the way the parts fit very well.

Painting

All paints for this model were Model Masters and Floquil enamel paints. landing gears, wheel bays, and the HARM missiles were painted with MM Flat White. The inside of the wheel bay doors were also painted Flat White. The edges of the doors were painted with Floquil Signal Red. The blue areas on the fuselage and vertical stabilizers were airbrushed with MM Blue Angel Blue.

The kit painting guide calls for Light Ghost Gray and Dark Ghost Gray for the fuselage, wings, horizontal stabs, and under wing fuel tanks and jamming pods. However, I airbrushed the above objects with one color, Light Ghost Gray. The reason for this is because the two grays are so close in color you cannot distinguish any difference between the two grays.

Decals

Once the paint was dried and cured I hand brushed two coats of Future on the model and let it dry and cure for three days in preparation for decals. Decals for the EA-18G Growler were excellent. The were easily applied and adhered well to the model. The kit provided markings for only one aircraft, the CAG aircraft for the VAQ-130 Zappers. Hasegawa decals are a bit thick which is a good thing as some of the decals for this model are large and required a some maneuvering on the model surface to get the decals in the correct position— they did not tear. Note that there a lot of decals for this model.

Conclusion

This is a very good kit and I enjoyed building it. This kit was no weekend project. It was a lengthy build because of all the parts and the many decals. Building and decaling the under wing things was like building another model. But it was worth it as I am very pleased with the look of the finished model.