Construction
This kit has been around for a couple of years and, though it doesn’t have the finesse or internals of the Tamiya offering, it still stacks up well against it and at less than half the price is an excellent value kit.
My plan was to build it ‘all button up’, as if it was ready to go, so the internal detail of the cockpit, gun bay, nose radar and the lack of engine (as in the Tamiya kit) was not going to be an issue.
That said, though the cockpit detail from the box is reasonable, I did get the Eduard ‘zoom’ set for it. To be honest, this wasn`t really worth it as the extra detail cannot be seen through the closed smoked canopy.
My plan was to use the pilot that is included in the kit, as he’s nicely detailed, especially with some extra decals from the spares box for suit patches and helmet markings to give him that little bit more detail. It also meant that, by using him, I didn’t have to worry about seat-belts on the ejector seat.
Surface detail in the cockpit is good and with a little care it can be made to look quite nice. The kit provides decals for the MFD’s and, when placed behind the clear facias, look quite good. As I said, the out of the box cockpit is more than acceptable in this scale, but a resin cockpit would be nice especially if you intend to leave the canopy open.
The cockpit tub fits nicely into the fuselage, but when you fit the front coaming you will find there are gaps. Don’t worry though, as these are invisible once the canopy is in place (a little work with scrap plastic may be needed if the canopy is to be left open).
The kit comes with two sets of clear sprues; one is clear and one is smoked. The idea here is the front canopy is smoked and the rear portion is clear. The great part about this is you can use the spare parts to mask the canopy off as they are not needed.
As I was doing a camouflaged scheme I opted to fix the canopy in place and mask off the clear sections, in order to keep the continuity of the colour demarcation lines.
Gallery Grid
Click Image to Enlarge/go back.
A few decisions…
One major advantage this kit has over the Tamiya offering, is that it has options for both the small and large intakes and along with the associated differing engine exhausts.
The F-16 fleet was built with the two different engine configurations, depending upon whether a GE F-110 or PW F-100 engine was used. The best place to work out which configuration to use is to look up your particular frame number on the previously-mentioned F-16 website, where the block number will tell you what engine was used.
A very simplified rule (there are exceptions) is any block number ending in 0 from block 30D onwards (30, 40 50) use the F110 engine and therefore they have the larger inlet to accommodate the requirement for more air for the higher thrust output. The large inlet is referred to as the “modular common air intake duct” or ‘Big mouth’.
Those jets in the block numbers ending in 2 (32, 42, 52) use the less powerful F-100 engine, which requires less air so a smaller intake is used. I hope I haven’t confused you too much!
With this in mind, the jet I intend to build used the smaller intake and PW F-100 engine, which is an option in the kit for a Taiwanese aircraft, which meant I was sorted on this front.
One issue I did have was the undercarriage doors, wheels and landing lamp configuration changed on the later blocks from 40/42 onwards in order to cope with the increased all up weight of the aircraft.
The earlier aircraft, which I intended to model had the landing lamps on the min undercarriage, but the kit replicates later blocks with the lamps on the front undercarriage door, beefed-up main struts and wheels along with bulged doors to accommodate their increased size.
Removing the lights and fittings required minor surgery, but the doors, struts and wheels required more work and the need for resin replacements so I decided to live with these inaccuracies.
Ask a question or add feedback:
You must be logged in to post a comment.