When
I returned to modelling last year, I started off with small stuff like a 1/48
109. Then I did a couple of bigger models like the 1/32 Tiger Moth and the
Spitfire. Now I’ve really done it… a 1/32 scale F-16! The damn thing
measures over a foot and a half long, God knows where I’m going to put it…
Anyway,
having looked through the Gallery pages on ARC, it struck me that nobody seems
to have submitted a 1/32 Revell F-16, so I decided to find out why. I bought one
cheap off Ebay, and soon found out. It was the “Tiger Meet” version, of the
Belgian Air Force, with markings only for that service. First thing on my
shopping list then, was a set of Superscale decals for USAF markings, and also
an Eduard PE set to add a bit of detail to the cockpit and undercarriage.
I
decided to use the kit ejection seat as the detail on this looked pretty
good, but had to spend time carving off the moulded on belts and replacing
them with PE ones. The rest of the cockpit was pretty basic, but the PE
set helped here.
|
Click on
image below to see larger image
|
|
|
One
thing which amazed me was that in such a large scale, no throttle lever was
present, a fairly glaring omission. Scratchbuilding time again. I also added
some switches to the HUD panel by drilling tiny holes in it and poking short
bits of wire through, which were then painted. I added the pilot’s oxygen hose
from coiled wire, and replaced the HUD screen with thin acetate sheet. One of
the reasons for the sparse cockpit detail may be that the canopy is moulded in
one piece with the rear transparency, and has no facility to be positioned open.
I was having none of that, so surgery took place to separate the two parts. Then
problem number two presented itself – the main canopy had none of the rear
extensions which form the hinge point on the real aircraft. More scratchbuilding
to extend the canopy frame rearwards followed, and then the same on the canopy
raising mechanism to give the canopy something to attach to. (If the canopy
frame rear edge doesn’t look quite right to you, that’s why.) This was a
bargain kit from Ebay, but was turning into a lot of work for me. Still, we’re
modellers aren’t we, not just assemblers?
Click on
images below to see larger images
|
|
|
Then the
fuselage was assembled after the gun muzzle port had been drilled out (Revell
moulded it solid) and the wings were attached. This came back to haunt me later,
as the port rear section of the fuselage at the speedbrakes was warped
downwards. This meant that the port stabilizer which attached here would look at
an odd angle, and lining up the wings square with nothing but a warped fuselage
to judge from was difficult. That’s why when I finally sat the model on its
wheels, the port wing was 5mm further off the deck than the starboard one.
Coupled with the fact that the wing was warped too, this 5mm makes a noticeable
difference and spoiled the look of the whole model for me. A point to watch if
you’re considering this kit.
The kit has
raised panel lines throughout, except the curved access panels on top of the
fuselage, which was a blessing as I rescribed the whole aircraft and these would
have been extra tricky. Generally, detail was average, but fit wasn’t too good
and was compounded by the warped parts previously described. I used a lot of
putty on areas such as the wing roots and along the sides of the fuselage at the
rear – good job I did rescribe, as sanding would have lost a lot of the raised
detail otherwise. I also used putty to close up the locating pin holes under the
wings for the pylons. I like my aircraft to have very little under the wings, as
you get the purer shape of the aircraft that way. I decided to retain the belly
tank, though, and I will fill the wingtip rails with a pair of Sidewinders soon,
just so that people know what this thing is for.
One section
which was unforgivable by Revell though, was the intake. The fit to the body was
great, no complaints there, but then they went and installed a prominent front
wheel well box right in full view in the open intake! Silly buggers. I thought
long and hard about this, and ended up filling the intake with Milliput to blend
the box in with the intake interior. Not an easy job when the intake is already
assembled, and all the internal filing, sanding, polishing and painting took a
lot of time and effort to get somewhere near right. That’s why most people
build the Hasegawa or Tamiya 1/32 Falcons instead, is it? Right, now I know.
Forgive me, I’m still relatively new to all this!
At the other
end of the engine, the exhaust nozzle needed some work. I fitted the plain
inside with strips of Dymo tape to give the impression of the overlapping
segments, and then painted it white and finished off with airbrushed black
streaks. Outside, I went for Alclad Steel as a base coat, and experimented with
very gentle airbrushing over this with streaks of clear blue, red and even
yellow to get that metallic rainbow sheen of burnt metal. The ring just inboard
of the turkey feathers was Alclad with clear blue over it a little more heavily.
Not sure if it’ll be visible on the photos, but in natural daylight I can
assure you that you don’t believe you’re looking at plastic…
I like the
undercarriage. A bit chunky, and a bit sparse on the wheel well details, but
plenty of struts and things to take your mind off that. I added brake cables and
other miscellanea with the PE set and some brass wire. The whole gloss white
undercart was then given a black wash which highlighted the nooks and crannies
quite satisfactorily. I thought I’d overdone it at first, but it fits in with
the whole model quite nicely.
Once the airframe
was together, painting commenced with the usual Tamiya acrylics although I have
NO idea what Tamiya colours corresponded to the real F-16 – I just did the
best I could with the range of greys at my disposal! (If you look at the photos,
you’ll see that the whole plane changes colour depending on whether the sun is
in or out, so I can’t see what all the fuss is about when it comes to exact
colour matches.) The dark grey curve near the cockpit was airbrushed freehand. I
know some people will say that the darker grey should come further forward,
overlapping the cockpit, but I took some pictures of some real F-16s at RAF
Fairford just before I painted this model, and they had the curve right where I
put it, so there! (Since I had plenty of static shots at Fairford, I decided to
place my F-16 behind the barriers – that’s the last photo.) Anyway, there
are enough inaccuracies on this model to keep the nit-pickers happy, but as
I’ve said before on previous articles: overall - does it look good?
Then it was a
clear coat of Johnson’s floor wax and the usual black wash in the newly
recessed panel lines before the decals. Hmm, decals. I had to use a combination
of Superscale decals for unit markings, Revell kit decals for the smaller
stencilling, and home made decals too, as some of the stencils weren’t low viz
in the kit. Luckily I had a 1/48 F-16 in my stash, so I scanned the decal sheet
into my computer and scaled up the stencils I needed. For some reason, ALL of
the decals silvered, so I can only conclude it was my surface preparation at
fault, since three different sources of decals couldn’t all be the problem.
Once the flat coat went on the silvering was quite pronounced from certain
angles, which is another source of disappointment with this model.
Then it was
onto finishing touches, such as the static dischargers on the fin and
stabilizers, which I made from lengths of 0.015” steel wire. Some people
recommend fishing line or toothbrush bristles as a safeguard against
breakages…let’s see them try to break these! Safety? In my opinion, anyone
who gets their fingers too close to one of MY models deserves to get punctured!
As a
conclusion, I can see why nobody has submitted a Revell 1/32 F-16
before…raised panel lines, poor fit, average detailing, ludicrous intake,
closed canopy. On the other hand, if you’re prepared to put in a
LOT
of effort, you end up with a big chunk of aircraft sitting on your coffee table
which doesn’t look that
dissimilar to what you’d get from a kit costing several times as much. It’s
not my best ever model, and I do keep on making silly mistakes, but in the words
of Sir Arthur Streeb-Greibling : “I have learned from my mistakes, and I could
repeat them exactly…”
Dean
|
|