1/48 Italeri IAF F-16C Barak WIP

Mix-n-match sprues?   Who do they think they are, Dragon??

That resin exhaust looks incredible!

Thanks Dre!  These Shull24 resin exhausts are about as good as any I've seen!

I've glued the the upper and lower fuselage halves together.  These actually went together pretty well.  I didn't sand down the Aires cockpit quite enough so the upper fuselage part ended up being a little bit wider than the lower part.  The gap isn't large and with all the filling/sanding experience I'm getting on this build it doesn't seem like a big deal:

I was able to fit the cockpit in there pretty snugly.  The radome has been attached, too.  This needed some sanding and a little filling with Mr. Surfacer 1000 to get it to look good.

I've also attached the leading edge flaps to the wings.  These fit mostly well although the parts are a little bit thicker than the wings themselves.  I made sure they sat flush with the top of the wings and the step is on the bottom.  This should be well hidden once all the ordinance is hanging from the wings:

I used some CA glue to fill any gap made where the wing parts meet up on the underside of the wings.  Also, I had to file off the guide pins on those sensor parts underneath the leading edges because they cause the parts to be pointed off to the sides a bit and not joined up with the longitudinal axis of the plane.  I then used Mr Dissolved Putty to fill the gaps.

I also used Mr. Surfacer 500 to fill in the seams where the intake assembly mates with the lower fuselage part.  I've attached the sensor parts that are on each side of the intake.  The nav lights will be attached to these at the end of the build:

Also, you can see in the pic below that I've attached the adaptor for the AN/AAQ-14 targeting pod.  Again, I used Mr. Dissolved Putty to fill in the large gaps.  Geesh!  This thread could be one big advertisement for Mr. Surfacer and Mr. Dissolved putty!

Looking like you're making this one a good one.    I like the chalky, worn-out whitewash look...

Thanks!  That's from using a cotton swab dipped in alcohol and rubbing away the Mr. Surfacer.

Ok, here is the Shull24 resin exhaust durning and after painting:

The flame holder is two parts.  One part is the turbine section and the other part is the flame holder.  The turbine section was painted with Alclad II Burnt Iron and dusted with some pastels to give it a high temperature  dirty look. The flame holder was painted Alclad II Exhaust Manifold (I think) and treated with some pastels as well.  The turbine fan was painted with the same tan color I used on the interior of the other parts.  I thinned it down quite a bit and "washed" it on to the fan detail.

Here's the exterior of the burner can painted:

And here's the burner can assembled and painted in its final colors.  The only problem with the Shull24 exhaust is that the details in the burner can don't exactly line up.  That's ok, though.  These are still some of the best exhausts out there.

This pic was taken at a farther distance:

That's some mighty fine paint work going on!   I can't wait to see the rest of this built and painted.

Thanks Dre, but you may want to keep your expectations a little lower on this one.  

This kit is a total POS.  No joke.  So many parts don't fit together.  There are ejector pin marks or major ejector pin flash in the strangest places.  This thing is pretty much a putty whore.  Sub assemblies don't line up right.  Several parts were broken while still attached to the sprue tree.  Even the directions are missing a few parts.  I wish I had taken more pics of the troubled areas just so you all could see how bad it is.

This kit comes with some AGM-65 Mavericks.  I tried to put one together.  I ended up throwing it out.  It was that bad.

If there were only a few mistakes I could understand that.  But this kit, which is a relatively young kit, just has too many problems.  Its just a cheap knock off of a Tamiya kit.  I really wish I had just bought a Tamiya kit and the resin IAF update set instead.  Oh well.

I'm at the point where I don't think I want to invest too much more into this one.  I feel like I'm putting lip stick on a pig.  I am gonna see it through to the end, though.  I'll try to make it contest worthy.  But I might use some different less detailed weapons and save these good ones for another kit.  I also wish I hadn't wasted my Shull24 exhaust in this thing...not that I can't get another one.

Here's the completed vertical stab and rudder.  I needed to use Mr Surfacer and Mr Putty along just about every seam.  In the end, though, I think it turned out ok.

Here's how it looks on the plane.  You can see how much filling was needed at the rear of the base part:

Here's the targeting pod.  Even this part had some issues.  The vent on the back is a separate part.  It has two male alignment tabs that are supposed to fit into two female notches on the pod.  The notches weren't even close!  You can sort of make them out in the pic just forward of that rear panel line and lined up with the latches on the pod.  And yes, I needed to use some filler.

So I ended up sanding off the tabs and just eyeballing it.

And does it fit into the adapter on the lower fuselage?  I think you already know the answer to that.

Even the pylons needed filling.  Or at least the pylons I'm able to use!  The mid board pylons were so bad that I ended up using a spare set from a Tamiya kit (white).

The inboard pylons are just one piece.  Otherwise they'd need filling too!  Actually, at this point I'm surprised they don't need any regardless.

Here's a shot of the 'pit with the bang seat in it:

Almost seems like a waste of a good AM resin 'pit in this kit.

Hang in there!!! =D

I don't know Fly I always end up with kits that never fit together right and if they turn out really well I get a massive sense of satisfaction, keep fighting it, the Eagle was a pretty great finish so a bit of patience and I'm sure you can get a similar result.

Fly - I second Dean30, as evidenced by your F-15 completion, this will no doubt turn out far better than even Italeri envisioned. I built the same kit, pretty poor effort on their part, took lot's of filling, splicing, carving, sanding and cussing, but it turned out an OK 2-3 footer. I can already see that yours will be much better, I'm envious. Nice work, thanks for posting your progress.

Patrick

Fly, I have to say that you're doing a great job on a sub-par kit; keep cranking and I'm sure it be awesome in the end.

Sorry guys, I wasn't ignoring anyone but I've been away on vacation for the last week in Myrtle Beach.

bvallot, Dean, Patrick and Dre...thanks for the kind words and encouragement.  I know I'm sort of whining a bit with this kit.  It just bugs me how in these modern times with the new molding techniques a not-so-inexpensive kit could be so poor in quality.  

Oh well.  I'm gonna stop "complaining" but I'll continue to point out the problems.

And the update...

I've attached the vertical stab assembly to the fuselage.  Normally with the Tamiya kits I don't attach it.  I just loosely attach it with the pins and rubber washers that are supplied with it (Its designed like that so you can remove it for transportation).  But this kit doesn't have this feature.  And, I think I've been knocked out of competitions in the past for doing that.  I think the judges saw that it was loosely attached and mistook it for some kind of poor build quality on my part.

This assembly fit pretty well.  I used Mr Dissolved Putty to fill in the small gaps.  I've also attached the Shull24 resin exhaust shroud.  This was originally designed to fit the Tamiya F-16 and it didn't' quite line up with the Kenetic fuselage parts.  I used some CA glue to bond it and use it as filler.

You can also see that I've attached the AN/AAQ-13 LANTIRN navigation pod.  Normally, I would paint everything separately and then attach it.  But in this case I decided to use a pod from the Hasegawa Weapons Set.  The detail on the kit supplied part was poor and the fit wasn't good at all.

I don't mind that you're pointing out the inadequacies of this kit- knowing the weaknesses of this kit leads me to consider the Tamiya kit all the more!  So, thank you for the knowledge.

Dre

I don't mind that you're pointing out the inadequacies of this kit- knowing the weaknesses of this kit leads me to consider the Tamiya kit all the more!  So, thank you for the knowledge.

So I've assembled the flaps.  These were 2 pieces...the main flap part and a smaller insert.  The smaller insert didn't fit at all and needed quite a bit of CA glue to fill in the gaps.  You can see it clearly in the pics below.

The flaps are about 1 mm shorter than the space that they go into.  When dry fitting it it was very noticeable.  It was easy to fix, though.  I just glued on a bit of styrene sheet to the tip and sanded it to shape.

Now it fits more snugly.

I've glued on the flaps.  On the Tamiya kit I wouldn't have.  But the Tamiya kit has little tabs on their flaps so that you can insert them up or in the landing position.  These tabs make it easy to glue the flaps on after painting.  This Italeri/Kinetic kit doesn't have the tabs so I figure it safer to attach them now.

I had to attach the landing gear at this stage.  Normally I paint the gear separately and attach it after I've painted the plane and the wheel wells.  But after dry fitting this gear I saw that it wasn't going to work.  The plane would have tilted very obviously to one side if I had attached the gear legs to their alignment holes.  Also, the gear legs were so flimsy that I felt like I needed to attach the actuators and braces to provide secure bonds and maximum support.

There was a problem with the actuators and braces.  The braces were about 1mm too long and needed to be filed down.  And the actuators were both broken on the sprue tree.  I finally made it all work and it feels pretty solid.

Also, that part that runs horizontally that sort of sticks out the sides of the well was broken on the sprue tree as well.  The way it was attached to the sprue tree made it almost impossible to remove without breaking, anyway.

But wait!  There's more!  The center piece that divides the wheel well into two does not sit straight in the well.  Its hard to tell in the pic below but you can see that it just ever so slightly bends and does not follow the centerline of the fuselage.

This ends up being ok I suppose since it gets covered up anyway but man does it bug the heck out of me!

I guess I cut out that long Y shaped part for nothing.  Oh well.  At least now I have the peace of mind knowing that the gear is attached very solidly.  Plus, this will be easy to mask and paint since the wheel wells are just a bunch of straight lines.

I'm just gonna start adding one of these  behind every sentence.

Those rear struts and braces do look delicate.   Makes me very nervous to add that stuff before painting as I know that I'll probably break them off in short order.

lol!

Yeah, that's another reason why I try to attach this kind of stuff after painting.  Unfortunately, in this case, I think I'm better off assembling it now.  I'll just have to be careful.

"Careful" he says.....

Here she is with the LAU-128 rails on the wingtips.  These really give the F-16 an aggressive look I think:

Since I'm using the Aires resin cockpit I had to cut out a bit of the framing around the cockpit to get the IP coaming to fit.  Aires instructions are not very good at guiding you on exactly where to cut so you have to cut, dry fit and repeat.

I ended up cutting out just a bit too much plastic so I needed to add some shims to make the resin part fit:

I used some Mr. Dissolved Putty to fill in the seams:

Here's the canopy masked and ready for painting:

Here's how it looks on the model.  I had to sand down the canopy frame quite a bit to get it to fit snugly.  This kit is going to fight me every step of the way:

Alrighty...I finished up most of the base assembly and put a coat of Tamiya Fine Grey Primer on it!  There were actually fewer seams that needed to be touched up than expected.  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pics of the plain primer job or the troubled areas that needed work.

The worst offender was the seam where the two upper fuselage halves come together.  I used some fine sanding sticks to soften up the edges and then used Mr Surfacer 1200 to gradually begin filling the seam while still leaving enough of a seam to keep the natural panel line there.

The two parts in the back of the upper fuselage...on the right side under the vertical stab...also got the same treatment.  

I've also pre shaded the entire model:

During the pre shading I found some other minor areas than needed to be touched up.  These areas will be very easy and quick to fix.  Then on to fun stuff...the base colors and weathering!

I've begun adding the base colors.  Since there are going to be 4 colors I am going to do the weathering a little differently on this one than how I did it on the F-15E.  

Here's the first color on the underside of the plane.  I lightened the color a bit by adding white.  Then, after I applied the first layer, I just used the color straight out of the bottle:

Now what I've decided to do is apply the light brown color to the entire upper surface and layer it the same way as the bottom.  It looks good to the naked eye but the flash drowns out the pre shading quite a bit:

I will add the other colors and fade them using the post shading technique instead.

And here she is with rest of the colors:

I applied the dark brown & green straight out of the bottle since I covered the pre shade with the light brown.  Then I applied some color mixed with white to the interiors of the panels.  I did this while the masking was still on so that I could get the fading color right up to the edge of the camo.  Most people don't do this and the effect is that the areas where the camo colors meet are not consistently shaded like the middle of the colors are.

Your method of preshading haphazardly around random parts is very intriguing.  I can't believe I haven't thought of something resembling this already!  Seems simple enough. =]  Smart!!

Keep it coming...I can't wait to see what's next.

Fly-n-hi

This kit is a total POS.  No joke.  So many parts don't fit together.  There are ejector pin marks or major ejector pin flash in the strangest places.  This thing is pretty much a putty whore.  Sub assemblies don't line up right.  Several parts were broken while still attached to the sprue tree.  Even the directions are missing a few parts.  I wish I had taken more pics of the troubled areas just so you all could see how bad it is.

I hope their F-14B is a better fitting kit. I try to generally stay away from Italeri for the reasons you mentioned but it looks like you are over coming all those obstacles with a great looking model.

I love Israeli colors on Vipers. Just lovely. I'm a die hard post-shader using the method you describe. If you've done it before I'm sure you know that gloss coats and everything tone it down somewhat significantly.