Hello Chaps,
Two days ago, I completed my latest "Hairy Stick" build- the Italeri 1/72 scale F-16 A/B NATO Falcon. This kit is discontinued and was tooled new in 1980, and in between was repackaged a few times with new box art, new parts and decals, but never new tooling. So, the tooling is 37 yrs old, but I have to say that it was pretty decent. The parts had nice fine recessed panel lines, a reasonably detailed cockpit that included two plain seats each within their own tub that had side consoles. Two instrument panels were included, but nothing else. I decided to dress up the cockpit a little, by adding 35 scratch-built parts (crude as they may be), plus adding 14 pieces of decals to the 4 side consoles and 1 to each instrument panel from my spares box. Scratch-built parts included the following: 4 pedals, 4 pedal mount brackets, 8 sections of seat-belt (4 to each seat), 2 ejector pull handles, 2 oxygen bottles (1 to each seat), 2 HUD side bracket mounts, 2 HUD lenses, 1 canopy actuator cylinder and 1 canopy actuator swing brace, 4 ejector seat guide rails (2 to each seat), 1 rear and 2 front wall sections around the Pilots seat and 1 upper wall section behind the Pilot's seat to locate the canopy actuator mechanism, and, 1 rear wall section behind the second seat. Decals were included for the two instrument panels but not for the 4 side consoles.
The decals were very good- Cartograf, printed in Italy, with markings for 4 options- 2 single seat "A" version Falcons and 2 Two Seat "B" version Falcons. I chose to model a two seat version in the markings of a Royal Dutch Air Force 313th Sqn aircraft # J270.
The kit went together pretty well with just small amounts of filler at wing to fuselage joints, nose to fuselage joint and vertical fin to fuselage joint. The undercarriage was rock solid for this scale of kit, so no concerns about it flexing and/or breaking.
The kit also included some nice under-wing stores: 2 extra long range fuel tanks, 1 center-line fuselage fuel tank, 2 AIM 9 Sidewinder Missiles, 2 AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles (1 on each wing-tip) and 4 WCMD 420kg bombs.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with this kit and it looks like a pretty decent representation of a F-16B.
After building and brush painting 7 models since November 2016, it's time for a break to make a start on a man-cave at my new house so that I can begin to build larger kits and airbrush them again!
I hope you enjoy the following photos, wherein the last one includes a US Quarter coin to give an idea of scale.....
If you'd like to watch any or all of my build and "Final Reveal" videos for this build, then here are the links to those:
"Build Update #1" Video: https://youtu.be/CHZqcdxqNJ8
"Build Update #2" Video: https://youtu.be/Phlkwma3NEQ
"Build Update #3" Video: https://youtu.be/_0kgAevxGvM
"Final Reveal" Video: https://youtu.be/-EcSeR43cxo
Thanks in advance for taking a look and leaving any comments, greatly appreciated!
In the meantime, happy modeling guys and have fun doing it!
Cheers,
Martin 