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Belgian AF F16A Anniversary


Whirly

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Wow! It's amazing how you can get attention with a darkish and not so close distance picture :lol:

Thank you all for the appreciations, though it didn't really come out so well. I still need to paint the radome and exhaust then I'll have to do many touch ups while the decals are baking on the window.

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More masking done for the exhaust, canopy frame and radome. I stupidly forgot that there is one more shade of gray to be applied over the nose, upper intake and rear fuselage sides... I'm getting quite tired of all this masking as I had never realized how complex is the F-16 camouflage, especially when mixed with a commemorative scheme!

 

P_20170309_221624.jpg

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Exhaust and grey done.

I started with an easy decal and immediately got stuck withe the result after a mild application of decal softener...

 

P_20170313_225040.jpg

 

This will be hand painted, hope for a better result with the other decals, they are on a separate sheet so I may have a little bit of luck  :pray:

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Of course you're right Trickyrich! I was tempted to use the softener because as first applied the decal seemed made of brass sheet...   :lol:

 

Anyway, this is remediable, just some more work to paint the belgian flag.

As I wrote before this decal and the roundels are on a separate sheet, different paper and probably different printer too. So they were definitely put in blacklist and more usable roundels have been sourced from an Esci sheet (I hope so!)

Turning to the main sheet, I've been most careful given Danny's advice and I applied three coats of Microscale Superfilm. I experimented with a spare decal and it still disintegrated as soon as I touched it with my tweezers after being soaked in water, so I changed plans and applied a thick coat of Kleer. This worked well, it only reduced quite a bit its responsiveness to softening liquids, so hope to apply the rest this evening. Some decals are still 'baking' in the sun since the yellowing is quite visible on a white background, hope they will get better shortly since I'm running out of time :waiting:

 

P_20170316_003759.jpg

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Yes Trickyrich, it's a real pity and I wonder why nobody ever made an attempt at this beautiful scheme besides DACO.

Anyway, in all fairness, I should say that the sheet I own is very old and was issued at the very start of DACO's existence: I remember ordering a few sheets through the local IPMS chapter after some members had visited the Belgian Convention in Antwerp. It was a cumbersome affair involving International Money Orders, paper letters and other exotic things of the past century  :)

 

 

 

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Hasegawa had this scheme in one of their F-16 boxing's, although in a different scale;

163729-12192-pristine.jpg

 

Hope I will stumble upon one once!

 

 

Good luck with yours Whirly, no doubt you will find a way to finish it with success.

 

 

Erik

 

 

 

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On 20/3/2017 at 2:52 PM, Knetterik said:

Hasegawa had this scheme in one of their F-16 boxing's, although in a different scale;

163729-12192-pristine.jpg

 

Hope I will stumble upon one once!

 

 

Good luck with yours Whirly, no doubt you will find a way to finish it with success.

 

 

Erik

 

 

 

 

Thank you Erik for you support!

Actually I meant no other attempt in 1/72 :) I knew of the Hasegawa boxing but it's the wrong scale to me. And if you can find one, have a check at the decal sheet: Scalemates dates it to 1994 and most probably the white will be a nice cream shade by now...

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Time for another update finally.

I had a few bad moments with the decals again, just lessons learnt for the future.

My experiment with Kleer is to be taken with a pinch of salt since you have to be very quick at applying the decals after this treatment otherwise they will turn very stiff and hard to apply after full curing of the varnish.

Here I have completed the black trims and part of the vertical tail bands. You can see in background the remaining decals after three weeks of sun exposition, unfortunately they still showed a visible yellow halo and this would not be acceptable over a white background.

 

P_20170319_192247.jpg

 

I choose to re-draw the offending decals and print them with my laser printer.

 

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While handling the model more problems appeared with the already applied decals being very brittle and splintering away...
 
P_20170319_193433.jpg
 
At least I got a decent result with the black decals! You can see also the stencils which I had to scrounge from an old Esci sheet.
 
P_20170323_080100_1.jpg
 
So now it's resting on its wheels. Last night I applied the white decals on the tail: despite three BATHS (coats doesn't convey the meaning...) with Microscale Decal Film they still broke down in two parts each and I felt lost for a moment :rain:
 
P_20170324_002911_1.jpg
 
There are still many repairs to do and missing bits but I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!
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I agree WOW! After all your issues with the decals she still looks fantastic!!! Perseverance and clever workarounds have helped produce a really cool looking F-16, well done. Hopefully the remainder of the build will trouble free or less troublesome. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The GB end date is looming so I made a final effort to complete this adventure. Here is one shot of the finished model, more in the gallery.

 

P_20170405_080536.jpg

 

Just out of curiosity I soaked the remaining decals in water to see how they would have reacted and looking at the result it's just as well that I reprinted them!  :tmi:

 

P_20170404_214234.jpg

 

Overall though I'm statisfied with the result and I'll probably never got to the end without the GB pressure, so I have to say a big "thank you" to all those who contributed with help and encouragements or simply liking my posts. A special thanks goes to Trickyrich for hosting so well this GB with his continuous attention to everybody's builds.

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