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F-16F Desert Falcon - Block 60 Viper in 1/32! *Finished!*


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Some good work done on this today.

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Engine parts with base colours

The tailpipe is painted with Halfords White Plastic Primer and weathered with a metallic lacquer applied with a child's toothbrush!

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The turbine and afterburner base colour is WEM Corticene, a ship colour for RN linoleum. It's a perfect match for burned titanium!

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After some treatment, it looks like this:

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Add it all together and you get this:

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Additional weathering with Tamiya weathering powders. Photo isn't great but there's some subtle shading and scorching in there.

 

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Last to complete on the engine was the Aires GE F110 nozzle.

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I used Alclad Pale Burnt Metal over Aluminium, and Jet Exhaust for the petals. The ring is AK Extreme Metal Aluminium and the carbon panels are Alclad Jet Exhaust with Transparent Smoke over the top.

 

Still needs weathering and heat effects. The photo doesn't really show the subtle gold coloured effect from the Alclad.

 

Alan

Edited by Alan P
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Meanwhile, back at the airframe...

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Resin replacement nose and wings attached without any issues whatsoever. Some putty will be needed to smooth off the seams but otherwise the fit is excellent.

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Flaps attached.

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CFTs attached. These were a bit fiddly and needed to be glued progressively from the back end to the front. With a bit of care, the fit is almost seamless.

Final act of the day was to attach the engine fairing at the back:

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The circumference isn't quite right so there's a slight step to make good.

 

On the whole, this is looking pretty good and progress has been much quicker than I anticipated. Next step - landing gear.

 

Alan

Edited by Alan P
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I've been following & enjoying this, I like the look of these Block 60s in their low viz desert scheme. Of course, Hasegawa limited ed 1/72 ones had limited themselves by dint of price &/or availabilty by the time I turned onto F-16s. :( Keep up the good work Alan.

Steve.

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3 hours ago, mirageiv said:

Fantastic work so far Al, the engine looks very convincing indeed. I really look forward to more! :popcorn:

 

David

Thanks David. I'm picking it up after the weekend.

2 hours ago, stevehnz said:

I've been following & enjoying this, I like the look of these Block 60s in their low viz desert scheme. Of course, Hasegawa limited ed 1/72 ones had limited themselves by dint of price &/or availabilty by the time I turned onto F-16s. :( Keep up the good work Alan.

Steve.

Thanks Steve!

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Hi again,

 

Been off for a bit as I finish editing my new book (third novel written!)

 

This is coming together very well.

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Lots of puttying today. Most of the gaps are round the resin parts (particularly the nose) but the wing roots need some attention too.

 

Using the SAC metal gear which scrubs up okay once all the moudling seams have been removed.

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The oleo can be polished up with the edge of a knife. By masking it now I've got a shiny silver oleo for free!

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The main gear legs are similar. SAC gear seems to be just exact copies of the kit parts, and to be honest I don't like them because they are made of quite a soft metal which bends easily. My preferred option is G-Factor brass. If there's an option I'd pay the extra because they're practically indestructible!

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The kit has some obvious ejector pin marks, and they've cunningly managed to put them on the display side rather than the hidden side. Academy taking moulding lessons from Revell, I think.

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Very quick fix is Perfect Plastic Putty for the linky things at the top and cut up Avery labels to hide the marks inside the retraction struts. Simple!

 

Once all the parts are prepared, I separate them into nose, port and starboard so I don't mix them up later.

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The extra nose gear door is to use as a mask for painting. I'll be using the IsraCast replacement door for the display at top left.

 

More follows...

 

 

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While all that landing gear stuff was going on, I scrubbed and washed the model after sanding all the putty away. The usual filthy job, but it all looks pretty good. I just left it to dry on the windowsill!

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Now on to the wheels:

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This is the brilliant resin set by Wheelliant. Correct format for the F-16F and incredible detail. I really like how the tyre is moulded separately from the hub as well. Makes for a simple and precise paint job.

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Here they are painted with white primer over Mr Surfacer 1000. That detail just pops!

While all the gear legs were drying, I started on the canopy. The Big Ed set gives a lot of extra detail so it should look great when finished.

The kit thoughtfully provides two complete clear spruse, one in clear and the other tinted:

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Sadly on the real aircraft, the front canopy is tinted while the rear one is clear! Rather than cut these in half, I'll be tinting the clear one and using the tinted one as a cockpit mask.

 

I sanded off the mould line on the canopy and polished up with buffing sticks, micromesh and finally Tamiya's three-step polishing compound.

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Next...lumps and bumps!

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As the F-16 has grown in weight and capability, it's grown all sorts of extra lumps, bumps and fairings. The Block 60 has plenty of extra bits to add on!

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Some of these are kit parts, some resin, and some from the Eduard exterior set. It all fits pretty well.

I particularly liked these vents, with the Eduard exhausts:

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On the other side are the Eduard grilles and the sharp-edged PE scoops.

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All in all not a bad day's work! 

 

I could have gone on, but I managed to spill an entire bottle of Zap CA accelerator all over my work table. The stink made it impossible to keep working! Why oh why do they make it in a tall, slim bottle that topples at the slightest nudge?????

 

Also, the internet appears to be conspiring against me ever posting photos - After the Photobucket debacle, I took the advice of some people on BM I switched hosting to Village Photos. All the photos I've linked today had to be manually typed as the Village website image links were all wrong, and nothing seems to make them display correctly.

 

The things you gotta do, huh?! 

 

All the best,

Alan

 

Edited by Alan P
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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, hello again!

 

After a break for holiday in Devon and a stinking cold, I'm back at work on the Falcon.

 

Spent the better part of two days trying to recreate the unique AN/AAQ-32 targeting pod carried by the Block 60 jet:

 

I used the Sniper XR pod from the kit and did quite a bit of chopping and changing.

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The rear part is the front and rear third of the Sniper pod. The head unit uses the Sniper head with some modifications:

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There is a 1mm plasticard shim between the halves to widen the cross section. Also used plastic card to build up the shape of the lens and the square cross-section. 

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For some strange reason, the clear sprue on the Sufa kit includes the optical glazing for the AN/AAQ-32 but I can't find the pod itself anywhere in the kit. If the basic Academy F-16CG/CJ kit contains this part it would cheer me up no end after all the work I did! Anyway, I used the glazing and faired it in with plasticard and green putty. It got a bit clouded with all the sanding, but it polishes up okay and I'm going to coat it with polarised translucent film anyway.

 

Al

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Next on this adventure in plastic:

The rest of the airframe was washed again ready for primer.

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I'm using the spare kit canopy as a mask. I masked the interior to catch any spray that might creep through any of the tiny gaps.

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Underneath I blutacked the gear doors in position to mask the wheelwells and used sponge to mask the intake.

 

I decided I would use Halfords Filler Primer as an alternative to Mr Surfacer because it's easier to get hold of and cheaper.

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Yes, it is orange!

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Although it goes on quite thick and has a slightly powdery finish, it sands and polishes back to an almost mirror finish. Like Mr Surfacer it also fills any scratches or sanding marks in the plastic. I wouldn't exactly swear by it, but it's good stuff.

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Made a bit of a mess on the underside when I turned it around in my hands - my gloved fingers lifted the primer before it was fully dry, so splurged a bit more on and gave myself some extra work!

 

Otherwise the primer coat is showing I did a pretty good job so far. Just a bit of surface detail to restore and some tidying up beneath the LERXs.

 

Alan

 

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While all that was drying I had a go at the Eduard airbrakes from the Big Ed set:

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They are easy to shape and look much nicer!

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The last thing I did was assemble all the pylons and TERs (no photos, sorry!). I plan to fit magnets to the pylons to enable my customer to load whatever weaponry he chooses to display.

 

This is a real "feel good" build. Even though I feel a bit of pressure from being a commission, it's going really well.

 

Alan

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

And finally it was time for paint!

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So, we started with this... After a thorough and messy micromeshing, I sprayed over the yellow with Mr Surfacer 1200. (no photos, don't know why!)

I used Xtracrylix which are not the easiest paints in the world to use, but I think they're the finest pigmented acrylics available. I used Light Gray 16495 which is close enough, and Light Ghost Gray 16375.

After spraying the Light Gray I used my favoured camouflage painting technique - blutac sausages and cling film.

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The cling film is great because it's so quick to apply and sticks readily to the blutac. I masked an aircraft this size in about quarter of an hour.

I use a high volume Iwata TR-2 trigger-grip airbrush for the camouflage colours. It gets coverage quickly like a spray can but evenly and controlled like an airbrush.

Whip off the masks and it's been a good day at the office!

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These UAE beasts are the best looking Vipers by far!

 

Alan

 

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While that's drying...

One of the things I offered my customer was the option of different loadouts, but the easiest way of ensuring that is to make the loads interchangeable. So...

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I got some of these from Amazon - 50 tiny magnets for about 12 quid.

These are really diddly, just 3mm wide by 2mm deep but they stick like crazy. 

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The switchout options are limited - the inner wing pylons invariably carry the 375-gal drop tanks and the outer pylons are used for AAMs, so it's the centre pylon on each wing that gets the love:

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Drilled a 3mm hole in each and they fit snugly with a drop of extra thin CA to hold them in place.

Gave the same treatment to the weaponry: 

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The TERs will carry GBU-12s, and I also have two JDAMs which I haven't finished yet. The GBU-24s, HARM and Maverick are from the Academy F/A-18 Hornet kit.

 

Whenever I put paint on a build I always think it's almost finished, but there's still loads to do on this!

 

Alan

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On 14/08/2017 at 10:25 PM, stevehnz said:

Sorry. Not seeing a thing on my Android phone. :(

Steve.

It might be you, it's there on my Android phone? 

 

As Keith says, it's not just you! Thanks for the heads up 👍

Edited by Alan P
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Just been reading through your thread Alan & have to say there's some really fine modelling on show here, really good looking F-16!!

 

I have to say though that I also can't see the pic in your post above, I'm on a W10 laptop.

 

Keith

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