Viper Mania Part III - 1/72 Academy F-16C Have Glass (Ohio ANG)

[Phantome]

And finally, the last of the trio of Vipers that I finished recently.

 

This is an Academy F-16C Block 42 in the super attractive new Have Glass scheme. I used, for the first time ever, Mr Paint. It went on beautifully although I would have liked it to be a bit darker. I would strongly recommend MRP to anyone else, my only impediment to using more of them is living in a relatively small place in London where ventilation is an issue (it's lacquer-based) and yes, it smells bad.

 

The much-maligned Academy kit has its major issues, namely a nose that is too straight and which shows when looking at it sideways. It comes in either Block 40/50 or 42/52 boxings with different intake/exhaust combos. The Block 40/50's wide intake is horrible, looks like the grin of the Cheshire cat. However, the narrow intake is much better, although I think it is a tad bit too small (about 1mm); still, it looks ok next to the Revell. On the plus side, the Academy is the only Viper kit in 1/72 that includes the holographic HUD that is standard on the Block 40/42s. For that reason alone, I felt I had no choice but to use it, rather than base it on the Revell kit which aside from the HUD also requires the bulged wheel covers, etc. The Academy also has much better fit than the Revell, with less fiddly bits to worry about, like the landing gear which can get tricky on the latter (I have yet to build a modern Revell kit that does not have some landing gear issues).

 

Block 40/42 need strengthening plates, and these were taken from a vinyl set. The decals came from the Caracal sheet which is good... except for the fact that the walkway lines are too short. WAY too short, like 3-4cm more needed to cover the whole airframe. This is rather annoying, coming from a sheet that costs £13.99, it was not that hard to have added enough for two aircraft. I therefore had to mask the missing section (the part beneath the national insignia on the starboard rear fuselage) and paint with Gunze 36495. You won't be able to tell the difference unless you really really look (the painted line is slightly wider than its decaled opposite).

 

Weapons came from the kit. Masking the JDAMs was a bit annoying but looks great in the end (note the instructions do not tell you that the tail of the JDAMs is usually grey too). The kit has a nice assortment of pods too.

 

I left the aircraft with a satin-ish varnish even though it looks flat in the pictures. I need to find a way of replicating the metallic sheen seen on these birds...

 

Finally, for some reason Academy does not want you to build this with an open cockpit, however, this is not too hard to arrange yourself, I was just too lazy and wanted to take pictures of it first. Later I'll find a way of leaving it open.

 

Thanks for looking!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 4, 2018 by Phantome

[Rich G]

Really nice, nice weapon load out too, I think I might have to do a Have glass scheme at some point!

 

Rich

[Phantome]

Everyone needs to do a Have Glass once in their life

[CaracalModels]

Excellent work, thanks for sharing. Sorry about the short walkways - I can only imagine the emotional and physical toll of masking 3 centimeters of gray walkways, and will do my best to address this issue on future F-16 sheets ;-)

Edited February 6, 2018 by CaracalModels

[Phantome]

On 2/6/2018 at 9:41 PM, CaracalModels said:

Excellent work, thanks for sharing. Sorry about the short walkways - I can only imagine the emotional and physical toll of masking 3 centimeters of gray walkways, and will do my best to address this issue on future F-16 sheets ;-)

 

Well, the problem is that none of the lines are remotely the correct length. Would've just been easier to just add a number of long, equally sized lines and have the modeller cut them to size. So it's actually not just the time spent painting the extra walkway, it's cutting up little pieces to add on to lines that are too short. The walkway that is perpendicular to the fin on the starboard side is actually composed of all the 2-3mm bits that were left over from the other lines.

 

It's a great sheet aside from that issue but if you're paying top money for a 1/72 sheet, this has no excuse, it easily adds 30-45 minutes of (very tedious) work to the decalling and painting process.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Phantome

[HOUSTON]

Ooh THAT'S an OUTSTANDING  Viper.

 

SPLENDIFEROUS build  Sir..

 

very IMPRESSIVE model indeed.

 

 

[F-32]

Nice work and a great choice of scheme