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!

Btw, I made a decaling goof, see if anyone can spot it

Part II of the late 2017 Viper spree that I just finished off recently, here's another Revell F-16C with markings of "Wild Thang", a Desert Storm bird from Shaw AFB. This was a Block 25 and so had both the narrow intake and P&W engine. A few other bits and bobs had to be corroborated with pictures since Revell's instructions do not account for a Block 25 or 30/32 despite these being the only C blocks that the kit gets right! The aircraft depicted is from the 363rd TFS from Shaw AFB with nose art "Wild Thang". The decals came from an old Hi-Decals set that I had since ages ago. I am not a huge fan of Hi Decals. They are quite thick and register in not that great and so avoided as many as I could (only the unit code, serial, and nose art), with all the other stencils coming from an old Superscale sheet, alas they are not made for the Revell kit and are quite incomplete, notably on all the underside bits. Note that the Shaw birds during Desert Storm did not have the walkway lines painted which saved me some trouble. Paints were all Gunze except 36118 (Tamiya XF-24 instead). The centerline pod and the bombs were taken from a Hasegawa weapons set, as was the TER. Although Vipers use a special TER set, it should be noted that in Desert Storm many of them carried the standard types. I also tinted the canopy with a mix of Tamiya transparent yellow and smoke. So mostly was just to have a Desert Storm viper on the shelf. Looks good anyway!

Late last year I went on a Viper rampage. Here's the first of them. Kit is the Revell F-16C kit which has all the bits for an early F-16C. The famous Rammstein Dragon is one of the most colorful of all USAF Vipers IMHO and I have always wanted to build it. The decals came from a Superscale set but all the stencils were swindled from an old Revell F-16A boxing, one of the few places one can get hi-viz stencils that were the norm up until the Gulf War (hey decal makers, what are you waiting for?). The aircraft was an early Block 30 which still had the narrow intakes. Gunze paints were used throughout (except 36118 which was Tamiya XF-24) with some light weathering with enamels. I decided to build the Viper unarmed aside from AIM-9s. More Vipers coming soon...

Had started this one quite a while ago and was planning to do it for the recent MiG-29 group build but did not get around to finishing it up until a few days ago. Great kit, which builds much better than the 9.13 which had some fit issues. As with the 9.13, my main gripe is the separate wingtips which are very delicate and hard to get a perfectly smooth fit. Fit is still worse overall than the Trumpeter but it is more accurate, and includes the characteristic "pinch" behind the canopy. What's best about the kit, however, is the weapons. It's a veritable weapons set in its self with plenty of AA and AG goodies of which the only omission are R-77 missiles. Tired of the overuse of Kh-31s, I decided to arm this Fulcrum with a pair of Kh-29s along with KAB-500s. It looks menacing. I also built the fuel tank but I doubt that the aircraft could have taken off with this weapons load. Note that the Trumpeter only includes just one Kh-31 (!) which is quite lame, although it does come with R-77s. For painting, I was disatissfied with the Akan SMT paint set when I built the Trumpeter, and so used my own mixes. For this one, I used the Akan paints for the T-50. They came with a greenish rather than blueish hue which I think was appropriate. My bet paid off, as I think they look spot on. Up to you to decide! Overall, highly recommended kit.

1/72 Italeri YF-23 Black Widow Built entirely OOB aside from scratch-building of part of the seat (which I lost) and self-printed AMRAAM missile markings.

Done!

Decals on! Despite the kit being in my stash for almost 20 years, they went on like a dream. Alas there were some errors. The 87-800 serial should be on both inside and outside of the stabilizers, but Italeri only included one pair, so I used them on the outside. Also, Italeri included a decal for the air-to-air refueling panel but I saw no images of the real YF-23 having any such marker (even in one pic where it's actually refueling). I also think the national insignia and badges may be slightly oversized. Custom decals were made for the AIM-120s in training mode. Also, I decided to post-shade (lighten) some of the flaps as well as the contour of the forward wing panels as this was evident on the real thing.

I'm hoping the next in line is a Ki-84. Killer bird desperately in need of a modern 1/72 tooling

Which they never bothered to do any variant of aside from the basic Block 50

Update: one the primer arrived I was ready to start. The primer worked wonders, it was really easy to cover the whole thing quite quickly and One Shot Primer has self-leveling properties that can only be described as magical. Seriously. Best non-lacquer primer on the market by quite a margin. After that, I decided to do the black basing mottling with Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey, thinned much more than usual and basically just went along spraying lots of squiggly lines over each other until it turned into a mottled mess. Tamiya is great for this since even thinned its coverage is great. Alas there was a slight catastrophe: had a surprisingly horrific airbrush splatter near the nose! I wiped out as much as I could immediately but in the process rubbed off some of the paint and primer. So I re-primed the area before finishing the mottling. There was no trace of the rubbed off bit which is a testament to how even the One Shot is. Finally, sprayed XF-24 in gradual light coats. IMHO XF-24 is the best approximation of FS 36118 in acrylic... Gunze is completely off the mark, Vallejo lacks the blue-ish hue, and hate Lifecolor. Looks great for a first attempt at black-basing! After the picture was taken I "evened out" the color of the flaps as pictures of the real thing showed them to be slightly off color (lighter) to the rest of the plane. Overall I was quite surprised at how easy quick this whole thing was. The mottling was the more time consuming bit but even that didn't take more than 15-20 minutes (discounting the re-painting of the splatter). It was only then that I realized that by that time I was already over 2/3 of the way to finish painting it which was something of a psychological boost. I was a post-shader before and so finishing the priming stage meant that the bulk of painting was still left. I also must confess that the mottling was even fun. Rather than have to be paranoid over not getting a pre-shade right, you are basically just spraying randomly with no care in the world. Jackson Pollock would be proud. I am officially a convert to black basing now and will continue to use it in all my future builds.

Some observations for anyone planning to build this: - The fit of the main fuselage parts is remarkably good (especially for an Italeri!). There were hardly any annoying corrections to do. - Be careful with gluing the two intake bits (the one that is painted gold and then the sort of intake guard). It's very flimsy and if for some reason either piece breaks off after construction, you're screwed: they'll get stuck inside and you'll have to do some major surgery. I used plasticard to ensure they were permanently fixed (see last picture). - Normally I paint and mask interior bits before the priming/painting but in this case due to the angular shape of the wheel wells and weapons bay, it's probably quicker to mask after painting and then paint white. - The instructions say 20g of nose weight but I think you can do with much less, especially if you include an open weapons bay. We'll see... !

Sorry for the huge delay. I hard ordered some black One Shot Primer but the store I ordered it from did not have it in stock and they only realized that a few days later... so I ended up buying it from a belgian buyer on eBay and just got it yesterday. In the meantime, this was the process of scratch-building the missing side of the seat as well as painting the exhaust. The YF-23 exhaust is interesting, it seems to be composed of various panels which tend to have different dark metallic colors. So what I did to reproduce this was to pre-paint some of them in black and white before painting them Vallejo Metal Color Burnt Iron (did this more than once since I screwed up). The result was splendid although it still needs some degree of white dusting as a final bit of weathering. The other issue was the gold cover above the intakes. Italeri did not mold this piece in a way in which you can reproduce the real thing so I said to hell with accuracy, just painted it Tamiya XF-31 titanium gold. Other than that, all went well although only after constructing the cockpit did I realize that the YF-23's ejection seat is painted black (like an F-15) rather than grey (like an F-16). Duh! Will have to repaint.

Love the paint chipping on the underside... what technique did you use for that?

Like the first post of this thread, I too binned the Revell Fw 190... terrible wing fit and just generally iffy all around. Horrible canopy as well. I was excited when the Airfix kit came out and lo and behold, even more awful. Binned it as well. Then built the Hasegawa and it was a dream (haven't done the Eduard yet). The Xtrakit Sea Harrier is probably the most horrible kit I've ever built to completion. Everything about it was a nightmare, even excusing its short-run nature. The most awful kit I have ever seen (but not owned or built) is the new(ish) Airfix Bf 109G-6. If in the 1980s you would have thought that a kit like that was to be produced 30 years later you'd have shot yourself.

Initial comments on this kit: it looks the part, and suffers only from raised panel lines. Being a stealth plane this is not a big issue, and having thought about sanding and re-scribing them, I have decided on keeping them as is and build the kit as it was intended to be built. The cockpit is quite detailed although like many of Italeri's kits, probably inaccurate to some degree but who cares. The open canopy option is afforded as is an open missile bay. The interior detailing is a bit crude and generic so I'll decide on the way whether to leave it open or closed (but will paint it regardless). There are two painting options, the all-36118 first prototype and the Mod Eagle-like second prototype. I will be doing the first as it looks more sinister and closer to what a flying Black Widow would look like

And so 2018 begins with a kit that has been in storage for nearly two decades... a rare 1/72 Italeri YF-23 I bought this kit when living in the US during my high school years or shortly thereafter, so circa 1996-99. The kit is dated 1994 so it was relatively new back then. This was my second foray into modelling and first "serious" attempt, this time with an airbrush (a Paasche single-action). However, I didn't actually start this kit until many years later, around the mid-naughties, but I only got around to painting the cockpit. Since then, the kit had been stored in a box somewhere in my family's house until I rescued it a few months back and brought it back with me to London. On the plus side, despite some cleaning up needed (the plastic is a bit dirty), all pieces are accounted for except one of the sides of the ACES seat which I will scratch-build with plasticard. This is quite an achievement given how easy parts can fall off and get lost in Italeri's flimsy open-ended boxes. Also given how rare this kit and how much it goes for these days on eBay, it's a privilege to have one near-intact, and even with no yellowing of the decals! Thankfully, I have another one of these in the stash (still sealed!) so I can afford to do some experimenting with this one. Namely, black-basing. This will be my first attempt at this technique which over the holidays I started getting more and more enthusiastic about. The Black Widow is an excellent starting point for this: it's all dark grey camo will be perfect for black basing. It's a big plane too and despite being only a prototype, looked grimy enough in pics: http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/510961f66bb3f7682a000012-1200/yf-23.jpg Anyway, it is an honor to start work on this gem of a kit and make it my first completed build of 2018

Just curious, are 10s in the aircraft serials or unit number acceptable? i.e. a USN bird with "110"... or a MiG-29 that's "Red 10"?

Not sure if it's just me but the cowling on the Academy looks waaaay off (too small). Kind of ruins it for me.

You're pretty much correct. Literally the only change is is an addition to one of the two main sprues with the MLU cockpit, gun piece, 2x AMRAAMs, and LAU-128 launchers (wingtip and underwing). Still no air-to-ground weapons and no pods. You're pretty much stuck doing the MLU version or the F-16A.

Having gone on a recent F-16 spree, this is what I can say: The Block 40/42 is the HARDEST in 1/72 to model. Only the Academy kit can do one straight out of the box, and that's basically because it's the only one that includes the 40/42-specific holographic HUD. There's just one problem: it's the most inaccurate Viper kit in 1/72. The nose is too straight and the wide mouth intake on the Bk 40 is laughably bad: it looks like the grin of the Cheshire Cat. On the plus side, the narrow intake on the Bk 42 is much better even if a bit small. Also, surface detail is phenomenal (much better than the plain-ish Revell and Hasegawa) as is the fit. Only other downside is lack of an open canopy option but this can be arranged with only moderate difficulty. Note that there are 4 Academy boxings and each of them can only do either a Bk 40/50 or a Bk 42/52 - only one set of intakes is included, as opposed to Revell and Hasegawa which include both. These are: - Basic "CG/CJ" kit: Bk 40/50 - "Air National Guard" kit: 42/52 - "Thunderbirds" kit: 42/52 - "ROKAF" KF-16: 42/52 (*this kit does not include Sniper/Litening pods, just Lantirns) Note that blocks 40/42 had reinforcement plates on the fuselage. None of the kits include these as photo-etch but there are some good vinyl ones you can find (Daco does a 3x for a tenner). Worth noting that not all aircraft had all plates: you need to cross check with references. This is also the case for the MLUs! Overwhelmed? You should All in all, I think the best possible Bk 40 in 1/72 scale is to use the Tamiya Bk 50, steal a holographic HUD from the Academy 42/52 kit and get some vinyl reinforcement plates. You're sorted. You can then use the Academy kit for a Bk 52... or if you got the Thunderbirds boxings, resell it (they're 52s and so the holographic HUD is surplus).

I wish the problem in 1/72 were the decals rather than the more serious one... the kits! There's no modern steel mold of the Fairey Firefly... the short-run Special Hobby kit is rare nowadays and very expensive. There's no decent alternative to the Hasegawa Avenger. Also rare to find on eBay and expensive, and even more expensive new whenever there's a rebox (sadly nowadays, mostly combo boxes) Also no modern steel molds of the Seafire. Sword and Special Hobby did a bunch of them but only a few are still available (mostly post-war types) and they're all short-run. Thankfully we have the good Eduard Hellcat and Tamiya Corsairs, the latter which would only require cropping and sanding the wings. Nothing too complicated. It is unfortunate that the most widely used BPF Corsair is the Mk. II (F4U-1A) which is from the slightly more expensive boxing vs the slightly cheaper -1D (Mk. III but not used in combat). The recent and cheaper Revell F4U-1A is actually highly inaccurate as it more closely depicts a -1D. The Academy Helldiver is also excellent and a good price given how big the darned thing is.

You don't actually have to sell them all at the same time. Make version A.... sell it for a few years... new boxing arrives of version B... sell that for a few years... then C... then you rebox A once it's being sold on eBay for twice its retail price... then repeat... etc etc This seems to me a far more lucrative strategy than sell A... rebox A... rebox A again...

Let's see... in 72 scale: for a bare minimum effort they could have produced F-4E and F-4G versions of their F kit. That's a huge number of possibilities. Never followed up their Fw 190A-8 with any other A variants. Again, minimal effort needed for this. Could have done a Hurricane Mk. I from their Mk. IIs. No combat versions of their Hawk, just the Red Arrows version. Never released a Tornado GR.4 either. Was just a matter of a few extra pieces. 48 scale: No Rafale C after their M, again minimal changes needed No F-15C either from their Strike Eagle etc etc etc I'm sure there's more but I'm not that familiar with their 1/48 repertoire It seems to me if I was in marketing and I knew a bit or two about aviation, this would be obvious: a whole new kit you can sell with less than 5% of the effort of a new mold! So to me, it's not a matter of Revell being the biggest European model company, it's how bigger/better it could be. And yes, all companies have had a number of missed opportunities, but not in the numbers that Revell has had.

Tamiya doesn't really like 1/72 scale for jets. Their F-16 was a rarity and only produced one variant vs three different boxings in their 1/48 versions. They also got some flak for initially releasing said F-16 without drop tanks, pylons, and missiles and I wonder if that soured some interest.