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Hi everyone, Here is one more project I completed back in 2020 somewhere mid-year but it took me a while to post an RFI report here. This time this is Kinetic's F-16I Sufa naturally in IDF colours: I do have a lot of interest in IDF aircraft due to their operational history but more importantly because the Israeli were always trying to sqeeze maximum of the assets they were obtaining which resulted in aircrafts' versions with the ultimate characteristics. F-16I modification of the famous Viper is a perfect example of that approach. Construction was not very complex. The mainframe structure has just two parts - full upper fuselage from radome to airbrakes that is molded together with wings and lower fuselage. However then you get a lot of parts to create a standard Viper - multi-part intake, main gear bay, rudder and stabilisers, cockpit tub, etc, as well as some Sufa specific parts such as ventral spine, conformal tanks, various antennae, pylons and so on. Fit was good to great although frontal engine section that creates intake with front gear bay requires dry-fitting. The nastiest part being intake to lower fuselage joint where you would probably need to make a thin plastic insert to close the gap between the two subassemblies. Another area to watch out is the internal intake side. Intake is made of five parts which creates joints where real aircraft has the smooth curved surface. At the same time the intake is very deep and needs to be painted somehow if assembled and sanded unpainted. So I chose to paint parts prior to assembly and sacrifice smooth surface in favour of better and easier paintjob. I did apply some aftermarket parts including Eduard cockpit PE set and Aires resin exhaust. Original exhaust is quite simplistic so the model definitely benefits from the resin option. Lastly Master pitot and angle of attack probes were used. Kit decals are applied. They are Cartograph printed so are of exquisite quality and include abundant quantity of technical stencils. Weapons are all coming from the aircraft set which contains a great range of IDF armament including Python 4 AAMs, Rafael Spice guided bombs, Delilah and Popeye cruise missiles, as well as a range of navigation and targeting pods all with a set of decals. The only thing that the kit unfortunately lacks is the standard F-16 centerline fuel tank. I hanged the AN/AXQ-14 targeting pod instead of the centerline tank although I'm still not fully sure if that pod is needed with weapon combination that I've chosen. Paints used are Hobby Color H310, H312, H313 for top surface, vallejo 70.990 for the lower side and lightened H305 for the radome and other unpainted plastic covers. The green H312 needs attention as it matches to the green colour used by IDF in the post Six-Day war period but not to the contemporary green. To bring H312 to the lighter modern green tone you need to mix it with white at about 1:1 proportion. As you can see the Kinteic kit converts to a very nice model with a lot of details and very well representing this interesting Viper variant. However the worst thing about the kit is the kit's instruction... The manufacturer decided that the true modeller should be working with references that is why: - no decal guide for weaponry is provided - no paint guide for weaponry is given either - some mainframe parts are not indicated on the assembly steps while some are indicated wrongly - paint references are sporadic - the black and white colour profiles do not show demarcation line between the green and tan areas - not all stencils are indicated on the stencil placement guide ...so you need to work with walkarounds A LOT!!! This superarmed beast took quite a bit of my time on and off during more than a year. But glad it turned out nicely and I must say it looks really cool on the shelf with its bright colours and serious armament under the wings. Hope you like it too Kind regards, Dennis

Here's my take on the Kinetic's 1/72 Sufa kit. Built OOB with kit decals. Not bad kit, but with lots of minor snags and quirks that really do get you down, but in the end it looks like a sufa. Used various colours for LGG on the undersides, pylons and fuel tanks namely, MM LGG, HU and Tamiya XF-66 and XF-83. Uppers were done in MM Acryl sand, Gunze H72 and H310, (72 for the CFTs and 310 for the body) and HU 23 sky green. All the dielectrics brush painted with Italeri 36321. AK wash and Alclad Matt cote sealed this one off. [url=http://s856.photobucket.com/user/sdaneels/media/AZ%20Model%20IK-3/Kinetic%20172%20Sufa/IMG_8949_zpse56270a7.jpg.html][/url