Academy 1/48th F-16C Fighting Falcon

[Peter W]

A few years ago I bought an F/A-18 kit from our favourite auction site and when it arrived the seller had included this kit in the package as an extra gift. A wonderful act of generosity and another F-16 in the pile. I'd read much about this kit and most of it maligning how poor it was but it still looked buildable. Then when the F-16 group build came up I thought that it might be an excuse to get on with it. Alas, as I was already building 2 others, it didn't get too far. Wind forward to last week when I made the decision to stop getting more boxes from the loft and start/finish some that were already in the modelling room. A lot of the comments on this kit were along the lines of it being a Hasegawa clone, so I decided to test the theory and try fitting some Aires extras, no mean feat when you consider that they don't usually fit the kit that they're intended for. As it happens the cockpit fits pretty good and no more hard work than expected. The plan is to mark this one up as an aircraft from the 527th Aggressor Squadron whilst based at RAF Bentwaters in the late 80's to mid 90's. This means a combination of small intake/big exhaust which, with the Aires GE Block 30/40/50/60 Exhaust, is possible with this kit. Depending on how it goes I may add a few more bits to it but for now just cockpit and exhaust are planned.

Onto some pictures: -

The Kit

The Aires cockpit dry fitted in place

More soon

Pete

[phildagreek]

I've built this in the last couple of years and I have another in the stash. It's not bad little kit, the only problems being the lack of detail in the intake area - I ended up covering it with FOD protection and I tried to use the kit decals, they were a nightmare to get on, but were so thin they looked pretty good. Good to see the Aires pit fits in, my second one will benefit from that little update.

Good effort so far.

[Peter W]

I finally decided to pick this kit back up and am truly shocked that it's been over 3 years since I started it, where does time go? I've been picking away at the cockpit for a while, when the mood struck, and that 's just about ready to be glued in. I also took a look at the plastic parts for the undercarriage bays and legs and they really are shocking, so the Aires bays and SAC metal legs have been added to the build. I was talking with a fellow Britmodeller and office worker yesterday, Stoohoo, and said that I kept reminding myself of the statement "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should". This build is more like "Just because you shouldn't, doesn't mean you can't". The Academy kit isn't the greatest piece of plastic ever moulded but I'm on a mission now to make it better. Anyway, a few pictures to bring it all up to date:

 

The cockpit dry fitted and ready for some glue:

 

 

Then the undercarriage bays cleaned up and dry fitted, which fit pretty well to be honest:

 

Fitting the SAC undercarriage will be fun though, a little bit of chopping and cleaning up but definitely possible.

 

Back soon with some more

 

Pete

[Peter W]

Finished hacking about the SAC undercarriage set and it's all dry fitted in place ready for the next phase. All in all it's turned out quite good and wasn't the hardest job to make it fit the Aires bays. The main gear needed the white metal casting cutting out between the legs and then cleaning up. The front leg casting was pretty poor and nowhere near as good as the Aires parts, so most of it was cut away and thrown in the bin. I just used the lower part of the leg and super glued it to the Aires parts.

 

 

Just need to glue it all in and get some paint on now.

[Peter W]

Been pressing on with this one and a little bit more to show. As is pretty well documented, this kit isn't the best of fits in both the wing to fuselage area and the intake trunking. I took the plunge and glued the top wing to the fuselage before gluing the bottom fuselage on. This created a few gaps underneath but did minimise a big gap that would have been on the top otherwise. Pretty pleased with how this turned out in the end, a little bit of filling to do still but really not that bad. The next step was the nose cone which, again, wasn't as bad as I'd feared. The worst but was the intake trunking which was an awful fit and took a bit of filing and sanding, followed by a re-scribe to get something passable. The inside of the intake was not even worth the effort of cleaning up so I'm going to fill it up with a Steal Beech Intake plug. The other thing I've added to the build are the gorgeous Royale Resin early F-16 wheels, a really beautiful piece of resin craftsmanship. Onto some pictures:

 

The Wings

 

The Nose Cone

 

The Intake

 

Something to fill the Intake with

 

And lastly those lovely wheels

 

Back soon

Pete