UKguyInUSA Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 Hello Chaps, Two days ago, I completed my latest "Hairy Stick" build- the Italeri 1/72 scale F-16 A/B NATO Falcon. This kit is discontinued and was tooled new in 1980, and in between was repackaged a few times with new box art, new parts and decals, but never new tooling. So, the tooling is 37 yrs old, but I have to say that it was pretty decent. The parts had nice fine recessed panel lines, a reasonably detailed cockpit that included two plain seats each within their own tub that had side consoles. Two instrument panels were included, but nothing else. I decided to dress up the cockpit a little, by adding 35 scratch-built parts (crude as they may be), plus adding 14 pieces of decals to the 4 side consoles and 1 to each instrument panel from my spares box. Scratch-built parts included the following: 4 pedals, 4 pedal mount brackets, 8 sections of seat-belt (4 to each seat), 2 ejector pull handles, 2 oxygen bottles (1 to each seat), 2 HUD side bracket mounts, 2 HUD lenses, 1 canopy actuator cylinder and 1 canopy actuator swing brace, 4 ejector seat guide rails (2 to each seat), 1 rear and 2 front wall sections around the Pilots seat and 1 upper wall section behind the Pilot's seat to locate the canopy actuator mechanism, and, 1 rear wall section behind the second seat. Decals were included for the two instrument panels but not for the 4 side consoles. The decals were very good- Cartograf, printed in Italy, with markings for 4 options- 2 single seat "A" version Falcons and 2 Two Seat "B" version Falcons. I chose to model a two seat version in the markings of a Royal Dutch Air Force 313th Sqn aircraft # J270. The kit went together pretty well with just small amounts of filler at wing to fuselage joints, nose to fuselage joint and vertical fin to fuselage joint. The undercarriage was rock solid for this scale of kit, so no concerns about it flexing and/or breaking. The kit also included some nice under-wing stores: 2 extra long range fuel tanks, 1 center-line fuselage fuel tank, 2 AIM 9 Sidewinder Missiles, 2 AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles (1 on each wing-tip) and 4 WCMD 420kg bombs. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this kit and it looks like a pretty decent representation of a F-16B. After building and brush painting 7 models since November 2016, it's time for a break to make a start on a man-cave at my new house so that I can begin to build larger kits and airbrush them again! I hope you enjoy the following photos, wherein the last one includes a US Quarter coin to give an idea of scale..... If you'd like to watch any or all of my build and "Final Reveal" videos for this build, then here are the links to those: "Build Update #1" "Build Update #" video: "Build Update #3" video: "Final Reveal" video: Thanks in advance for taking a look and leaving any comments, greatly appreciated! In the meantime, happy modeling guys and have fun doing it! Cheers, Martin 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buzby061 Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 Top notch! Pete 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark4700 Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 Wow, a lot going on. Nice work and finish is very nice. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luis Alfonso Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 Wonderful build Martin!! Thank you very much for sharing!!! Cheers, Luis Alfonso Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpha Delta 210 Posted February 27, 2017 Share Posted February 27, 2017 Excellent result from an old kit! I love the weathering. Well done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKguyInUSA Posted February 27, 2017 Author Share Posted February 27, 2017 21 hours ago, Buzby061 said: Top notch! Pete Thanks Pete, much appreciated 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeeJee Posted February 27, 2017 Share Posted February 27, 2017 That old kit is not the best, and de decals are bad that is a giving. But the placement of those decals is in de hand of de builder, and that need a little bit fine tuning a you can see on this picture that I took at Volkel Airbase. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKguyInUSA Posted February 27, 2017 Author Share Posted February 27, 2017 2 minutes ago, BeeJee said: That old kit is not the best, and de decals are bad that is a giving. But the placement of those decals is in de hand of de builder, and that need a little bit fine tuning a you can see on this picture that I took at Volkel Airbase. Cool, photo! For a moment, I thought you'd superimposed my model onto a blue sky background and were letting me see how it looks that way. But yes, when I applied the tail fin decals, I noticed this anomaly immediately...the two angles either side of the decal were incorrect, out by about 15`, so, if I adjusted the decal for the tiger image to be correctly aligned, I had a lot of the white section hanging off the back of the tail and the red and blue sections were too far inside of the leading edge....the blue being worst, because it is the furthest from the point of rotation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKguyInUSA Posted March 14, 2017 Author Share Posted March 14, 2017 On 2/26/2017 at 3:30 PM, Mark4700 said: Wow, a lot going on. Nice work and finish is very nice. Thanks Mark, much appreciated! Cheers, Martin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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