RNlAF F-16A MLU J-002 "Diana"

[FortyEighter]

For the 2001 Airshow at Leeuwarden AFB, F-16A (MLU) of the Dutch Air Force was painted with a special tail scheme depicting 323 Squadron's badge of Diane (the hunter).  In latter years it has carried several other tail designs (most of which are available from Daco Products).

 

The only photos I could find of this airframe from 2001 had rather boring loadouts but I did find an undated one where it has live GBU24s and AIM120s (though with a plain tail - so I've wielded my Modeller's Licence to produce this combination)

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was built from the Eduard "Nato Falcons" limited edition boxing of the Kinetic plastic, which included resin seats, exhaust, wheels and photo etch for the cockpit and some airframe details.  It is one of my earlier efforts which never got fully finished - I'm not too happy with the fit around the nose BUT Kinetic's use of multiple choice panels to enable various Block versions to be built can lead to fit issues.

 

Painted with Gunze acrylics, decals are mostly from the kit though those on the armament were mainly from the FighterTown F-14 "extras" sheet.

 

Mike

[Luka]

Nice! I see you have chosen one of the more 'modest' Diana artworks; at some point some designs were even denied for being too racy to show in public!

[FortyEighter]

2 hours ago, Luka said:

Nice! I see you have chosen one of the more 'modest' Diana artworks; at some point some designs were even denied for being too racy to show in public!

Well the "modest" version came with the kit but I do have some of the "racier" versions unused as only bought to get some more decals.  I've built two of the variants from the Eduard boxing and ran out of of stencils.

[RMCS]

Niiiice 

[SAT69]

That's a very good looking Viper!

[F-32]

Tooled up and ready to go - very cool indeed