Here
are some pics of my recently completed 1/72 Hasegawa F-16D that utilized the
Israeli Barak boxing of this kit.
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images below to see larger images
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This
kit comes with a resin spine, RWR bulges for the sides of the nose, a blade
aerial for the top of the spine and a separate rear para-brake housing tip for
the spine. The kit also comes with
the updated Block 40 wheels, big-mouth intake and RWR beer cans for the wings.
I intend to do a few other big-spined variants of the Viper and since this was a
very limited-run edition of this kit, I made an RTV copy of the kit part and
cast a few for future projects. The one applied to this kit is one of
those copies. The original spine includes the three chaff & flare
dispensers on the sides as seen on Block 30 variants... so I filled the
forward opening on each side because the aircraft I wanted to replicate was a
Block 40.
The RWR bulges on
the sides of the nose are scratch-built out of Evergreen styrene strip as I was
not impressed with the resin ones provided in the kit. I also
scratch-built the pre-cooler intake above and behind the left main gear strut,
along with the EW antenna below the intake, forward of the front strut and
slightly to the left of center-line. The HUD-repeater screen above the
WSO's rear console was done from Evergreen styrene as well. The EW
fairings on the sides of the intakes were taken from the RM F-16 kit and cleaned
up as they had some pretty nasty sink holes from the molding process.
The Litening III targeting pod on the right side of the intake is a shortened
and modified Lantirn from a Hasegawa weapons set, along with the GBU-12's from
an Ha weapons set too. I'm not positive the Israeli's have used the
configuration I modeled for the LGB's, but I liked the look of the slant
configuration on the TER's so this is the way I did it. I scratch-built
Python V's for the wing-tips from Evergreen tubing and styrene. They're
generally not carried on the wing-tips operationally due to weight and G-load
restrictions, but I took artistic license again and placed them on the tips as
they look so different in that position. There are pictures of static
Baraks on the ground with them loaded this way, but none shown in flight.
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images below to see larger images
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Markings were a combination of kit decals, Isradecals and
Aeromaster. I re-mixed the sand color that I applied to the upper
surfaces, trying to get a closer approximation to that of the Scorpion emblem on
the tail as I felt that the ones provided in the Isradecals sheet were a little
too "pink", but this turned out to be an optical illusion... because
once it was applied to the kit, it actually seemed to blend a bit better.
It's not a dead-on match,
but close enough in my humble opinion.
Wheels for the Block 30 were used in this build
as the aircraft modeled had the B30's instead of the B40's. The rest of
the build was done pretty much straight out of the box and I'm thrilled with the
results as I've always wanted one of the big spine Israeli Vipers in my
collection.
J.C.
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images below to see larger images
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