1/72 Italeri F-16B Tigermeet

Gallery Article by Orlando Sucre Rosales on July 6 2010

 

Hello again, fellow modelers and readers!

This time I’ll tell you the not so strange story of a cat who’s lived three and a half lives, my General Dynamics F-16B Fighting Falcon “J- 270” from the 313 Tiger Squadron of the Royal Netherlands Air Force. I purchased Italeri’s F-16C/D kit may be 14 years ago, it was perhaps one of the first kits I bought from that brand. The kit was the basic Italeri F-16 A/B with an additional sprue including parts for the C/D versions’ pods, although parts and decals were included to build the kit as any of A/B/C or D versions. It had recessed panel lines and a sufficient level of detail for its price at that time (15 years ago Italeri produced cheap kits, now they sell their old-tooled kits and their newly tooled ones at the same somewhat expensive price!) Italeri’s F-16 kits today are miles behind the newly tooled Academy offerings, but are close in price.

Well, my F-16 was born as a USAF F- 16C some 12 years ago. Construction began at the cockpit interior, which I assembled following the kit’s instructions. By that time I didn’t mind so much about accuracy and I hadn’t the same reference resources I can find today, so I painted every cockpit part following Italeri’s instructions and just added masking tape seat belts. I then inserted some nose weight and later I closed the fuselage.

The ill-fated story of this kit began when I decided to tint the cockpit canopy. I bought Humbrol’s Clear Smoke with its recommended Cellulose thinner. When I intended to airbrush this product over the clear parts, the airbrush only spattered the paint, so I ruined the canopy of the one-seater version. Then I added more thinner, mixed the paint again and tried to paint the canopy of the two-seater version, with the same results! I later tried to remove the offending paint from the canopies, but nothing worked. I learned the hard way that Humbrol’s Clear Smoke can’t be airbrushed. As I couldn’t finish my kit without a canopy, the unfinished model was put aside and so ended the first life of my F-16.

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Some years later Italeri reissued the kit with a striking box art featuring a F-16B with 1998 Tigermeet tail art and I fell in love with it. Although I knew that Italeri’s F-16s aren’t by far the best F-16 kits of the market, as the box indicated “F-16 A/B” I knew that with one of the two canopies of this new kit I could finish my first kit and another F-16 as well, so I bought the kit anyway. When I opened the kit I realized that Italeri added a sprue with two AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles (although poorly done, they were a novelty by that time.)

I decided to build the two-seater F-16B first because I always wanted to have a Tigermeet bird (by the way, the Tigermeet F-16A that was posted in July 2009 on ARC came some years later.) Therefore, the second life of my kit began with a little surgery to remove the one-seater rear cockpit part. I painted and installed the rear seat and instruments console, and then I glued the rear two-seater cockpit part to the fuselage. A lot of filing and sanding was needed before and after gluing this part. I continued the build by adding the wings, stabilizers, ventral fins and the radome. Putty was needed to smooth almost every joint, in particular the joint between the jet intake halves (whose interior were of course painted white prior to assembly) and between the whole intake assembly and the fuselage.

I finished this stage by gluing the big one piece canopy onto its place. It’s a pity that Italeri didn’t include the choice of displaying the canopy open. Worst yet, they also didn’t represent the panel lines that separate the canopy from the fuselage. I also scratch-built and glued the intake navigation lights because I didn’t like the kit’s ones, which I think are correct only for some Israeli versions. I left the undercarriage parts, the afterburner, the fuel tanks and the armament for the final assembly stage.

The model was now ready for painting, so I airbrushed several coats of satin white into the wheel wells. By that time I had the comprehensive “U.S. Military aircraft colors 1955- 2001” guide prepared by Paul Boyer of FSM magazine (later reissued into “How to paint and weather scale models,”) so I used this reference for the exterior colors, namely FS36375 Light ghost gray for the undersides, FS36270 Neutral gray for the front fuselage, the tail fin, the outer side of the ventral fins and the fuselage panels perpendicular to the wing roots, and FS36118 Gunship gray for the fuselage behind the cockpit and the wing upper surfaces.

My reference also states Neutral gray as the “standard color of F-16 radomes.” However, the radome color of the F-16 seems not to follow a rule, as many variations can be seen in different photographs. The more important thing is that the radome always looked different than the fuselage behind it. As I trusted my reference but I also wanted to show the difference between the fuselage and the radome, I used a lighter shade of MM Neutral gray (mixed with 30 % white) for the fuselage and full neutral gray for the radome, with the additional benefit that the lighter shade blended with the Light ghost gray of the undersurfaces very well.

I applied soft masks and hard masks to the model before airbrushing MM Gunship gray (mixed with 40% white). By the way, the masks for the curves behind the cockpit were drawn with a circles template.  At this stage I also painted the fuselage portion of the afterburner piece (the afterburner was later painted with Humbrol Metal Cote Polished Steel,) the three fuel tanks and the weapons.  The AMRAAM radomes were painted white, then the AMRAAM fuselages and fins and the Rockeye cluster bombs were painted FS36320 Dark ghost gray, as per kit’s instructions.  The Sidewinders were also painted with white fuselages, black radome and gun metal canards according to the instructions.

The model was then given two coats of gloss clear before decal application.  By that time I was still using Humbrol varnishes, although they remained tacky after drying, because I haven’t yet thought about finding a replacement.  I had no problems with kit’s decals, but the decal placement instructions were sometimes vague.  The only complaints I have on the decals are that all the red stencils should be orange instead, and that the refueling probe indicator seems to be oversized.  I could have replaced these with aftermarket decals I already had, but I became aware of that too late.

After all the decals were in place, the model received a coat of flat clear (except the radome, which received a coat of satin clear) and it was ready for the final assembly stage. The assembly of the undercarriage was somewhat difficult, in particular of the main undercarriage doors. I lost the little front wheel, so I used the one from the other kit. The end of the second life of my kit came with an accident. While trying to attach the Rockeye bombs (which had no attachment points) the model escaped from my hand and fell over my working table. The result was one underwing pylon and one wingtip Sidewinder launcher broken. I could repair the pylon, but not the launcher, even though I scratchbuilt the piece. The model went again, this time almost finished, to hibernation for a long time…

In 2006 I ordered a kit of a Hasegawa F-16CJ. Studying the kit’s instructions I noticed that I should have to cut the wingtip Sidewinder launchers of this kit to replace them with AMRAAM launchers. So the rebirth of my Tigermeet F-16B came by serendipity. I cut the launchers from both sides and replaced them with the ones I cut from the Hasegawa kit, which were better anyway. I glued the remainder subassemblies and pieces, but before gluing the Sidewinders I wanted to modify them as captive trainers, as seen in many photographs of Dutch F-16s and in the kit’s box art. I therefore cut the Sidewinder tail fins and painted the fuselage with blue and the radome and canards with gunmetal (actually MM Metalizer Exhaust.) I made another improvement to the model by adding static dischargers at the trailing edges of the wings, stabilizers and fin, made from monofilament and painted with Revell Steel paint.

The model was almost finished, but had no weathering because by that time I was reluctant about accenting panel lines to modern jets, because these are hardly visible even in photographs bigger than a 1/72 scale model of the airplane. In the end I accented the kit’s panel lines with a fine drawing pencil, and added gunsmoke streaks at the front of the cannon with graphite powder. I couldn’t accent all the underwing panel lines because the armament was already attached. This incarnation of the model was finished in August 2007.

The above describes the third life of my kit, but I wrote about three and a half lives at the beginning of this article. The “half life” is a “MLU” (Mid life update) I made to the kit by November 2009. After finishing the third version of the kit, I was concerned about the validity of having full ordnance, and “live” armament as well, under a Tigermeet aircraft. After further reading about Tigermeet engagements I learned that these are not merely the exhibition of nicely painted aircraft, but complete exercises similar to the famous Red Flag exercises. This fact dissipated my doubts about having full armament, but not about having live armament.

Well, in a cleaning session of my kits in early 2009 two of the Rockeyes fell from the kit. There came the idea of repainting all the Rockeyes as training units. I searched the Internet and I found photographs of these, with white bodies, a blue band and a brownish red at its bulbous tip. I found photos of inert AMRAAMs, and I also finally found a full photograph of “J- 270” at the time it wore the 1998 Tigermeet tail art, unfortunately without underwing stores. (I previously just had a photograph of the tail alone.) In this new (for me) photograph I saw that the canopy frames were black and that the radome was darker than I had already painted it, and that the aircraft were not as clean as I supposed before.

The “MLU” of the kit then consisted of the following:

  • The Rockeyes were painted as inert units, as described.

  • The AMRAAMs were painted as inert units. Painting the blue bands wasn’t enough, as I realized that the bodies should be FS36375 instead of FS36320 as I painted before, that the radomes should be smaller than suggested by the line engraved on the body, and that the fins and canards should be bare metal. Therefore, the AMRAAMs were fully painted again. Even the blue stripes were masked and airbrushed, together with the ones from the Rockeyes!

  • The canopy frames were masked and painted MM Interior black.

  • The radome was masked and painted with a mix of Humbrol 156 and white (4:1) to represent a darker shade of neutral gray.

  • The panel lines were accented a bit more, and some dirt was added to the wing upper surfaces. I used a photograph of another Dutch F- 16 in flight as reference.

  • The metal ring before the afterburner received a subtle coat of Tamiya Clear blue, while the afterburner itself received a coat of Gunze Smoke, in order to achieve a more realistic look, but the Smoke didn’t worked as I expected.

  • The flat parts of the kit received a coat of Xtracrylic flat clear and the radome received a coat of Polly S satin clear, to kill the tackiness of the Humbrol varnishes I used previously.

  • During the MLU the pitot tube broke beyond repair, so I replaced it with a piece of hypodermic needle and a piece of copper wire inserted into one end.

  • I added the static discharger that goes at the top of the fin, which I missed before.

  • The navigation lights were painted again, with Chrome silver, Tamiya clear red and a mix of Tamiya clear blue and green.

Well, after the MLU (better yet, three and a half lives) I’m really satisfied with my F-16B of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, with its full inert weapons load and its nice Tigermeet tail art, although it doesn’t have details such as the thin ribs that run along the radome and the parachute end cap, among others. It’s since then one of my favourite models.

I’d like to add a commentary about the kit’s armament. When I was searching for photographs of the cluster bombs, I found several articles describing how harmful these weapons have been over the civil population of the countries were they have been used, even years after the weapons were dropped. In fact, many countries have signed an agreement proscribing their use from now on. I want to make clear that I used the Rockeyes in my kit only for aesthetic purposes and because they were already included within the kit. I think that the kit would loss a lot of its artistic value if I’d remove its Rockeyes.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the story and the photographs. By the way, I included just two photographs of the model before the MLU, it had grey Rockeyes. The remainder of the photographs portrait the model after the MLU, with its white Rockeyes.

I dedicate this model to my wife Omaira, who likes real tigers very much, in our 25th wedding anniversary!

Thanks for watching and reading. Greetings from Caracas , a city whose skies have seen many F-16s from the Venezuelan Air Force (FAV.) By the way, my next F-16 build will be a F-16A from the FAV, with the surplus canopy of the kit presented in this article.

Orlando Sucre Rosales

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Photos and text © by Orlando Sucre Rosales