Hello once again!
It's good to be back here after going on a long hiatus due to my busy schedule
and here I am, back here with my fourth article. So without much further ado,
presenting to you once again, Academy's brand new 1/72 F-16CG Fighting Falcon of
the 8th FW based in Kunsan Air Base, South Korea. I had initially thought that I
had enough of 1/72 kits and was ready to move on to 1/48, but when I happened to
chance upon that kit in my favorite model shop, I just realised that I had to do
another F-16 since the entire 8th FW has recently transitioned into Block
40 F-16s and I also thought of giving Academy a shot. Well I should say
that the kit is very good!
Click on
images below to see larger images
I took a few weeks
to complete this plane as I could only afford one hour a day in assembling it
while the rest of the time was spent on my studies. To be honest, this kit was
the most detailed 1/72 kit that I've seen so far but it was plaqued with
all sorts of problems. One notable incident was that the wheel well wasn't
assembled properly and I only found that out after cementing the 2 fuselage
parts together with the main landing gear. And the levelness of the wings
was VERY obvious when the gear was slanting. In the end with no choice, I
had to perform a very risky and painstaking job of forcing open the fuselage to
correct the wheel well. And yes, parts broke like the AOA sensor on the right
side of the nose. I had to scratch-build a new sensor in the end. But thank God there was no serious damage to the fuselage after forcing them apart. Now
you should experience the sense of tension and suspense when trying to
force open the parts! Cos you don't know wha t's gonna' break next or what's gonna'
happen.
Another
problem was the decals for the missiles. As the decals came in one piece, it was
tough trying to get the decal in the exact position especially on the AIM-9X missile.
At one time I got so frustrated and almost wanted to ditch the missiles for the
conventional AIM-9Ms. But fortunately, I got the decals in the desired position
after spending nearly 15 minutes!
Other additional
items added to the model was a GBU-10 LGB and an LAU-129 launcher unit robbed
from the Hasegawa weapons set mounted on the left wing. Other than that, all
other weapons came from the kit. The AMRAAMs provided were slightly wrong on the
rear fins and was corrected by cutting away a small section of it using a pen
knife.
There was a seam of
the canopy and that had always been my worst nightmare! I do not have
the file that is used for removing the seam so I ended up using a pen knife to
carefully scrape away the seam before using a wet ice cream stick to file the
remaining portions of the seam to reduce it's visibility. Now the seam is almost
invisible to the eye unless you look close enough.
This plane was
heavily weathered to add to the effect of realism to a jet that is fully armed
with live ammunition and ready to carry out it's mission of 'DEFENDING
THE BASE', 'ACCEPT FOLLOW-ON FORCES' and 'TAKE THE FLIGHT NORTH'. That's the
mission of the 8th FW in Kunsan Airbase, South Korea. The burn marks on the
afterburners were easy to create. I simply painted the inside of the burners
white before applying a layer of smoke gray over the white once it dried. After
the smoke gray dried, another layer of white but this time more diluted, was
painted over the smoke gray. And there you have it. A realistic afterburner that
is easy and effective to create without having to use a lot of methods.
This kit was
generally a joy to build despite encountering problems. Overall I'm satisfied
with Academy's products and I'll be looking forward to many more models by
Academy in the future. Some pictures were taken with my other F-16s to add more
drama to the situation. This kit is very good and I will strongly recommend it!
Ok enough said. Will
let the rest of the pictures speak for themselves. Hope you'll like them. Please
feel free to comment on the plane or letting me know how I can continue to make
improvements on future jets yea?
If you've read this
article up to this point. Congratulations! Cos you've just increased your
capacity to persevere! Haha...
Till then,
Cheers!!
Xue
Qian
Singapore
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images below to see larger images
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