F-16ADF "L'ultima Diana"

[Skinny_Mike]

Hey Jake - Thanks for straightening me out on what needs to go. I've been considering picking up both of the Viper guides because I have a Hase Blk40 that's next in the pile. I just haven't pulled the trigger yet. Not really sure what I'm waiting for.

Hey Louis - thanks for stopping by!

Paolo - Thanks for the link. those are really helpful. I have an extra set of the bird slicers from my Kinetic F-16I kit that I was hoping to be able to modify for this build. But looking at the kit piece it may be better to just rebuild the whole assembly for both of them. Not exactly sure yet. My scratch building skills are pretty bad, so maybe I'll try to build new ones and if that fails, I'll just try to mod the kit pieces.

[Paolo Maglio]

Paolo - Thanks for the link. those are really helpful. I have an extra set of the bird slicers from my Kinetic F-16I kit that I was hoping to be able to modify for this build. But looking at the kit piece it may be better to just rebuild the whole assembly for both of them. Not exactly sure yet. My scratch building skills are pretty bad, so maybe I'll try to build new ones and if that fails, I'll just try to mod the kit pieces.

build new onew by your own, it is very easy if you start from small plastic strips, just 2 cuts for each antenna...

Edited March 2, 2012 by Paolo Maglio

[Paolo Maglio]

also mind the reinforcing plates on the air intake:

[Skinny_Mike]

Had some house guests last weekend that kept me out of the model cave. But have been working on some of the smaller updates, like removing the GPS antenna and getting the front intake cleaned up. Also started scrath building the barrel end of the M61 cannon, but I realized that you won't see it, so I've kinda abandoned that effort.

In the mean time, I have been thinking about what to put under the wings. I'm not sure what I want to do, and hoped to get some suggestions from the readers! My options are:

1. Totally slick, yep not even the wing tanks. I like this idea. Shows off the jet and the artwork, with out the distraction of stuff under the wings to dirty it up! But this option is not realistic - I mean come on when is the last time anyone saw a Viper without external tanks!

2. Just the wing tanks and nothing else. I like this option. Its clean and realistic for an F-16. But I don't think this particular aircraft was configured that way. I believe it always had the missle rails on stations 2&7

3. Same 2, but with the missle rails on 2&7. This is a confirmed load for this particular aircraft, but I don't like it. Just looks weird!

4. Last option. The max load if you will - 2 wing tanks, 1 centerline tank, travel pods under each wing and the missle rails. So the benifits here - this really was a load out on this jet. Its symetrical and looks ok and with the bright yellow travel pod, adds a splash of color as my girl friend would say. But - that's alot of stuff under the wings.

So - what does everyone think?

Thanks for following.

Mike

[Paolo Maglio]

2 possible combinations:

QRA: she actually served as alarm aircraft for scramble on May 23rd 2010 with 1 AIM-120C-5 and 1 AIM-9L plus 2 tanks.

This way:

ACMI: in the last 12 days of Aril 2010 she dogfight against Israelis F-16 and F-15 over Sardinia with central fuel tank 1 Automatic-ACMI pod and 1 dummy Sidewinder.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Paolo Maglio

[Skinny_Mike]

I have not been moving as quickly as I would like on this kit. But here is some new progress. I've got the intake all done and some of the little bits taken care of.

Hopefully I'll have a new update soon. Weather was pretty bad this weekend, so I'm getting some good time at the bench.

Thanks for looking in, comments are always welcome!

See you soon.

Mike

[Skinny_Mike]

Hey everyone,

I’ve got a pretty big update this time, and the plane is starting to look like a viper! So the first step was to install the intake to the bottom of the aircraft. I did this a little out of order because dry fitting was showing that the fit was a little off and was going to need some work to get it onto the airplane, so I wanted to do that with minimum structure in the way. With quite a bit of fiddling I finally got all the parts to fit together. You can see in the photos that there was a pretty substantial gap at the rear of the intake, on both sides, that needed to be filled with some plastic card. Here’s how it looks…

I also remembered to add the little hole in the splitter.

Then I put the fuselage halves together. The fit is pretty rough on these are well. Huge gaps along the seam from the wing forward.

Filled in the gap with putty, used the nail polish remover trick and a little bit of sanding with some fine grit sand paper to clean up the seam. Ended up pretty good I think.

Well it looks like an airplane. One thing I did like was how Kinetic handled the wings. The halves are attached to the top and bottom of the fuselage. No need to fight with getting the dihedral right and the wings to look even. They just are! Good job there!

So next stop is to get the wheels bays set up and ready. I’ve got the Early Viper Guide from Reid Publications, so I may try to add in some extra detail to the bays!

Thanks for looking.

See you next time!

[Skinny_Mike]

Spending some time at the bench today, getting the little details on the fuslage set up. Looking on the aft end, the airframe has 4 cutouts for chaff/flare dispensers.

Looking at Jake's book I think the forward two dispensers is an addition to the later airframes and therefor should not be there. Unfortunatly I don't have a clear picture of this area. The kit comes with blank out panels, but I don't think those are correct either. Anyone have any ideas that these two cut outs should look like?

Thanks for the help

Mike

[jmel]

Install the blank plates, then fill the area smooth. They don't exist on the Block 15 ADF. Pics of that area are on page 130 of the Early Viper Guide.

You may also want to get rid of that rectangular panel forward of the gun muzzle. It's not there on the ADF.

Jake

[Skinny_Mike]

Install the blank plates, then fill the area smooth. They don't exist on the Block 15 ADF. Pics of that area are on page 130 of the Early Viper Guide.

You may also want to get rid of that rectangular panel forward of the gun muzzle. It's not there on the ADF.

Jake

Thanks Jake, appreciate the help. That panel has been filled and sanded, but still shows up with the panel lines and rivets dis-colered, so the pictures look like its still there.

BTW - your viper guides are awsome! Loving them both.

Mike

[Paolo Maglio]

Mike, about the two remaining chaff dispensers: these were usually covered wit a blank protection but chaff was added when Diana went to Sardinia to dogfight with the Israelis.

So if you are going to add the two 370 gal fuel tanks close all the chaff dispensers.

If you will add just the central 300 gal fuel tank you can add the chaff dispensers.

[Skinny_Mike]

Mike, about the two remaining chaff dispensers: these were usually covered wit a blank protection but chaff was added when Diana went to Sardinia to dogfight with the Israelis.

So if you are going to add the two 370 gal fuel tanks close all the chaff dispensers.

If you will add just the central 300 gal fuel tank you can add the chaff dispensers.

Thanks Paolo. I think I'm going to rebuild the blank panels. The fit of the kit supplied parts are just awful! I'll have some pictures up tomorrow - I hope.

[Skinny_Mike]

Greetings all and Happy Easter

Well I didn’t start on the MLG bay as I had planned. Instead I spent some time doing some of the detailing while the gear wasn’t on to get in the way. So let’s start at the back. First step was to fill and remove the two forward chaff/flare buckets as they don’t exist. I used the blank out panels supplied by Kinetic, which are way too small for the openings anyway. Puttied up the gaps and sanded it all smooth. Then for the aft buckets I installed the blank out panels again. But as you can see in the photo the fit is awful. So I made my own from some .020 inch plastic sheet. These are recessed into the cutout, which is how it looks like they fit in my references. I also made a little indent in each corner to represent the mounting screws for the panel. The diameter is a little big but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out overall. I’ll paint them a slightly different shade of grey and give them some wear and tear to add character I suppose.

Then on the front of the intake I removed the mounting points for the targeting pods. Chopped them off and sanded the area smooth. It all feels pretty smooth but once I get some primer on there, I’ll make sure there aren’t any parts that need to be cleaned up further.

Lastly I added the stiffener plates. This aircraft only seems to have the lawnmower blades on the fuselage spine. The plates came from the Orion Models set. These are not as detailed as the ones from Cross Delta but I can’t seem to find those anywhere. Under a coat of paint they’ll look good. I positioned them according to the instructions plus reference photos, but they look too far forward to me. What do you guys think?

So that’s where I am for now. I have a few more details to work on and then it’s on to the landing gear. I’m going with white metal gear legs, at least for the MLG and I have a set of Royale Resin wheels. Plan is to start on that tomorrow.

And here’s an overview so far. I think I need to tidy up the workbench; it’s getting a little cluttered!

Hope the Easter Bunny is good to everyone and thanks for following along.

Mike

[Skinny_Mike]

So a short update for tonight, well short for you, this was about 3 hours of work for me!

I started work on the MLG legs. The kit legs do not have the landing lights on the MLG as it is supposed to depict an MLU aircraft where the landing lights are relocated to the nose gear door. I decided to go with the aftermarket legs because they had the landing lights already attached, which keeps me from trying to figure out how to scratch build them. I used the SAC set. The detail is also much better than the kits, but overall the light position was the main selling point! This was my first time with metal gear and I am pretty pleased with the result.

So the first step was to add the electrical wire to the landing lights. I used some copper wire for this and I tried a new technique for me. I soldered the copper wire on, and it turned out pretty good. Could have been better, but like I said I tried something new and expanded my bag of tricks. Once that was complete I fashioned some brackets for the hydraulic lines to the brakes out of plastic stock. I then used some copper wire again to run the hydro lines. My original plan was to solder the copper wire to the accumulator (I think) at the end of the gear, but alas I got a little too ambitious! Turns out I melted the end up pretty good. Oh well – better luck next time I suppose! And here are the pictures of the finished product, well sort of...

Next step is to get some primer on the gear and a coat of paint. Then I’ll add the sensor wire that runs up the bottom leg, from the brakes.

Thanks for looking.

Mike

[Paolo Maglio]

Mike, you are doing a very good job! Problem with plates is due to the fact that ADF have slightly longer plates at the base of the fins and no aftermarket company make them that big and long!

Mind you also need plates for the wing roots

and you need to scratchbuild another plate for the left side air intake, just like this:

Edited April 10, 2012 by Paolo Maglio

[Paolo Maglio]

on the right side of the intake you may want to drill some holes, these are for attaching the cheak pylon (even if never used on ADF!)

then you have to scratchbuild these two plates on each side of the canopy:

finally about the chaff dispensers: when blank panel is fitted it is usually cleaner than the rest of the fuselage, here is one full:

Edited April 10, 2012 by Paolo Maglio

[Skinny_Mike]

Mike, you are doing a very good job! Problem with plates is due to the fact that ADF have slightly longer plates at the base of the fins and no aftermarket company make them that big and long!

Thanks for the kind words Paolo. The key is I'm having fun with this project and improving my skills quite a bit.

I have a question for all those F-16 experts out there concerning the ADF spotlight. Looking at my refernece pictures from the internet and the great pictures in Jake's book, I looks to me that the spot light sits recessed of the panel on the nose and basically there is just a hole in that panel that the light sits behind and shines through. Also it looks like the light is pointed at a slight angle towards the nose of the aircraft and is not really perpendicular to the fuselage of the aircraft. Am I seeing those pictures right?

Thanks for the help

Mike

Edited April 12, 2012 by Skinny_Mike

[Paolo Maglio]

Looking at my refernece pictures from the internet and the great pictures in Jake's book, I looks to me that the spot light sits recessed of the panel on the nose and basically there is just a hole in that panel that the light sits behind and shines through. Also it looks like the light is pointed at a slight angle towards the nose of the aircraft and is not really perpendicular to the fuselage of the aircraft. Am I seeing those pictures right?

Thanks for the help

Mike

Yes, I think you are right Mike, light is pointed slightly up and forward here you are some more photos shot from different angles:

[Skinny_Mike]

Hey Guys – sorry its been a while since my last post. Life and a bunch of set-backs have kept me from being farther on this build. Frankly I’ve found when I get frustrated the best course of action is to set the kit aside and take a breath, which is what I did. Spent a little time painting my FW-190 as well.

So – last we left I had wired up the main landing gear. Then I started painting the gear and the bays. I used MM Insignia White. Here is where disaster struck. I’ve always had problems with white and gloss paints. 2 wrongs didn’t make a right in this case! First problem was that the white went on too think, everywhere! All the detail was obscured on the landing gear legs and it went on really think in the bays. And to add insult to injury, the white somehow clogged up my airbrush, to the point that I had to send it back to Paasche to get them to clean it out for me! :explode: Yeah – its been tough modeling lately!

So I took a break. My airbrush is home (Thanks Chuck P. at Paasche!) and I stripped the paint from the main landing gear legs, which took all the added details off as well, and started over. All the hydro lines are back on, I primered with Tamiya white primer right from the rattle can, then painted the gear and parts of the gear bay with Lifecolor flat white. Then I painted the lines black and blue based on my reference pictures. I left the brake lines white as they seem to be either white or natural metal. Then I started assembling everything. I also started adding some of the details. I won’t go crazy here, just a few added details. Here are the pictures of the gear bays right now. Sorry – I forgot to take any pics along the way.

So on to a litte good news. As Paolo showed us above, The Itialian ADF F-16 has a different style of the lawn mower blade reinforcement plates then the American F-16s do. After doing a little research, I found that Astro decals (formerly Daco decals I think) have a set of the right reinforcing plates.

http://ultra.glo.be/daco/

So I ordered up a set, peeled off the Orion plates (first picture) and replaced them with the Astra/Daco ones. They look much much better. (second picture)

And the set also comes with the fuel tank reinforcement plates for the wings.

So there we are. Hopefully there will be smooth sailing from here! Doh – I forgot I still need to deal with the tail!

And now I'm off to the Paso Robles wine festival! Thanks for checking in!

Mike

[Skinny_Mike]

Sorry - apparently got a duplicate post!

Edited May 18, 2012 by Skinny_Mike

[JesniF-16]

Wow, I guess I'm not the only one to have problems with MM gloss white and other gloss colors <_< I have switched to Tamiya acrylic gloss white and black and the paint sprays beautifully IMO. It looks like you're moving forward again, nice detailing work going on.

/Jesse

[Skinny_Mike]

Wow, I guess I'm not the only one to have problems with MM gloss white and other gloss colors <_< I have switched to Tamiya acrylic gloss white and black and the paint sprays beautifully IMO. It looks like you're moving forward again, nice detailing work going on.

/Jesse

Hey Jesse - I've been having bad luck with most gloss whites. All the other gloss colors I seem to be ok with. Although ironically I got MM insignia white to airbrush just fine on my Corsair's tail. That was why I was using it for the white here. Maybe it has to do with covering the details. Not sure. Anyway - thanks for looking in, and BTW your Tomcat is looking great. I'm hoping to follow your example when I finally start my painting.

[DACO Products]

The Itialian ADF F-16 has a different style of the lawn mower blade reinforcement plates then the American F-16s do. After doing a little research, I found that Astra decals (formerly Daco decals I think) have a set of the right reinforcing plates.

http://ultra.glo.be/daco/

So I ordered up a set, peeled off the Orion plates (first picture) and replaced them with the Astra/Daco ones. They look much much better.

Just to avoid confusion:

Astra is a subdivision of DACO, just to keep non-Belgian Air Force related items ( = Astra range) separated from Belgian AF topics (= DACO range)...

As these reinforcement plates are used also on Belgian AF F-16s, this set is available under the DACO range

But I'm happy you like them

Danny

[Skinny_Mike]

Just to avoid confusion:

Astra is a subdivision of DACO, just to keep non-Belgian Air Force related items ( = Astra range) separated from Belgian AF topics (= DACO range)...

As these reinforcement plates are used also on Belgian AF F-16s, this set is available under the DACO range

But I'm happy you like them

Danny

Thanks for clearing that up. I really wasn't sure what the story was. But the reinforcment plates are really fantastic. Do you know when the separte sets will be available? I pillaged the ones I used from a set of decals and I need to replace them!

Thanks

Mike

[Paolo Maglio]

long time no update Mike are you in trouble?