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CD48160 - 1/48 F-16 "Viper" - The Early Years


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Here is my solution.  I used parts from the Otaki, Early Tamiya and a first issue Hasegawa F-16A.  There is a panel line just forward of the front edge of the windscreen where I cut the Hasegawa fuselage and then mated the Otaki nose to the Hasegawa fuselage.  I then assembled the intake trunk and cut 1/4 inch out of the length at the rear edge and mated that to the fuselage. I then puttied and sanded until it was all good.  I took the Hasegawa fin and sanded off all the limbs and bumps and used that.  I reduced the cord of the wings by taking .060 off the leading edge of the Hasegawa wings, and .080 off the trailing edge.  I reduced the span of the wings by about a tenth of an inch off each wing.   I used the sub fins from the Otaki kit, the stabs from the Tamiya kit, as well as the nose gear door, pilot tube, wheels and ejection seat.  Its not 100% accurate by any means but it looks the part visually.  I am still decaling this beast which I call my frankenviper.  

 

IMG_0532.JPG

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4 minutes ago, aircal62 said:

Here is my solution.  I used parts from the Otaki, Early Tamiya and a first issue Hasegawa F-16A.  There is a panel line just forward of the front edge of the windscreen where I cut the Hasegawa fuselage and then mated the Otaki nose to the Hasegawa fuselage.  I then assembled the intake trunk and cut 1/4 inch out of the length at the rear edge and mated that to the fuselage. I then puttied and sanded until it was all good.  I took the Hasegawa fin and sanded off all the limbs and bumps and used that.  I reduced the cord of the wings by taking .060 off the leading edge of the Hasegawa wings, and .080 off the trailing edge.  I reduced the span of the wings by about a tenth of an inch off each wing.   I used the sub fins from the Otaki kit, the stabs from the Tamiya kit, as well as the nose gear door, pilot tube, wheels and ejection seat.  Its not 100% accurate by any means but it looks the part visually.  I am still decaling this beast which I call my frankenviper.  

 

IMG_0532.JPG

 

IM......PRESSIVE.  Well done.  A lot of work I'm not sure I'd want to do, but this is very well done.

 

Chappie

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I have two Hasegawa F-16As.  I have always wanted to do a red white and blue F-16, so I guess I can build one of the FSD options.

 

 

Edited by Kurt H.
i re-read the thread and realized i made a mistake
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2 hours ago, habu2 said:

Only FSD #1 (0745) wore the RWB scheme.  All the other FSD jets were variations of gray...

 

Yep, so one RWB jet for me.  The gray scheme with a dark radome is cool look as well. I would really like to do a cloud scheme yf-16 but I do not want to go down the path to try and find a suitable YF-16 kit. 

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5 hours ago, cag_200 said:

Very nice. I need to deal with this later on (otaki-tamiya/hasegawa - all in white sprue plastic).

The YF- thing is: the gun needs to be located  aside the cockpit ejection seat, not aft.

Very true about the gun.  After all the cutting and fitting I decided that the gun issue was one I was going to skip.  

 

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On 3/7/2020 at 2:20 PM, aircal62 said:

Here is my solution.  I used parts from the Otaki, Early Tamiya and a first issue Hasegawa F-16A.  There is a panel line just forward of the front edge of the windscreen where I cut the Hasegawa fuselage and then mated the Otaki nose to the Hasegawa fuselage.  I then assembled the intake trunk and cut 1/4 inch out of the length at the rear edge and mated that to the fuselage. I then puttied and sanded until it was all good.  I took the Hasegawa fin and sanded off all the limbs and bumps and used that.  I reduced the cord of the wings by taking .060 off the leading edge of the Hasegawa wings, and .080 off the trailing edge.  I reduced the span of the wings by about a tenth of an inch off each wing.   I used the sub fins from the Otaki kit, the stabs from the Tamiya kit, as well as the nose gear door, pilot tube, wheels and ejection seat.  Its not 100% accurate by any means but it looks the part visually.  I am still decaling this beast which I call my frankenviper.  

 

 

Yessss....this is the route I plan on taking. coming along nice there!

 

I have the three kits (Extex/Otaki, Tamiya (early), and a Hasegawa "A" for detail parts and probably the wing/fuselage, and vert stab). I thought about just pushing forward with the Otaki kit...but that "hump" is just way too much! I then intended to do some surgery with the Tamiya kit to replace that area. Here are some comparative photos for anyone interested, the gray being Otaki, and the white Tamiya's early YF-16. Perhaps this will spur internet sales of Otaki and Tamiya F-16A...and thus Kursad's decal sheet!  😉 👍:

 

f16e.png

 

f16b.png

 

F16a.png

 

f16d.png

 

f16h.png

 

f16j.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by 82Whitey51
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  • 3 weeks later...
13 hours ago, habu2 said:

This gallery has YF-16 and FSD photos taken at Edwards, FSD includes the AFTI & XL

 

https://www.air-and-space.com/General Dynamics F-16 pre-production.htm

 

At the bottom are links to more early airframes of the F-15, YF-17, YF-22. YF-23...

Nice coverage of the FSD jets for F-16 "The Early Years, Part II".  🙂

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, who is going to build the first one? Most of you must have received your decals by now - let me know what you think. The 1/72 version is in the works and should be available sometime in the June-July timeframe.

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3 hours ago, KursadA said:

So, who is going to build the first one? Most of you must have received your decals by now - let me know what you think. The 1/72 version is in the works and should be available sometime in the June-July timeframe.

Wow! Great looking sheet. Showed up in the mail today.

First one?? Hmmm...I may do a quickie OOB build using the old Tamiya kit (but ...is it worthy of such awesome decals 🤔). My "project" build will be a kit bash OTAKI/Hasegawa kits.

BTW, thanks for the credit on the back page! 🤙

Edited by 82Whitey51
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  • 4 weeks later...
22 minutes ago, KursadA said:

The 1/72 version of the Viper Early Years sheet (CD72103) will be available in July:

 

cd72103.jpg


Yey!

I have a marketeable 1/72 AFTI conversion about ready.

It's designed for the Hasegawa kit, but can be adapted to Revell's.

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  • 4 weeks later...

So that begs the question. Which is the best 1/72 F-16 kit to start with?  In no particular order: Academy, AMT/ESCI/Italeri, Hasegawa/Minicraft, Monogram, Revell, others?

Edited by Dutch
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For a YF in 72nd start with either the Hasegawa or Academy kit (same mold). Note the ventral fins are wrong for a YF (they are production sized) but easy to correct. 
 

The Academy YF boxing is readily available at Hobby Lobby but the box art may be misleading.  
 

Everything else in 72nd is a production variant. 
 

 .

Edited by habu2
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The early Monogram 72nd kit is a mix of YF/FSD features, just like their 48th kit. 

edit - I made an assumption you were asking about prototype kits. For FSD I would recommend the Esci/AMT kits. Hasegawa would have to be backdated from a Block 15, with smaller stabs and antenna locations. Same with the new-mold Revell kit which are mostly A/B MLU jets. Fujimi kits tend to be HTF/$$$. Italeri has really deep panel lines.  I could go on.......
 

.

 

Edited by habu2
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