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1/48 Tamiya F-16C Aggressor


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Hi there!

 

I've started on a new build whilst I wait on a few items and decals to come out for the f-22. In the meantime time for another viper, because, why not? I've learned quite a bit from my first viper build (F-16CJ misawa) and would like to see how this build compares. Originally I thought about doing a OOB build but the aftermarket and tinkering syndrome got the best of me. Looks like another long drawn out battle.

 

Starters:

Kit: Tamiya 1/48 F-16C/N     There are lots of extras in here for the extras collection. I wish I can use them all. 

Decals: Bullseye's F-16 aggressor sheet - heaploads of very very cool options

 

Quinta's 3D decals

Eduard F-16 set

 

Master F-16 probes and wicks

Tamiya F-16 detail up set for the strengthening plates

KA model nozzles

Royale Resin wheels

 

I'll add to this list if I forget anything.

 

First up, the cockpit. Again it is sad to sand off Tamiya's excellent cockpit detail, but I know it is for a good cause :).

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With quinta's sets, I didn't need to spend weeks fiddling around with PE, drilling, etc. I decided to leave the Quinta set unmodified for my first go, as I didnt want to risk modifying it for the worse. The material behaves very much like typical vinyl and is quite flexible. I did add more buttons and dials to the throttle via. styrene rod. 

 

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Rest of the cockpit went together using kit parts, Eduard, and Quinta. I seem to take a liking to modifying stock kit parts (My 3 builds so far testament to that) as opposed to surgery with resin, at least for the cockpit. The seat is again kit parts with Quinta/Eduard-bash. Belts from Quinta, I pinned areas down w slower drying CA where they tend to stick up because of the vinyl material. Lastly, I stuck on a hud lens made from a jewellery hobby sticker thing and hud scratch made from projector film as the Eduard one is too thin, IMO. 

 

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More to come. Again questions queries suggestions very much welcome. Always learning.

 

Konbini

 

 

Edited by konbini
Added RR bits to the goodies list
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Wow, I’ll be watching this one.


That seat turned out great. I have a set of the Quinta decals for the Tamiya F-16. I was skeptical about how good the seat decals would look and was going to go with a resin seat until I saw your work. Definitely using the seat decals.


The HUD looks great too.

 

 Can’t wait to see the rest of it. 
 

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On 10/9/2020 at 2:39 PM, arnobiz said:

That's a beautiful cockpit, very inspiring thanks for sharing! Now I need to start work on my F-16s...

 

Arnaud

Many thanks! Very much helped by having Quinta's goodies. Always room for more viper 🙂

On 10/10/2020 at 4:45 AM, ExchefAndy said:

I know the varying opinions on the new Quinta cockpit decals, the for and against... but seeing them added here, looks fantastic! Nice work indeed

Andy

Thanks!  If Im going all out on a build I want to have any advantage I can get. 

7 hours ago, okthree said:

Wow, I’ll be watching this one.


That seat turned out great. I have a set of the Quinta decals for the Tamiya F-16. I was skeptical about how good the seat decals would look and was going to go with a resin seat until I saw your work. Definitely using the seat decals.


The HUD looks great too.

 

 Can’t wait to see the rest of it. 
 

Glad I am able to help in that area. I too was originally skeptical and thought I'd be 100% using PE belts but nothings gained from not trying, so I tried, and it didnt spontaneously combust so that's a win 😄

 

Ahh. The Hud.  *Swears a few times.   On the Eduard instructions it calls for the trimming of my hud unit parts to fit the PE bits. Once trimmed there aint going back. I agonized over using kit vs PE and decided to snipsnip away knowing there will be drama. The hud glass took long enough especially because I needed to scratch build it, including cutting a curve in the plastic at an angle. (the top of the hud).   At times, after I fitted the glass perfectly within the PE unit and dabbing the hud corners carely with highly thinned clear acrylic, the glass would suddenly fly off into oblivion because of slight residual PE stress with the glass.    I managed to do it in the end, another miracle luck thing. 

 

 

More to come 🙂

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Konbini

I'm sure something will come along again that will wow the modelling community. Constantly amazed. 

 

 

Another update:

Time for another episode of How I Made My Eyes Sore. Main landing gear bays.      Text only, there is a server problem with this particular post. Pictures in next message. 

 

Like my first viper build, I again thought about how I would go about it. And again I went with the kit parts for this supplemented by scratch made detail, wire, and Eduard bay details. The MLG bays did take a while to detail up. I decided this round to, instead of doing a bit of minor surgery so I could detail the whole bay and make the intake trunking in one piece and trying to fit it all together in the end, I went with Tamiya's instructions where I make slowly build the bay up, make half the intake trunking, install it in the fuselage, then complete the rest of the bay. Last time there was quite a bit of wrestling with the model (mating the fuselage and the one piece intake/bay) and I ended needing a bunch of clamps, and weight, and more than an overnight sit for the airplane to settle down. 

 

In this step after partially detailing the MLG bay I installed it into the fuselage and mated the top and bottom half. It is at this stage missing the front half of the intakes. I did a dry fit afterwards with the front intake and it should be doable. I haven't gotten there yet, a bit of guesswork here.

 

I felt like the approach I did this time around is a bit easier and the only caveat is a middle intake seam to deal with later when everything is baked/mated together. The construction itself was pretty straightforward. I made use of reference photos and my previously built viper model as a reference. The Eduard bits were sometimes fiddly (especially the red box thing) but overall once I studied the reference photos enough I picked the important details I wanted to represent and made them. 

 

Next up I made the MLG. I coated the landing lights with reflective film as I am lazy and didnt want to mess around with something like alclad for this step. The most amount of time was spent on the wiring on the MLG. I tried my best to stay faithful to the real thing, and it took a long time. 

 

Again questions queries suggestions welcome. Many thanks.

 

 

Konbini

 

Edited by konbini
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My apologies, the pictures will have to be in this post. Imgur seems to be unhappy with arc or vice versa promting the internal server error message when I tried to post a reply with pictures.

 

I'll try again.

 

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Konbini

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Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing. The one and only concern I have for the cockpit details is color matching the gray to the same color of the decals. Although this may be an awesome way to detail, I can hear the judges (if you do contests) bypassing the piece in the end.

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16 hours ago, Mr Matt Foley said:

Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing. The one and only concern I have for the cockpit details is color matching the gray to the same color of the decals. Although this may be an awesome way to detail, I can hear the judges (if you do contests) bypassing the piece in the end.

The same with Eduard PE I hand painted areas where it may look off. This time I went with Tamiya's sky grey and other parts left in mr surfacer grey shade. Just to clarify, do you mean in a comp judges will take points off for poor color matching work or the fact that I used Quinta parts?  Many thanks for the comments 😄

 

Konbini

Edited by konbini
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11 hours ago, konbini said:

The same with Eduard PE I hand painted areas where it may look off. This time I went with Tamiya's sky grey and other parts left in mr surfacer grey shade. Just to clarify, do you mean in a comp judges will take points off for poor color matching work or the fact that I used Quinta parts?  Many thanks for the comments 😄

 

Konbini

 

If there is a color mismatch between the aftermarket items and the rest of the cockpit color it would certainly be something to consider when judging. That is after construction etc., is considered. It would be no different than finding decal silvering etc. Best outcome is to mix and match before application.

 

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5 hours ago, Mr Matt Foley said:

 

If there is a color mismatch between the aftermarket items and the rest of the cockpit color it would certainly be something to consider when judging. That is after construction etc., is considered. It would be no different than finding decal silvering etc. Best outcome is to mix and match before application.

 

Gotcha.  I was under the impression I was missing something there, all good cleared up now. I better pick up my act as well, there are so many talented builders and fabulous builds. 

 

 

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Good day again,

 

Another update. 

 

First of all after mating the top and bottom halves of the fuselage with the back end of the intake/gear bay, I stuck on stiffener plates onto the top. I used slower drying CA to help give me a few seconds to position the parts. After the parts are on and secure, I use a diamond file to smooth out rough edges.

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Next up, the exhausts. I find this area to be more difficult to replicate accurately especially the weathering. I gave the insides a coating of a combined mix of Mr. Color off-white and flesh.   The exhaust outsides were primed, then coated with Alclad black base. I tried a mixture of Alclad pale burnt metal, copper, and magnesium. Unfortunately no matter how close or far or under different PSIs the mixture would spiderweb and I had to redo the whole thing after dousing and brushing the exhaust with thinner and cleaning it out. 

 

I sprayed each Alclad individually and discovered the pale burnt metal was the culprit. I believe it is either a bad batch or I ruined it before but do not remember. Not being able to mix the shade I want I instead went with Mr Metal’s mix of gold and steel. After some buffing it looked acceptable.

 

The rest of the exhaust was weathered with Tamiya’s panel liners and Tamiya enamel weathered to taste. 

 

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I also started on the nose landing gear (NLG). scissor link is Eduard, and the rest was scratched from various gauges of wire. Some swearing and poking and prodding later it looked ok.

 

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More to come, stay tuned. 

 

Konbini

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On 10/15/2020 at 4:46 AM, SERNAK said:

Beautiful work so far!

Thanks for your kind words!

 

3 hours ago, okthree said:

You’re doing a great job adding details on this kit.  Good work.  I’m getting ideas for adding details to my next Tamiya F-16. 
 

Where did you get the different battery?

Many thanks! ! 

 

The battery is from the undercarriage PE set from Eduard, specifically the f-16c/n one in my case.  Hope this helps !

 

 

Konbini

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Hi everyone,

 

It’s update time.

 

I installed the nosewheel gear into the front half of the intakes and mated it to the back half on the fuselage. I used a bit of acrylic based putty, a bit of sanding, spot painting, and some more sanding to get the joint to settle down the best I can. 

 

With all the major sub assemblies complete into the one airframe I decided to get down to the main job of painting. In the end I went with the adversary “ghost” scheme introduced in 2019. 

 

The masking was by Advanced Modeling Products. The material is vinyl like and will do a bit of comforming, and some parts needed some “stretching” along its entire length to fit. This is my first time using this product, and it turned out very nice, especially the top side where I will be seeing the model most of the time. Of course the job I done wasn’t perfect, there were bleed throughts in some areas, or under/overcoverage in others. I spent some time afterwards doing touchup. 

 

 I did a basic black preshade over most of the airplane and followed through with the rest of the spraying and masking steps. I finished the basic colors with the dark blue-green sprayed in two layers on top. One is the basic dark blue green the next is a “post shading” of a lighter shade, very lightly so it is almost invisible. 

 

This is what I’ve done so far. Still dealing with a few f-ups with fingerprints etc (yes, I touched part of the vertical stab with my finger still wet with thinner).     

 

Stay tuned!

 

Konbini

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28 minutes ago, paulsbrown said:

You make it look easy. Are you using lacquer paints?

I've had my moments of frustration 😉 and luck

 

I used both acrylic and laquer purely based on color availability. for example I used Mr. Color's laquer air superiority blue, but topped that with Vallejo's acrylic FS35109 for the dark blue green.   

 

Edited by konbini
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Ok, so you kept the lacquer as the paint to be masked over and the acrylic on top?  I've got a couple digital masking jobs planned but I haven't been too confident of some of the acrylic paints not pealing off with the tape and thought of doing in that order.

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8 minutes ago, paulsbrown said:

Ok, so you kept the lacquer as the paint to be masked over and the acrylic on top?  I've got a couple digital masking jobs planned but I haven't been too confident of some of the acrylic paints not pealing off with the tape and thought of doing in that order.

This time yes, it was straightforward vallejo acrylic on mr color lacquer (on mr surfacer primer) with no real issues with advanced modeling's masks. I went without testing anything with my build. Not the brightest move on my part.  For your case if you have any concerns I would test a scrap part with an unused scrap corner of the masking sheet if you want to be sure.  

 

 

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One of the keys to successful masking is make sure you give the each coat of paint at least 48hrs to dry and cure. If you are impatient and lay down the mask soon after painting your flirting with disaster. Also a good primer coat is important.

 

Edited by Night Owl Models
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1 hour ago, Night Owl Models said:

One of the keys to successful masking is make sure you give the each coat of paint at least 48hrs to dry and cure. If you are impatient and lay down the mask soon after painting your flirting with disaster. Also a good primer coat is important.

 

Considering AKAN acrylics with a Ukrainian digital scheme is flirting with disaster.... But I hear you, and those colors sometimes need even more time. 

 

On 10/9/2020 at 6:48 AM, konbini said:

Belts from Quinta, I pinned areas down w slower drying CA where they tend to stick up because of the vinyl materia

Konbini, did you use any other adhesive like white glue for the other Quinta decals?

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8 minutes ago, paulsbrown said:

Considering AKAN acrylics with a Ukrainian digital scheme is flirting with disaster.... But I hear you, and those colors sometimes need even more time. 

 

Konbini, did you use any other adhesive like white glue for the other Quinta decals?

 

For flat parts like instrument panels I used Tamiya clear acrylic, which is similar to white glue. After some parts dried just to be sure I tapped the joined edges hidden from view with a pinprick amount of CA to lock it in.  

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