F-CK !!

[JackMan]

Ok,ok, it should have been F-CK-1.....or to be more accurate, IDF Ching Kuo F-CK-1A for the single seater & F-CK-1B for the twin-stick. F probably stands for "Fighter" and "CK" might stand for "Ching Kuo".

So I left out the "-1" in the thread title. But it got your attention didn't it?.... kekekeke

Anyhoo, in one of my earlier posts on Taiwanese IDF Ching Kuo (F-CK-1) kits I mentioned about a 1/72 resin kit that's been on sale on E-bay recently.

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index....howtopic=200646

I was a little hesitant to buy this kit given the lack of details in the E-bay seller's page. It merely mentioned that it's a resin kit with vacform canopy. In fact, in a couple of his pages, there's no description at all; merely the name of the plane & a couple of pictures. Not even the name of the manufacturer.

Another reason for my hesitation was the price. A whopping US$49 and another US$15 to have it shipped to me.

But my Jedi intuition & Spidey senses told me that this might just be the rare & sought after M-Box kit. As far as I know only 2 companies made resin kits of the Ching Kuo: Han Models in 1/48 & M-Box (from Hong Kong) in 1/72.

After much hand-wringing, I crumbled under my "Must-Have It!" mantra, said to myself, "F-CK (heh!) it! " and ordered it. Besides, some of the 1/72 all-resin Anigrand kits are also about the same price....

The package arrived today in a brown paper wrapped parcel. Tearing off the brown paper with my teeth, toes & claws, revealed a bubble wrapped box:

Unwrapping it, I discover that, lo-&-behold, it is indeed a reissue of the M-box kit:

Original M-Box kit (Picture saved many moons ago from www.Sonicmodel.com website)

Opening:

More bubble wrapping:

More Opening

All the parts come packed in a plastic bag with the smaller parts (engine nozzles, gear doors, ejection seats) in a smaller bag:

Closer:

The decal sheet is very nicely printed by Tiger Wings & comes with unit insignias for 3 different units + lots of stencils in Chinese + English:

Don't ask me why "U.S. Air Force" wordings are included as decals. My guess is that some of the weapons supplied by the States to Taiwan still had these wordings on them. I noticed that Fireball Modelwork's Taiwanese Cobra AH-1 decal sheets also has these US stencils for their Hellfires.

More to follow...

Edited March 3, 2010 by JackMan

[HOLMES]

...And so JackMan The project commences ..and the tantrums and the headaches, and the Mantras ...Must do it ..must get it done...

I look forward to this beauty....

HOLMES :unsure:

Edit: Oh yeah forgot to say..The kit looks GREAT...

Edited March 3, 2010 by HOLMES

[GreyGhost]

Interesting kit ... :unsure:

I'll enjoy seeing this one built up ...

Gregg

[RedHeadKevin]

I wonder if they'll ever have some kind of conformal fuel tanks for this, to make an "Extended Range" version.

That's right... the "F-CK-ER."

[JackMan]

I wonder if they'll ever have some kind of conformal fuel tanks for this, to make an "Extended Range" version.

That's right... the "F-CK-ER."

You had to say it didn't you?

http://www.mdc.idv.tw/mdc/air/rocair/idfc2.jpg

They're calling it:

IDF C/D (Hsiang Sheng / Xiong Ying fighter)

http://www.aidc.com.tw/enaidcsite/web/ma01.asp

I really like these Indigenous aircraft. They have a unique charm & sexiness of their own. Just like the Japanese F-2........ a bigger badder version of the F-16.

[JackMan]

Cont'd

The fuselage parts have nice & not-too-deep recessed panel lines. In fact, some of the panel lines for the access panel hinges, etc are quite nicely detail for this scale. There are 2 vacform canopies given. They don't have the sparkling clarity of the Falcon vacform canopy sets but are still good enough and are quite nicely formed.

Instruction sheet is just a single A4 sized paper with rudimentary but easy to understand instructions. Both English & Chinese instructions:

The cockpit is bare but a nice resin instrument panel is given (with decals for the panels). The gear well doors have good interior details on the inside just like the real thing. The single resin ejection seat provided is also quite nicely done but I'll probably replace it with an aftermarket Martin Baker Mk.12--the type that the real Ching Kuo uses.

Engine nozzles are pretty well done with the engine exhaust petals & good interior details

Engine exhausts still inside bag...good interior details, no?

I started to compare the parts with the 1/72 scale line drawings that came with the only book (that I know of) of the Ching Kuo.

It has English & Chinese captions for majority of the pictures (which are of the 'walk-around' type) but unfortunately for non-Chinese readers, no English translation of some of the in-depth articles inside. Btw, I think you can guess where the M-Box kit's boxtop image comes from

IMPRESSIONS:

The main fuselage is split into 2 with the forward fuselage as one piece & the center/rear fuselage as another:

Forward fuselage

Center/rear fuselage

Placing them against the line drawings from the book (I photocopied the drawings since the way the book is binded makes it difficult to place the kit parts onto the pages):

The fuselage is slightly undersized when compared to the drawings. You can see the gap between the forward & center/rear fuselage. This is roughly the difference in size of the kit vs the book's drawings:

Also, here's a close-up of the rear:

It shows that the F-16-like air-brakes come up short.

Overall, the slight under-size doesn't bother me too much. I'm happy with it.

Edited March 4, 2010 by JackMan

[JackMan]

Slightly under-sized wings but correct shape of trailing edge (the Kiddyland/Zhengdefu IDF kits got the overall shape & trailing edge of the wings wrong. They merely copied the F-16's straight trailing edge)

Similarly, the horizontal stabilisers are also slightly under-sized (but not a big problem for me):

Only the vertical tail, more or less, tallies with the book's drawing:

Btw, if you're wondering why there are so many holes in the wings & stabilisers,

My guess is that the mold maker tried to emulate the real thing which has similar rivets at those locations. Some of the "rivets" in these parts have actually become holes (ie you can see through them). No biggie. I'll just use Mr. Surfacer to fill them up...but not completely fill them up since I want to accentuate the rivet details when I do a panel wash later on.

The thing that struck me most about the kit parts was how thin some of the parts were. For instance, the horizontal stabilizers are VERY thin and remind me of thin, crispy potato chips. The wings & vertical tail are also very thin. Extreme care has to be used when handling these. In fact, one of the RWR on the fuselage to wing joints broke off.

More to follow....

Edited March 4, 2010 by JackMan

[Jinxter13]

Good luck with the build, with your skills it should be noooooo problem

:D Why does this look to me like an Viper was landing and a Hornet was taking off and the two merged as one and this is the end result?!?!?!.

Edited March 4, 2010 by Angels49

[dahut]

It should have been F-CK-1.....or to be more accurate, IDF Ching Kuo F-CK-1A for the single seater & F-CK-1B for the twin-stick. F probably stands for "Fighter" and "CK" might stand for "Ching Kuo".

Huh?

Why does this look to me like a Viper was landing and a Hornet was taking off, the two merged and this is the end result?!?!?!.

I know, Cliff. My first thought when I saw this was, "Wow, a VipeHornGripSukh!

Could they have squeezed another aircraft design into that airborne conglomeration?"

Oh, them whacky Okinawans!

Edited March 4, 2010 by dahut

[Jinxter13]

Huh?

I know, Cliff. My first thought when I saw this was, "Wow, a VipeHornGripSukh!

Could they have squeezed another aircraft design into that airborne conglomeration?"

Oh, them whacky Okinawans!

Y'know the intake design and placement, you might just could add a French Rafale in to that and it would then be Mega-Conglomeration..if someone finds another similarity we'll have taa- daaaaaaaa the ULTRA!!! :D

[LanceB]

if someone finds another similarity we'll have taa- daaaaaaaa the ULTRA!!!

Well the oversize vertical stab kind of reminds me of the Tweet...

[JackMan]

Good luck with the build, with your skills it should be noooooo problem

Thanks but you praise me too much. I still haven't crawled out of my baby's pen world of plastic kits and into the world of resin, vacform or even photoetch. Daunting...but eventually I'll have to do it.

Why does this look to me like an Viper was landing and a Hornet was taking off and the two merged as one and this is the end result?!?!?!.

You're not far from the mark. Here's a quote from Taiwanairpower.org:

The fuselage of IDF closely resembles F-16 and F/A-18 since the program has received assistance from U.S defense contractors. The cockpit is very similar to that of F-16, with the sidestick controller on the right, the throttles on the left, and the Martin-Baker Mk 12 zero/zero ejection seat sloped at thirty degrees.

Me thinks it was some sort of political arm twisting. Seems every Asian ally in that part of the world is forced to make do with something that either resembles an F-16 or an F-18. Case in point:

Korea:

http://asiadefence.files.wordpress.com/200...ide_left_lg.jpg

Japan:

http://www.military-today.com/aircraft/mitsubishi_f2.jpg

Y'know the intake design and placement, you might just could add a French Rafale in to that and it would then be Mega-Conglomeration..if someone finds another similarity we'll have taa- daaaaaaaa the ULTRA!!!

Y'know, I actually did consider kitbashing a Rafale kit with an F-16 & an F-18 to make one of these birds. It's the way the intakes & the separated engine area that give it a Rafale-ish look. Heck, even the tail bears a resemblance.

Edited March 4, 2010 by JackMan

[dahut]

Y'know the intake design and placement, you might just could add a French Rafale in to that and it would then be Mega-Conglomeration..if someone finds another similarity we'll have taa- daaaaaaaa the ULTRA!!! :)

So we've raised the ante to the "Mega VipeHorneGripeRaphaSukh!"

Edited March 4, 2010 by dahut

[JackMan]

Yes, I'm back to entice you with more details about this kit. This way, maybe I can stir up more international interest for this bird and someone *cough* AFV Club *cough* will consider making an injection molded kit of it..... and no, I don't mean the Egg Plane version ......... http://www.hlj.com/product/AFVAFQ001

And now, they want to make a Mirage 2000 one too:

http://www.hlj.com/product/AFVAFQ002

But at least they're calling it by it's proper name: Deformed

Moving on,

NITPICKS:

What bugs me most is the nose.

You can see the nose profile of the real thing droops down like an F-16

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Taiwan---Ai...hing/1448605/M/

http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/ryankuo-militar.../photo?pid=1310

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Taiwan---Ai...hing/1456762/L/

But the M-Box kit shows it pointed slightly up like a sharknosed F-5E/F-5F:

compare noses:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Switzerland...iger/1654973/L/

The M-box kit's nose plan view is also "squashed" like a sharknosed F-5E:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Switzerland...iger/1628667/L/

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Austria---A...iger/1620227/M/

When in fact, it should be more like a F-16 radome.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Taiwan---Ai...hing/1448605/M/

http://www.taiwanairpower.org/af/idf/nose_1417.jpg

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Taiwan---Ai...hing/1448591/L/

Me thinks the molder of the resin master must have taken the Italeri/Testor F-5F twin-seater's nose & grafted it into the Ching Kuo.

UPPER FUSELAGE ACCESS PANELS:

The Ching Kuo, like the F-16 & it's bigger cousin the Japanese F-2, has numerous rectangular access panels in it's upper fuselage just aft of the cockpit & all the way to the tail.

Here's what the numerous rectangular access panels look like on the real thing (similar to the F-16 & Japanese Mitsubishi F-2)

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Taiwan---Ai...hing/1378336/L/

And here's what they look like on the M-box kit:

Can't understand why M-Box has these pieces of raised rectangular 'slabs' pasted on top of the fuselage. It wouldn't have been too hard to mold them as recessed panel lines. After all, they did this for the rest of the fuselage. Hmmm, much sanding & riveting needed.

I do like the lower fuselage though:

Good recessed panel lines, rivet details & quite nicely detailed landing gear wells.

[Antoine]

Thanks for the review.

Might be interested, I hope this is still available.

Any other possibilities in 1/48?

[despot]

I wonder if anybody knows any news about that Taiwanese effort for a new model kit.

And I'd be grateful if somebody can help me to locate where I can order a 1/48 Kitech or any 1/72 kit.

Thanks

[Keith Diamond]

I bought both of my Kitech (Zhengfedu) kits on ebay for ~$12. There's usually a handful of vendors from China or Tawain with similar prices.

The kit is workable with some effort and help from some Hasegawa F-16 kits. Knowing that the kits were innaccurate, I chose to fix things that I had the ability to fix, and leave alone items I didn't have the skill to improve.

My ROCAF build with True Details seats, Eduard PE for the Kinetic Sufa, and bits from Hasegawa F-16 kits. I also scribed new panel lines and added fastener detail. Decals were mostly homemade.

My USAF Whif build with the same treatment. Decals from Twobobs.

[Aggressor Supporter]

JackMan, any news on your build?