Seeing a picture on
ARC taken at the recent U.S. Nationals got me to thinking about a model that has
been sitting on my shelves for over a decade and a half. This Israeli F-16
is based on the old Revell F-16A kit that dates back to the 1970's. I finished
this model around 1988 for a local contest, where it took third place in it's
class. Since then it has collected a lot of dust and the decals have begun to
fade, along with my memory. It's hard for me to remember everything I did to
modify the kit.
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The obvious modifications, such
as the radar, avionics bay, and gun bay originated from a picture I found in a
book. I am not sure if such aftermarket parts existed at the time, but if
they did, I wasn't aware of them. Imagine my surprise a few years later to see
companies selling almost the same thing I had scratch built! Sheet plastic,
stretched sprue, odd parts, and even some strands of hair pulled from
paintbrushes were used in the open accesses. The remove before flight tags, FOD
and instrumentation covers were made from aluminum foil.
The engine is the unit that actually came with the Revell kit, meant for
external display on an engine cart. I removed the lower body covers with a knife
and built the framework from sheet plastic.
Sometime during the building
process I acquired the both the Hasegawa F-16A Plus kit, and the Fujimi F-16B
kit. If I recall correctly, I lifted the triple ejector racks, and the Aces II
ejection seat from the Hasegawa kit. I believe I took the wingtip launch rails
from underwing units in the Fujimi F-16 kit, since the original Revell units
were somewhat undersized. I think the landing gear and the engine exhaust cone
both came from an ESCI F-16 kit.
The model was airbrushed with Testors Model Masters paints, and Superscale
decals were used.
Billy
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