1/48 Tamiya F-16 AM Block 10

Gallery Article by Sten Arne B. Brunsby on Apr 22 2011

 

RNoAF F-16 AM Block 10 "277" ISAF reaction force Manas AB,2006

This is RNoAF F-16 AM "78-0277" tailnr 277. Depicted as used during the ISAF deployment in 2006 to Manas AFB for use in Afghanistan. 

"277" was deliverd to the RNoAF on July 30th 1980. It ws originally a Block 5 aircraft but was upgraded to Block 10 standard in the early 80's. From 1983 to 2002 she was with 332sqn at Rygge AB in southern Norway. After the MLU upgrade in 2002 she was returned to 332 sqn in the meanwhile 332'nd was moved to Bodo AB. in 2006 she was one of 4 jets deployed to Manas AB for use with ISAF forces in Afghanistan. She was returned to Norway and Bodo in late 2006 and was repainted in 2007 with the new red-white-blue tailflag as worn by all RNoAF vipers. I miss the good'ol squadron flags, and hope they will be reintroduced some day. 

The model started off as a Tamiya Block32/25 ANG kit. I used the Wolfpack block 5/10 conversion set. All RNoAF block 10's got the large elevators as part of the MLU upgrade. Apart from this it still retains most of its Block 10 features. The placements of probes and antennas, the lack of an in-flight refueling light and so on. Further more the fishplates are from the exellent Cross Delta PE set. These are self adhesive and I prefer to use these to most other including the Tamiya offering. 

The Searchlight on the right side of the nose was scratch built and is also a feature on all RNoAF single seaters. I just made a hole in the panel filled some milliput in there and used ClearFix to make the lens cover. 

Click on images below to see larger images

  

All weapons are made from what comes in the box and are fairly straight forward, the Sniper pod is also from Wolfpack and a very nice peace of work. I had a little hell fitting the clear part but after some careful fitting it was in there. 

The cockpit in the MLU's are all black to ease the use of NVG's, this time I wanted to try out some PE for the panels and seat and used a fret from Eduard, this is actually made for the Kinetic Barak , but as the cockpits are virtually identical I decided to go for this. It fit remarkably well, I was actually surprised on how painless it went. And it looks very good IMHO. 

The decals is from Vingtor (www.vingtor.net), they are very accurate and a joy to work with, printed by Cartograph the quality is sound and I just can't recommend them enough for any RNoAF viper build. 

From the pics I've seen of this jet in Afghanistan it was VERY dirty, I mean it was filthy.. So I made it as dirty and flat as I could get it without it looking overdone. 

This was a very satisfying project, I really like to work with the Tamiya models for MLU's , the conversion is fairly easy and I think it looks way better than the Kinetic model.. of which I have to give one more shot before I give up. 

Sten Arne B. Brunsby

Photos and text © by Sten Arne B. Brunsby