Now, there’s tons
of pictures of this cute bird on the 'net (including ARC’s Walkaround
section), there’s an offering by TwoBobs giving us the required decals, but
strangely, builds of this machine seem to be rare.
Well, as they say,
it’s a tough job, but someone had to do it!
So, here’s my take
on the VISTA program’s NF-16D. For those interested in the technical
background of the aircraft, there’s an introduction on F-16.net.
This was one of
those builds that sometimes just seem to happen. While shopping at the TwoBobs
website, I came across the now out-of-print article
48-019, “F-16 Test Vipers”, which at the time they were blowing out for
a ridiculous price, and I added it to the shopping cart planning to use it to
augment the kit decals of a Heller F-16D I had in my stash.
When the set
arrived, however, it turned out to be a true labour of love, and I decided on
the spot to finish the Heller kit as the VISTA NF-16D.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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This machine, being
the only one of its kind, has a number of peculiarities which could not be taken
care of using kit parts. To get a totally correct representation of the real
thing would have required the purchase of several aftermarket details sets plus
scratchbuilding and intensive surgery. However, I decided early on to make this
a quick build of something cool-looking and to live with the discrepancies (aka
"non-anal mode").
The avionics spine
missing from the Heller kit was acquired by ebaying an Italeri “F-16 B/D
Viper” kit, since I knew the Heller and Italeri kits to be basically
identical. This spine is known to be far from perfect, but hey – so is mine!
As a side effect, this gave me another F-16D kit to use with one of the
“spineless” options on the TwoBobs sheet ;-)
The NF-16D seems to
be the only example of the Viper to sport a combination of the later big-mouth
intake and the earlier P&W F100 engine, rather than vice versa. While the
Heller/Italeri kits include what I would call weird approximations of both types
of engine nozzles (the number of feathers on both being the arithmetic mean of
the two variants), there’s only the small-mouth intake, but I decided to live
with both the intake and nozzle anomalies.
Artistic licence
also allowed me to ignore the fact that the real deal uses the reinforced
landing gear.
Under these
auspices, the build went along with no major problems. Sorry, but I am not going
to regale you with the usual “Construction started with the canopy ...”
stuff here - everything you ever wanted to know about Viper kits and more can
already be found all over the 'net, especially on "mostly
Greg's" web site.
The model was then
primed and sprayed with several thin layers of Tamiya gloss white, with sanding
and polishing performed religiously in between. I then came across a major
stumbling block as it proved to be pretty difficult to locate any of the listed
options for FS 15044 (Insignia Blue) in Berlin, but what can you expect in a
city where even something as simple as a bottle of Micro Sol turns into a kind
of modelling Holy Grail. No wonder everybody does their shopping on the net
these days. Anyway, a sub-optimal solution presented itself in the form of a
lone bottle of Model Master FS 35044 which is both enamel and flat.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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As expected, the
decals presented no major challenges. Minor coverage problems on the wings and
horizontal stabilizers are probably down to shape idiosyncrasies in the large
variety of available 1/48 scale Viper kits that must be difficult to deal with
for a decal manufacturer - interestingly, this TwoBobs offering does not specify
any specific make of kit, nor does it include the usual “What’s out there”
section listing available options. If I were to do this again, rather than
touching up missing bits I would probably not bother with the wing and
stabilizer decals and simply spray those areas – with all the information
included with the decals, they should be easy enough to mask.
Speaking of masking,
the lower front section has to be completed with a mixture of painting and
decaling, and getting the two to line up is non-trivial, technically speaking.
Anyway, after some
final touch-ups, detail work, and Future top coats there it was – a
one-of-a-kind Viper with a paint scheme that really does justice to the elegant
lines of one of the most beautiful flying machines ever designed by man.
Ralf
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