ITALERI 1:72 G.D. F-16A/B FIGHTING FALCON

 

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster)  (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted:  January 2004

Kit Details:

Italeri #130 - 1:72 General Dynamics F-16A/B Fighting Falcon

Aircraft History:

TBA

The Kit:

The one and a half sprues float loosely in the box and the plastic is light grey, of rather good quality with engraved panel lines and reasonable surface detail.  The plastic totals around the 65 parts mark with two clear parts, both single piece canopies, one for single seat and the other two-seat versions.  Parts actually used will be around the 40-50 mark because some parts are not used in the kit and/or are used for the respective versions.  

Instructions:

The instructions are a rather large fold out sheet but follows Italeri's traditional style incorporating brief history, warning information, sprue diagram, five step assembly process and three pages of diagrams showing decal placement, with three-view sketches provided.  As usual painting information is given by alphabetic labels keyed to the ModelMaster range, with names and FS numbers provided also.  The optional and different components for both the different variants and air force examples are clearly detailed so you know which parts are to be used.  Mind you, whilst the instructions cater for versions A, D, E & F you have to assume that the ones on the bottom of the box are B & C, even though they are not marked this?  Not all the steps will be used, for instance, Step 1 deals with the first construction process for the F-16B whilst Step 2 deals with the F-16A.  The three-view sketches covers four schemes (USAF, Norway, Greece and Netherlands) for painting and roundel decal placement only.  Another three-view diagram is also provided which shows the generic decal placement and also the painting information for the aforementioned schemes - you have to match the shaded boxes to the quoted FS reference.  I don't know why Italeri have only provided a three-view diagram for decal placement, since you will have to interpret yourself where some go (on the starboard side not shown or covered) and I will cover this more in the decals section below. 

Construction:

The decision was made to do a single seat version F-16A so this commenced in the rather baron cockpit, where you are provided with a cockpit tub and basic ejection seat.  The side consoles and main instrument panel do not contain any detail, other than an ejector pin mark.  A decal is supplied for the main instrument panel(s) only, none are supplied for the side consoles, so a bit of improvisation is needed here.  There is also no HUD and the ejection seat while slanted back and depicts the F-16 seat correctly is over-simplified.  The cockpit was painted in standard FS 36375 although Italeri tell you to paint it FS 36440 Gull Grey which I can only suggest you double check your references as Italeri are renowned for getting it wrong on occasion.

The cockpit unit is affixed to the bottom fuselage half, which is obviously split horizontally.  The mounting section for the canopy is affixed to the top fuselage half and the canopy (both supplied come as one-piece) can also be affixed in place at this point.  Before the fuselage halves are brought together, a small fuel cap is inserted behind the canopy which is supplied as a clear part.  Everything fits rather well, especially the fuselage halves, but there are still small gaps that need filling and sanding.

All the gear bays have some structural detail with a minor amount of plumbing also included in the nose bay only.  The gear doors fit well with minor gaps needing filling.  The intake section is split into two parts and a separate intake mouth.  There is no trunking for the intake, the mouth is as deep as it gets and the splitter plate is best added now.  Again, everything fits very well, but still there are minor gaps that need filling.  The ventral strakes also fit well, but pay attention to which part goes where.

Assembly moves on quite quickly with the main components of the nose and wing sections all attached.  The wings are one-piece and fit quite well, with minor gaps resulting at the roots.  Two styles of fin-root fairings (or brake parachute housings) are provided, depending on which version you are replicating, along with two styles of exhaust nozzles.  The nose and exhaust nozzle are butt joined to the aircraft so need to be aligned precisely for a flush fit.  

The kit is rather a miser when it comes to stores options, supplying only a pair of underwing fuel tanks, pair of wingtip sidewinders and a centerline pod.  The outer two pylons under each wing are left bare, so the spares box needs to be raided if you want stores on those pylons.  All the pylons are butt joined to the wing, so are best added in my opinion before painting, a small outline on the underwing surface tells you where the pylons go.  The large underwing tanks mysteriously have holes in addition to the locating pins for the pylons so these need to be filled.  Small fairings (parts 66) are affixed to the sides of the intakes and look like they stick outwards, I think they are supposed to represent the small light fairings in which case they should be glued flat against the intake.  A small pitot probe is added to the starboard side of the nose, but no precise positioning information is given so you have to rely on references.  The small intake splitter plate is very fiddly to insert with no locating holes or the like provided (contrary to what the instructions would have you believe!) and in hindsight is best added before the intake mouth is affixed to the aircraft.

Colour Schemes:

There are certainly no shortage of different schemes one can choose from with the following offered in the kit:

The instruction sheet covers the first four schemes noted above with three-view diagrams; the bottom of the box, the last two with four-view diagrams.  

Again, I would suggest checking your own references and information regarding the painting schemes of the F-16.  For the standard ghost grey/gunship grey scheme (as found on most USAF and NATO examples), Italeri tell you to paint FS 36320 Dark Ghost Grey for main upper surface; FS 36231 Dark Gull Grey for forward fuselage and tailfin sections; FS 36118 Gunship Grey for nose radome and FS 36375 Light Ghost Grey undersides.  I went against Italeri's advice as I could only agree on the Light Ghost grey undersides and chose respectively FS 36118 (H125), FS 36270 (H126), FS 36320 (H128) and FS 36375 (H127) with the matching Humbrol paint numbers as denoted in brackets.  All I can suggest is that you do your own reference checking and decide accordingly.  In the end I also changed my mind and painted the radome black to represent an early NATO F-16.

Decals:

The decal sheet is rather small and the two things which caught my eye were just how small the roundels were for each air force and the lack of any substantial stencilling.  The roundels are slightly smaller than on other F-16 kits I have built but look the right size.  The stencilling provided includes wing walks, cockpit rescue stencils and warning triangles, refuelling patch, red rectangles and target symbols etc for the tanks.  The sheet is overall well printed by Zanchetti, is thin, has minimal carrier film and good colour register but is far from perfect.  The main criticism comes from the printing with a bit of bleed through on some of the decals and it could be because the sheet covers a number of air forces, and thus a number of colours. Only the USA and Greek roundels in my opinion are printed to be worthy of usage, the rest are best replaced.  For instance the Danish air force roundels have a dark red line bleed through from the white, the Netherlands blue bleeds into the red and not quite aligned, the Belgian roundels are printed off centre and so on.

The decals apply quite easily direct onto the painted surface (I decided not to gloss coat first on this occasion) and bed down very well, and seal nicely with a satin varnish.  I found some aspects of the decaling frustrating in that Italeri supply insufficient and vague coverage of all the decals.  You will need to apply the decals with a copy of some F-16 photos of the example you wish to replicate beside you.  The main problem is that the instructions cover only the port side so interpretation will be needed for the starboard side even though most of the stencilling for the F-16 appears on the port side.  You may also wish to double check the placement of the individual decals for the version you want to replicate, I did notice for instance, that the unit badge supplied for the Danish example is not shown on the four-view decal guide on the bottom of the box so a photo of a Danish F-16 will be needed to find out where this goes.

Accuracy:

The span measures about 140 mm and the length 207 mm which compares acceptably to 139 mm and 209.5 mm respectively.  The overall look of the aircraft looks convincing.  The kit lacks a bit of external detail and whilst the intake splitter plate is provided the intake underside UHF/IFF aerials are not, neither is the upper fuselage TACAN aerial.  One feature of the F-16A/B's is the static dischargers which are needle like probes protruding from the trailing edges of the tailfin, wings and tailplanes - 3 on each.  The kit only supplies two for on each tailplane.  The cockpit is not particularly accurate either, especially omission of HUD.

Overall Recommendation:

This was a very straight forward and quite an easy build, however, every stage of assembly required some form of gap filling no matter how minor it was.  The kit builds up easily and nicely into an acceptable replica of the F-16A.  Having built the Hasegawa kit though and am aware that the Revell kit is supposed to be a beauty, I cannot recommend this kit as even close to being a definitive F-16 replica in this scale.  However, you can do a lot worse too, there are a few other kits out there which this Italeri kit would also easily beat.  Overall, recommended for those who don't mind a few little quirks and minor gaps to fill with, it's a good weekend project.

 

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