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HASEGAWA 1:72 MITSUBISHI F-2A/B |
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne (
kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie
)
Kit Review submitted:
8 March 2004
Date: 7th March, 2004
When it comes to major military programmes, the Japanese have a habit of doing things the expensive way. The FS-X project was started to provide a replacement for the Mitsubishi F-1 attack fighter used by the JASDF (Japanese Air Self-Defence Force). A formal requirement was issued in late 1985. The main focus was on a naval strike capability, which was understandable given the political and geographical realities that the Japanese had to deal with. In the near twenty years that have elapsed since then, the Soviet Union has gone by the way of history and relations with China have steadily improved. North Korea is still a major threat, so the naval strike requirement was justified.
Back in the mid-1980's, a range of modern aircraft were available as FS-X platforms. The Tornado was a contender, but the F-16 and F/A-18 were more favoured, especially given Japan's historical preference for American-designed aircraft. In retrospect, the F/A-18 would have seemed to be the clear front-runner, as it was designed as a naval strike fighter in the first place. However, the Japanese eventually decided that only a new Japanese-designed aircraft would do - much to the consternation of the USA and some European countries. As much as anything else, the Americans and Europeans looked to this programme as a way of reducing their trade deficits with the Japanese. After much lobbying by these countries, the RFP (Request for Proposals) was reissued, and all three aircraft were again submitted as possible options.
A brand-new aircraft was still an option, but the possible high costs and the high probability of a lengthy delay ruled this out. Any of the proposed foreign aircraft would have to be modified, involving considerable Japanese involvement in redesign as well as in production. The prospect of having to co-operate with several European governments helped to eliminate the Tornado, and the F/A-18 was dropped because of high cost. At this point, the F-15 was also an option, as the Japanese had already license-built the fighter version of this aircraft. However, in October 1987, the Japanese announced that the F-16C/D would be used as the basis of the FS-X. As many as 130 aircraft were to be built. The Japanese would have a 60% construction offset. Unlike the Taiwanese Ching Kuo fighter, the FS-X would still be a true member of the F-16 family.
It seems a bit odd to yours truly that the F/A-18 was rejected on the basis of cost. Why? Because the Japanese went on to substantially redesign the F-16 to meet the project requirements. It goes without saying that all-new Japanese avionics and other indigenous electronic equipment were introduced into the design. However, the physical aircraft itself was radically altered in order to meet the low-level naval strike requirement. The wings are all new, with a completely different advanced construction and 25% more surface area than for the F-16. This allowed the FS-X to carry four anti-shipping missiles as required, and also allowed an extra pylon to be installed under each wing. The tail planes were redesigned, and the fuselage was slightly lengthened. With all of these changes and the development and testing that they entailed, it might have been cheaper and quicker to use an F/A-18 that would probably have required far less structural alterations to meet the mission profile. According to some sources, the unit cost of an F-2 is about four times that of a late-model (block 52/52) F-16C. Although the Japanese aerospace industry has undoubtedly gained valuable experience in design and advanced construction techniques, many people still believe the F-2 is a waste of money.
To cut a long story short, the first FS-X prototype flew in October 1995, with the F-2 designation being introduced the following year. Service entry for the first production aircraft was in 2001. The F-2 may also to replace some of JASDF Phantom force. The F-2 was also supposed to equip the Blue Impulse aerobatic team, but a 1997 review dropped this requirement, presumably on the basis of cost.
The only F-16 kit that I'd built prior to this one was the Matchbox kit, around Christmas 1980 or thereabouts. I offer as an excuse the fact that it was one of the very first F-16 kits, and it was cheap. Since then, there have been plenty of F-16 kits on offer, and there is still scope for new kits of variants with dorsal spines or conformal tanks. The one variant I'd really like to see a kit of is the F-16XL, which has been modelled in other scales, but never in 1/72 scale as far as I know.
Like the real aircraft, the origins of this kit are worth focusing on. This kit is presumably identical to another kit of the production F-2 released some time in early 2003 (or thereabouts). That kit had a list price of STG £18 from Hannants, which was too expensive for me. However, in late 2003 this new boxing was released at a cost of STG £12 (about 20 Euro), and I couldn't resist it. It was probably the very striking paint scheme that did it. When I went back to research this kit, I found that the kit I bought wasn't available from Hannants, only the more expensive one.
Box photograph from the first kit of the production version. This kit may only have an option to build the single-seat 'A' version. It is also 50% more expensive than the kit I bought!
Looking back a bit further, it seems that this kit is little changed from earlier kits of the prototype / pre-productions versions, known variously as the FS-X and XF-2. Indeed, judging from scans published on the Web, I would say that this kit is physically the exact same as those kits. Even the background information included in the instructions of this kit is identical to that included in at least one (if not all) of the earlier kits - it even still refers to the XF-2, and not the F-2!
But that's not the end of it. Scans of instructions from the newer Hasegawa F-16 kits are also available on the Web, and these seem to show that there is some commonality between them and the F-2 molds. Although the F-2 is an F-16 derivative, it is physically different in many minor and some not-so-minor aspects. And then there are the changes that would have occurred between even a pre-production and production aircraft. This all means that the accuracy of this kit can't be taken for granted, even if it's a modern Hasegawa kit of a very important Japanese aircraft. One hopes that the external changes were kept to an absolute minumum between the FS-X prototypes and the production F-2. I assume that these 1/72 kits are based on Hasegawa's line of 1/48 scale kits of the same aircraft(s).
The kit is packaged in the typical Hasegawa fashion: a large two-piece box containing two sealed plastic bags. One contains a scatter of sprues molded in light grey; the other contains the transparency sprue and decal sheet. There is also a set of four poly sleeves - I refuse to use the term 'caps' for something that is open at both ends. There over 140 parts in all, yet the kit is not really complicated at all. The finely recessed panel lines are well up to Hasegawa standards for surface detailing. As the box cover indicates, the kit contains parts and decals for two variant, the 'A' (single seat) and 'B' (two seat). The supplied stores are exactly the same as those displayed on the box cover. The decal sheet is quite extensive, containing a lot of line and stencil markings. Markings are provided for a single-seat aircraft of the 3rd Squadron, 3rd Air Wing based at Misawa, and a two-seater of the 21st Squadron, 4th Air Wing based at Matsushima. Both have the same paint scheme, which I assume is standard for all production F-2's.
Kits of the single-seat XF-2A and two-seat XF-2B development aircraft. The paint scheme on the ASM's indicates that they are also in the development/testing stage.
The instructions are printed on an 8-page leaflet in compact B5 format. It includes a stores loadout chart, and as usual you will have to resort to spares or weapons sets to model most of those. The only real complaint I would have about it is a common one with modern kits, which is that it's difficult to discern the exact position and orientation of some of the smaller decals. Note to Hasegawa, Revell and everyone else: if you're going supply a decal sheet crammed with tiny markings, then please supply some exploded views in the painting/decal guide. The paint codes are supplied for Gunze Sangyo and Mr. Color. Some of the paints are only have Mr. Color codes, but these all also have FS references. Anyway, these particular Mr. Color codes are almost all in the 300+ range, and I seem to remember that the equivalent Gunze Sangyo colours have exactly the same codes. Maybe that should be the other way around, depending on which paint manufacturer is following the other. One more point: the background information says that the F-2 is not armed with a gun, but it clearly has the standard port-side Vulcan rotary cannon installation.
By far and away the most troublesome part of this kit was the cockpit. The rest of the kit was pretty much a stroll in the park, but the cockpit assembly had some nasty surprises in store for me. To accommodate the single- and two-seat versions, there are different upper forward fuselage sections, but that did not cause any problems. Neither did the basic cockpit design and parts breakdown: a cockpit 'bath' with raised side panels, an ejector seat, the distinctive control joystick on the right hand side, and the main instrument panel. Decals are included for each of the side panels and there are no fewer than five decals for the various sections of the main panel. All of this relates to the single seat version, but the two-seater cockpit also looks straightforward.
So where exactly was the problem? In an unusual design, the cockpit 'bath' is designed to fix to the lower fuselage floor, rather than to the upper fuselage. The latter approach is the normal one for modern jets where the fuselage is supplied in upper and lower sections. Dry fitting showed that the positioning was completely wrong for both single- and two-seat versions. The 'bath' was too far forward, especially in the case of the single-seater version that I was building. There would have been a ridiculously large gap between the rear cockpit bulkhead and the fuselage. This was not a case of bad parts fit, but of bad design. As this unusual design is also apparent in the F-16 kits, I wonder did Hasegawa forget to make an adjustment somewhere. Eventually, I had to revert to the 'traditional' method mentioned earlier. I attached the rear of the completed cockpit to the rear edge of the cockpit opening in the upper fuselage. The central part of the main instrument console was cemented to the underside of the instrument panel shroud (fairing). This produced the best possible all round fit that I could possibly manage, given the problems that I encountered.
A picture of an almost completed model, taken from the side of the kit box.
There were some other aspects of the cockpit design that I still don't quite understand. One of them is the main instrument console. It has a central section and sections on either side set further back. That's correct, but the two side sections are set so far back and so far underneath the panel shroud that the pilot would have great difficulty in seeing them in normal circumstances, let alone when pulling several G's in a combat scenario. Had I attached the cockpit according to the kit instructions, then things would have looked even worse! Also, I wasn't aware that any F-16 or derivative has ever had foot pedals. The kit has them molded into the cockpit floor. They are so far forward that the pilot couldn't possibly reach them, which in turn means that you can't really see them in the completed kit - this is probably a good thing! On a more positive note, the kit includes a very good transparent HUD part, preset to slant back at a suitable angle.
Assembling the fuselage was easy after all of that. The only glitch is in the instructions, where it indicates the wrong position for the exhaust face. The instructions say to position it right at the rear of the fuselage, except that's where the exhaust jet pipe must be attached. There's another groove further forward along the interior of the fuselage, which is where the exhaust face should be positioned. Apart from this, and the fore and aft main wheel well bulkheads, there is just one other step before cementing the fuselage sections together. This is to position two poly sleeves, which will be trapped between the upper and lower fuselage sections. The sleeves are used to hold the one-piece tail planes in place with the correct angle of droop, while still allowing them to move. I hadn't seen this technique used for jet tail planes before, but I've since seen it in some other relatively new Hasegawa kits. The fit of the fuselage sections is very good, but as the upper section is in two parts (front and rear), you should take care that the seam between these two parts is flush. There was also a very small gap on the underside of the forward 'chine' section where the upper and lower fuselage sections met.
The air intake was the next minor problem area, being slightly too narrow and more than slightly too high to mate with the two halves of the nose wheel bay/air intake trunk section. This required some sanding to reduce the problem, but it could not have been totally eliminated without some major surgery. By comparison, the rudder and main wings caused no problems. The F-16 has basically totally straight wings set at 0 degrees, so that positioning them correctly is easy. The main undercarriage assembly was quite awkward at times, as the parts must fit together in a quite complicated fashion. Once complete, the undercarriage assemblies were very strong and sturdy. The same was true of the nose wheel undercarriage. The kit includes two small transparent parts that are used to represent taxiing lights on the inside of the nose wheel door. The instructions don't say that how to build an aircraft with retracted undercarriage, but I don't think it would be a problem.
Before attaching the external stores, I completed the rest of the construction. This comprised a variety of parts such as the tail pipe, underside fins, nose pitot tube and various fins and sensor fairings. The 'A' and 'B' versions have slightly different fits in this respect. There is also a small part (F14) that fits into the back of the brake parachute housing beneath the fin and rudder. This part looks as if it is meant to show the exposed part of the packed parachute.
Both single- and two-seat aircraft can be built with the cockpit canopy open. Unlike the regular F-16, the F-2 has a conventional canopy design where the windscreen and main canopy section are two different parts. Even though I was building my single-seater with a closed canopy, I wanted to include a part which was only meant to be used to if the canopy was in the open position. This was part K8, which is a horizontal bar at the base of the canopy behind the pilot - it must be part of the hinge mechanism. No matter how much I cut away at the part, it still prevented the canopy from being position properly on the fuselage. Eventually, I made my own simple replacement part from very thin plastic rod, and that fitted without trouble. Although the transparent parts are thin, the pronounced curvature of the canopy makes it quite distorted and difficult to see the cockpit detail through.
One of the very few pictures of the actual aircraft that I could locate. It probably has a lot to do with photography and lighting conditions, but my model appears to resemble this aircraft a lot more closely than the completed kit shown above. Both of the blue camouflage colours and the radome grey are darker here than in the kit picture.
Almost half the parts in the kit are for the stores and pylons, but it's all conventional assembly. The fins on the ASM-2 anti-shipping missile are particularly impressive. They are very thin, and are better than etched parts because they present a proper 3-D profile (razor-sharp edges and an angled diagonal ridge running down the centre) that etched parts can't really reproduce. Getting all the fins to line up in the correct position did require some effort, simply because the parts were so thin and thus difficult to 'anchor'. I admit to using quite a bit of superglue here. The ASM-2 is referred to as the XASM-2 in the stores layout chart, so I assume that it was developed at roughly the same time as the F-2. The AAM-3 wingtip missile is a new design to me, and any resemblance to any member of the Sidewinder family may be just a coincidence. The outer ASM-2 pylons should be positioned right over the under wing roundels, so the roundels should be attached first. Finally, the pylon for the centreline fuel tank faces in the opposite direction to what you might assume when you first look at it. It can only be fixed to the tank the right way around, but it might be possible to fix it to the fuselage the wrong way around if you do not pay attention. Also, there are two extra empty pylons outboard of the ASM missiles. They are not shown in the artwork, but the kit has them. The alignment pegs have to be removed to fit these pylons 'flush' to the wing - it seems as if they were a late change to the F-2 design.
The main blue/grey overall colour is Gunze Sangyo 56 medium blue. All my cross-references point to Humbrol 144. I do not know if this is an exact match. Hu 144 is matched to FS35164 intermediate blue, and if GS 56 was also matched to the FS shade, I would expect the Hasegawa instructions to mention this. The dark blue Gunze Sangyo 54, but I could not find any references to this in my Humbrol lookup charts. Hu 104 Oxford Blue seemed like the best match. I did not bother to paint the missiles in the training/test scheme which is visible in some of the box covers displayed earlier, as this is still included as an option in the instructions. I say 'still' because it is probably a hangover from the earlier kits. The subjects of this kit are front-line squadron aircraft who would not be likely to carry such brightly painted stores during normal missions. According to the instructions, the AAM-3's are painted completely medium blue, but the cover artwork and cover photograph from the two kits of the production version clearly show the nose and tail sections painted white.
The decals are typical for a Hasegawa kit, with excellent register and detail. As usual, they are also just a little bit too thick and glossy, and require a matt varnish to blend in with the paintwork. I am not sure why the decal sheet includes the two rows of numbers at the bottom. They match the size and style of the two types of serial number used on the F-2 - it's easy to see this by comparing the numbers with the real serial number decals. However, the instructions make no mention of them. I suppose you could use them to model other individual aircraft if you wanted - it's just an option that Hasegawa likes to provide in some kits.
Now we get to the 64,000 dollar question - or should that be the 64 million dollar question, given how just how much each F-2 is costing the Japanese taxpayer. Actually, the true unit cost is probably closer to 100 million US dollars. Unfortunately, there is a problem. I have plenty of reference material for the regular F-16, from the prototype aircraft right up to the most recent versions. However, I could find almost nothing that dealt specifically with the Mitsubishi F-2, which was really frustrating. A comment on the forums of F-16.net (see web reference below) suggests that this kit is actually a very accurate representation of the F-2.
Once I got past the troublesome cockpit section, I enjoyed building this kit. I don't build as many kits of jet aircraft as I once used, so the subject aircraft must usually have something special to recommend it, or else the kit must be of very high quality. In this case, the attraction was simply the colour scheme of the F-2 and the fact that the F-2 is the as aesthetically pleasing as any version of the F-16 family. Although the kit is generally very good, the problems in the cockpit were disappointing. If I wanted to build any other kit of the F-16 in the near future, then I think I would probably choose the recent Revell tooling.
As I said earlier, recent reference material on the F-2 isn't that easy to find. Joe Baugher's excellent web site includes an entry for the F-2 under the F-16 section, and the aircraft history section in this review is drawn mainly from this source. Other pages of interest that were turned up by Google are:
One of the forums on F-16.net mentions that issue No. 39 of the World Air Power Journal features the F-2.
© Person 2004
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