Viper 'Duel' Build: F-16A-MLU "UAF" / F-16C "NMANG" [1:48 Kinetic vs. Tamiya]

[Alex]

These are all of the piece parts needed for the Tamiya LG, plus the very nice ResKit wheels/tires, cleaned up, detailed, and ready to paint.  There are so many that I'm running out of clips, even having made more.  So I think I'll go ahead and get these painted before starting on the Kinetic LG.

 

Adding hydraulic/electrical lines to these things again emphasizes what a relatively tiny aircraft the F-16 is, at least compared to the Soviet jets I built last year.  Working on these LG is like doing a 1:72 Flanker.

[Alex]

Looking at the white-on-white assembly of LG parts and bay, I decided that it would just never look good without some kind of wash to emphasize the detail.  This despite the fact that the LG bays you see in photos of in-service Vipers tend to be pretty spotless, and certainly devoid of the kind of accumulated "grime in the corners" implied by a pinwash.  That said, sometimes we need to do some things that are a bit unrealistic to elicit that "look" of realism in our models.  So I proceeded to gloss coat everything and hit it with dark gray Vallejo acrylic wash.  These are two shots of one side of the main LG dry fit.  Not yet flat coated either.  The photos look grayer/dirtier than the pieces do in actuality.

 

 

The level of detail is not terrible here even in the less-detailed Tamiya kit, and in a non-magnified view it actually looks pretty nice.  I will obviously wait to assemble all this for good until the fuselage paint is completed; at that point I'll glue it up, touch up any missing paint on the hoses and electrical lines, then flat-coat it.  I've also assembled and cleaned up the pylons and external fuel tanks for the Tamiya kit.  I'll be using all ResKit AM weapons, and I have not touched those yet.  I'm also most of the way through building and painting both the Tamiya ejection seat and the Eduard AM seat I'll be using for the Kinetic Viper.  Pics of those once they are complete.

 

Next I think I will shift back to the Kinetic kit and do the whole LG thing over on that one.

[Alex]

I haven't lost the plot on this one; just been real busy with travel for work.  I did manage to build the ejection seats.  For the Tamiya Viper I'm using the kit parts, augmented with belts from the Kelik cockpit set.  For the Kinetic kit, I've used an Eduard resin seat.  I probably could have just as easily gone with the Kinetic parts, but the Eduard seat came in a bundle with their resin wheels, which I definitely wanted to use.  In the below photos the Eduard seat is on the right, Tamiya on the left.  These have not yet been flat-coated, so pardon any distracting shininess...

 

 

 

 

The Eduard part definitely has more and more finely cast detail, but the biggest difference between the two is on the back, which of course won't be visible...

 

The Eduard kit provided two or three copies of all of the decals for their ejection seat, so by being careful not to screw any of them up I was able to use them to do both seats, which definitely adds to the look of the Tamiya kit parts.  

 

Maybe when I get back from this next trip I can finally get after the Kinetic landing gear...

[Alex]

Been very busy with the garden and work (the usual excuses).  I've decided to park the Kinetic kit until some real in-theatre photos of Ukrainian vipers appear (that will definitely motivate me to get that one completed).  Focusing on the Tamiya kit I'm trying to get ready to start painting.  Masked off the LG bays:

 

The canopy came with a nice big mould seam down the middle of it, so I spent some time scraping and polishing that out.  I think I'm going to take a "black base" approach to painting this one, so the next step will be priming with Black Mr. Surfacer.  Maybe I will get to that before I leave for vacation next week. 

[Derek B]

Very nice Alex! 

 

Derek

[ScoobyDoo]

Nice build thread, great info.

 

FYI there are NM decal sheets, although I think they are out of production. I have several from Two Bobs and Caracal. My RCAF CF-18 squadron used to fly against the NM ANG all the time, we regularly deployed on TD to fight them. I liked to collect decals of their unit over the years.

 

They served great Tacos on the flightline there, they let a Taco guy with a stand sell on the flightline. Always a great time on those deployments.

[Alex]

On 5/17/2024 at 10:15 PM, ScoobyDoo said:

Nice build thread, great info.

 

FYI there are NM decal sheets, although I think they are out of production. I have several from Two Bobs and Caracal. My RCAF CF-18 squadron used to fly against the NM ANG all the time, we regularly deployed on TD to fight them. I liked to collect decals of their unit over the years.

 

They served great Tacos on the flightline there, they let a Taco guy with a stand sell on the flightline. Always a great time on those deployments.

I'm glad you enjoyed your deployments to the great state of New Mexico!

 

I saw those NM ANG decals on line, but sadly the F-16 ones are out of print and I could not find any to buy.  Unlike the F-100 NM ANG decals, which I did find a copy of for my F-100 kit...

[Alex]

Seems like between work and vacation it's been forever on this one.  Today I found some time after finishing work (on Sunday, so much for being "semi-retired") to work on this so I painted some scale black on the cockpit sills and rear shelf.

 

And did the same on the inside of the canopy, then installing the separate canopy frame piece that Tamiya supplies.

 

I'll temporarily install the extra tinted canopy using PVA to mask off the cockpit while painting.

 

Finally I painted some Mr. Surfacer White 1500 on the top of the vertical tail to provide a light background to eventually apply my yellow NM flag decal over.

 

Now I need to get to grips with figuring out how to use my laser printer decal paper.  I plan to mask a stripe on the top of the tail to keep it white while doing the fuselage paint, but for that I need to finalize the decal design, as the stripe has to be precisely the same width as the decal that is to overlay on it.

[Alex]

This doesn't look half bad...   I printed a whole sheet so I would have lots of chances to screw up and do over.  I bought some Microscale decal film, so I'll spray that on and let it dry overnight before doing anything else with them.  

 

You can see some scuff marks on the sheet at bottom right - the decal paper is stiff enough that it *barely* went through my tray-feed HP laser printer, and kinda jammed up as it was coming out.  I'm sure it would be better with a pass-through feed printer where you can stack paper in the back to run through flat.  But I would need to be printing a LOT of decals to justify a different printer.  At least this seems to have worked well enough for today.

[Alex]

So I got out the old Iwata airbrush I keep around for those rare times when I feel compelled to spray something other than lacquer-based paints (my good airbrushes spray Mr. Color, MRP, AlClad, and nothing else).  The decal film solution is quite thick - I ended up having to dilute it 2:1 with 70% isopropanol to get it to spray well.  I put on two coats and it seemed to dry almost instantly.  So I figured I'd give my new decals a whirl on a piece of styrene sheet.  They worked really well over just a bit of Micro Set:

 

If I had suspected that it was this easy, I'd probably have tried making decals before now.  Regardless, I'm pleased that this aspect of the build seems "solved" (touch wood).

[LSP_Kevin]

Microsale's Liquid Decal Film brushes on just fine, Alex, and self-levels beautifully. I find there's generally no need to break out the airbrush.

 

Kev

[Alex]

11 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Microsale's Liquid Decal Film brushes on just fine, Alex, and self-levels beautifully. I find there's generally no need to break out the airbrush.

 

Kev

That's what I read on the interwebs, but didn't trust my brush skills for that large an area!

[Alex]

An initial pass with Mr Primer Surfacer 1000 actually looks less terrible than I worried it might, given how much I wrestled with the fuselage fit.  With the exception of the rear canopy, which fits even worse than I thought.  That'll need some Vallejo liquid putty before a final primer coat.

 

[Alex]

So this is irritating.  I was going along fine, in fact got the basic camo colors painted on:

 

And then I went to apply a little emphasis to the very nice fine surface detail on the Tamiya kit.  I did something that I've done plenty of times before, which is to apply Vallejo acrylic panel line wash right on top of the lacquer color layer (in this case MRP).  I have done this because it is water-based, and thus needs no solvent for cleanup.  I guess thinking back what I've done typically has been to apply the stuff and then very shortly to remove the excess.  This time, however, I was working on the underside of this thing in the evening, and it was clear that I did not have time to do it all, so I figured OK, just leave it until tomorrow.  What I found this morning, though, is that the panel liner had seemingly irreversibly bonded itself to the paint.  I tried water, Windex, even white spirit to take the excess off, to no avail.  It looked like this:

 

Given the translucent nature of the MRP paint, I knew that I would not be able to paint it out without applying such a think layer of paint that it would ruin the surface detail.  It seemed like I might be stuck just sanding it down and re-painting.  I then decided to give 70% isopropanol a shot, and that did make some real inroads on the stuff.  Unfortunately it also attacks the MRP paint to some degree, so probably a thin layer of re-painting is inevitable no matter what.  Then it's back to square one on what to do - I feel like I spend so little time modeling these days that I'm forgetting technique.  Have I maybe only used this Vallejo stuff over Mr Color in the past?  Or is it just that it has to be wiped off right away?  I don't trust my memory now.  Ain't the aging process grand? 

[LSP_Kevin]

That's a bummer, Alex, but it sounds like you have a path back to success. I've spent the last year or so seemingly having to relearn everything I thought I already knew about model making, so I know where you're coming from!

 

Kev