More work with plastic plates in this post. Let’s get to it.
The gearbays on this kit are all bare. This is especially obvious when comparing them to the ones on the Tamiya kit.
The intake when fitted leaves a noticeable step on the port side joint.
Luckily it’s only a matter of trimming the slight mismold on the lower fuselage.
Using both the Tamiya gearbay and the WIP on Britmodeller as reference, I added the details into the bays using 0.25mm plastic plates and various bits of sprue.
The nosegear bay has some very unsightly injection pin marks.
There’s also a very big step inside the intake when the gearbay plate is fitted. I need to figure out a way to make this joint smooth.
First I detailed the nosegear bay with plastic plate and filled the injection pin marks with putty. I then cut off the forward end of the whole plate.
I then carefully sanded a slope on the topside of the plate.
The intake itself is made of 2 halves that are buttjointed together. They don’t fit all that well. Note that there’s also the Carapace ECM bump in front of the nose gear. This ECM only appeared in Belgian F-16s so it’ll need to be removed.
For a better fit, I added 0.25mm spacers on the intake halves.
The exterior intake now fits better but the interior still needs work.
Using some epoxy putty I built up the slope for the interior.
I then carefully sanded everything down smoothly. This took a few sessions.
The interior is a white color so I sprayed Tamiya XF-1 Flat White to check the work.
With the intake attached and the view slightly blocked by the fuselage, I think my solution looks decent.
I then masked off the inside of the intake as the lip will match the main color scheme.
There’s an out of scale gap at the joint between the gearbay and the intake so I filled it up with epoxy putty.
There’s also a big gap where the nosegear actuator connects into the gearbay. I closed it up with plastic plate.
A quick dryfit shows the work I’ve done. Not bad.
These are really missing the hoses and cabling but I was really just trying to make the gearbays look busier. I wasn’t concerned about 100% accuracy.
So the bulk of the detail work with plastic plate is done. There are however more areas to look at. Onwards.
Build Log
Part 1 – Construction | Part 2 – Construction | Part 3 – Construction
Part 4 – Construction | Part 5 – Construction | Part 6 – Painting & Finishing
