Written by 7:41 pm On the Bench

WIP : Tamiya 1/72 F-16CM Fighting Falcon Pt.2 – Construction

Work continues…

Disappointingly, Tamiya left some visible ejector pin marks on the gear doors which need to be addressed.

Tamiya calls for some blue and silver colored parts inside the gearbay. Not sure how accurate this is.

The main undercarriage is designed to be installed from the beginning. While troublesome, the upside is a stronger fit.

The wings fit without problems. Tamiya also added leading edge tabs so it’s easier to keep them straight.

The exhaust nozzle is connected to a housing where some prepainting was required. This was masked off then attached to the kit.

The stabilizers are interchangeable on the F-16 and are identical. Even though it s simple pin and hole connection, Tamiya somehow engineered the pin to ‘click’ in place. While still requiring cement, at least they don’t flop around like on the Hasegawa kit.

There are some panel lines and vents that need filling on the kit. I’m quite sure these are present for the older F-16 blocks.

There is a very fine mold line running down the center of the canopy. I couldn’t unsee it so I went ahead to remove it.

I carefully scraped it off and then used progressively finer sandpaper to get rid of the mold line.

Once cleaned up it was dipped into a vat of Future to shine everything back up.

The nose and tailfin were then cemented into place.

I attached the intake rail for the Sniper pod and the HTS pod at this point figuring that they will be much harder to attach once everything is painted. I also masked off the nose gear bay.

For the main gear bay, I first masked off the walls then backfilled with some wet tissue. These will expand and fit (somewhat) snugly into the spaces in the bay once they dry. The main landing gear were masked off with a ‘Washi tape’ that I bought to try out. These seem to be less tacky than Tamiya masking tape. But I’ll have to test them out more.

Gap fixing is next and then I can start painting.

Build Log
Part 1 – Construction | Part 2 – Construction | Part 3 – Painting | Part 4 – Finishing

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