For this year’s F-16 build, I’m going to be building a Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) F-16C Block 52. The base kit is from Frog which is generally considered as the first ever model kit manufacturer that operated from 1932 to 1976. This Frog however, is a company started in Singapore in 1997. The current owner of Frog is the owner of Hobby Bounties, a hobby shop in Singapore and the regional distributor for Airfix.
This kit uses the 1/72 Academy F-16C Block 52 kit as the base with a custom decal sheet depicting the two RSAF squadrons that fly the Viper. Let’s see how it shakes out compared to the Tamiya, Revell and Hasegawa offerings.
Work begins as usual in the office. Details are pretty good but the seat doesn’t come with any belt details. The instrument and side consoles are all molded on details.
So it was out with Tamiya masking tape and some careful painting to bring out the details.
The canopy comes pre-tinted and has a mold line running down its middle. This requires some careful sanding and dip in Future.
Like Tamiya, the intake is provided as just deep enough to have the illusion of a full trunking. The gray globs are putty to fill the injection pin marks.
Just like Tamiya, there’s a parallel pair of seamlines inside the intake. I went with ‘best effort’ in dealing with them.
The holes for the pylons are opened out of the box. I decided to go with an AirCAP loadout so the middle pylons were not required. These holes are filled with styrene rod and trimmed off.
Fitting has been pretty decent up to this point with no major seamlines. Details-wise I would say the Academy is smack in between the Hasegawa and Tamiya which to be honest, wasn’t surprising.
My first real issue was the insert for the AIFF ‘Bird Slicer’ antennas forward of the canopy. Academy one-ups Tamiya in this regard by providing three versions of this insert: plain without AIFF, low-profile bird slicers that look molded onto the nose and high-profile bird slicers that sit on a plate which in turn sits on the nose. For the RSAF Viper, I had to go with this third option. However the fitting of the plain insert wasn’t good, resulting in bad seamlines all round. The high-profile bird slicers attach via a hole and socket method.
Note also the tip of the nose which looks to be short shot. I wasn’t paying attention at this point though.
The kit provides two types of tailfin inserts: standard and extended. The standard fits fine but there’s a noticeable gap on the rudder.
I added styrene plate to ‘fill’ the gap.
It came as a surprise when the main gear door actuators did not fit easily into their slots after the gearbay has been attached as per instructions. The fit tolerance is too tight and I can’t get enough leverage to push them into place. I ended up shimming the pegs before they will fit into the slots.
But wait you say. Why are you installing the landing gear now? Simple, it’s just easier to deal with the intricate and fiddly fitting parts now before I have painted everything.
Of course the biggest risk of doing that is that the parts are fragile and might break during the build. And well, in this case it did happen: one of the landing gear eventually broke.
The quickest solution for me is to simply open another Academy F-16C and re-assemble a whole new lower fuselage. This time though I slotted the gear actuators first before attaching the gear bay into the lower fuselage.
This also necessitated assembling a new intake assembly.
I have to yank the cockpit assembly off the old lower fuselage and move it to the new one. This required cutting the attachment pegs off so I cemented the cockpit into the upper fuselage instead. This was reinforced with styrene bits for a stronger fit.
The new lower fuselage is ready. Note that I have also added the Sniper pod pylon on the intake.
Build Log
Pt.1 – Construction | Pt.2 – Construction | Pt.3 – Painting & Finishing
