1/48 Hasegawa F-16CJ Blk 50

77th FS a/c 91-0348

by David Bey

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Hi all,

I started this plane with the aim of putting a CJ blk 50 Viper in my display case, and it's turned out to be one of my longest 1/48th projects, and also one of my best. I originally intended this to be a normal OOB build; but it quickly turned into another superdetailing project where no detail was considered to be extra.

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Cockpit:

I used the BlackBox pit, and much much sanding and fitting was needed to get it in. The instructions weren't entirely clear as to how much of the canopy sill to chop off, I ended up chopping off all of it and had to rebuild it later. The rear bulkhead was a real pain to fit and I ended up having to force some areas to stick together with copious amounts of superglue. Everything was painted with Gunze acrylics, washed with oil, drybushed with FS 36375 and little bits of white and silver sometimes. I also added the front canopy seal from an Eduard photo-etch F-16CJ set. The seat was painted; everything was sprayed with future and then given a wash to enhance the contrast.

The cockpit. I added an Eduard photoetched RBF tag to brighten up the grays and browns, had quite a tough time folding it to the desired shape! Next time I'll use a paper printed RBF tag

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More photos of the BB pit:

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Wheel bays: 

Since I was going to add more detail, I purchased an Aires wheel bay set from spruebrothers.com and worked on the cockpit while it flew over (in about a week). The molding was beautiful, each detail intricate and well defined. However, at 19USD a set, I wasn't gonna buy many more of these! I also had the FM set, and so I decided on the next best course of action to preserve my cash (for more kits) - scratchbuilding! I started small - adding strips of styrene, using the Aires bays as a template. Below you can see a side-by-side comparison - it's far from done!

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The final product for wheelbays:

I added the blue box, the silver bottle, as much detail as I could muster without going crazy (wire for brake lines, piping etc); sprayed them white, washed etc etc you know the drill.

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Intake:

One of the greatest weak points of the Hasegawa kit is in the intakes. A flat wall marks the end, plus, it's real hard to get a smooth seamless intake. I didn't want to shell out for more resin (I actually have 2 sets of seamless suckers, but never used them cos I keep hearing bad reviews), so I decided to try and create my own "seamless" intake. I didn't want to do any cutting of sorts of the main fuselage, so I merely built a pseudo-seamless intake.

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First, I took a look at what I had to make a fan face. I was gonna' scratchbuild the whole thing, till I saw the P&W fan face included in the kit for the P&W exhausts. I took that, cut that to shape, sanded the back down, added a few strips of styrene for more fan blades, painted it and drybrushed it silver. For the intake, I added more styrene to the duct to complete it, then used putty and carefully applied nail polish remover with a q-tip to smooth it down into a real seamless intake. I then painted it gloss white, put in the painted heating thingy and masked up the demarcation line. Below is the final result.

Exhaust: 

Again, the kit's one was painfully poor in detail. I considered buying Shawn Hull's resin replacements; as they were pretty affordable, but I couldn't wait, so I decided to find a way to scratchbuild some detail on. I use strip styrene, and a sharp blade to score lines on the styrene, then cut it up into smaller strips to fit the exhausts. The exhaust duct was simply detailed with styrene strips as well for some texture. It was all then sprayed white and given some streaks of black, and more white sprayed on top. Basically I was trying to achieve a dirty streaky kind of look inside. I painted the outside using Tamiya Bare Metal Silver, and shaded it with clear yellow (I think I overdid it in some parts). The darker petal overlap areas were actually masked off with copies of the petals before spraying the bare metal silver.

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Decals: 
I used Twobobs OIF Vipers. Had Afterburner released their CJ sheet a little earlier, I would have build their wing king jet, but as it is, I'll have to do with this. Mission markings include a helicopter which was destroyed on the ground. Twobob's missile decals were used for the HARMs, AMRAAMs and sidewinders. I learnt from my previous builds (ie mistakes) and cut the one piece missile decals into smaller bits for application. All the decals went on beautifully; which is actually the norm for Twobobs.
 
Others: 
I used DACO's book as a reference for RBF tag placement. They seem to be everywhere! AoA probe covers were scratchbuilt from strip styrene and excess resin from the BB cockpit set, simply filed to shape. Sidewinder head covers were made from q-tip plastic, with styrene in front, painted yellow.  Static dischargers were toothbrush bristles, painted black with gold tips and bases. I used some chalks to add some dirt to the fuel tanks, and also to the wings (which were rubbed off with a wet q-tip; I didn't want too dirty a jet). Wash was oils, paint was entirely Gunze Aqueous. I also added a ladder from Eduard photo-etched, which cost me (IMHO) a bomb for a ladder!
 

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 A few more shots; some of these are real favourites of mine.

David

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Photos and text © by David Bey