Developed as a lightweight fighter for the US Air Force, the F-16 has become one of the most widely used combat aircraft in the world today.
Revell has released a new version of their F-16 kit with new parts to make the two-seat D model. Revell offered a two-seat B version in 2005. This kit features a superb new Cartograf decal sheet for the Turkish entry at the 2014 Tiger Meet. The beautifully printed instructions present 60 clearly illustrated steps with good color callouts. You will need to cross reference the colors if you don’t use Revell paints.
The two cockpits are separated into individual compartments, and each includes three-piece ejection seats, separate control sticks, and decals for the instrument panels and side consoles. Pilot figures are included if you want to crew your Fighting Falcon. Once complete, the cockpits mount into the upper fuselage half.
After assembly, the main gear well mounts into the lower section of the rear fuselage. Step 12 has you drilling two holes, but I could only find where one part is added to those holes; it is really tiny and not very distinct, so I didn’t bother with either.
The front of the intake was the only area that required a little extra work during assembly. The top of the nose gear well is the lower part of the intake trunk, and the resulting joint is a little clunky. It also was just a little too long and interfered with the fit of the main fuselage, so I trimmed a bit off the back. The inside of the front lip didn’t match exactly, so I carefully ground it as smooth as I could.
I had to remove a little flash from some of the landing gear parts, but, otherwise, things went together well. The detail in the main gear well is quite good.
There are plenty of underwing stores provided in the kit, many of which will end up in your spares box because they weren’t used on the actual aircraft. The wings have the holes for the pylons already molded open, but the real plane didn’t have the mid-wing pylon mounted. I filled the holes in with superglue.
With the airframe complete, I was ready to paint the F-16D in the typical three-color camouflage. I used Testors Model Master FS36375 Light Ghost Gray (No. 1728) underneath, FS36270 Neutral Gray (No. 1725) up front, and FS36118 Gunship Gray (No. 1723) topside. Parts of the tail also need to be painted black, so check the painting guide.
Decals took up the bulk of my time on this project. I started with the special markings at the tail. First, I added the ones at the top of the fuselage (nos. 13 and 22) because their positions were well defined, and they set the location of the others. I needed to trim the decals at the base of the tail to align the stripes, but everything else fits well. The decals are thin, so take care when moving them around. However, they conform beautifully. Unfortunately, the clear flat I used seemed to have muted the colors a bit; they’re not quite as bold as they were.
Overall, I’m happy with the result. General fit and detail were good, and assembly was relatively pain-free. I spent more than 25 hours on Revell Germany’s new F-16D, much of that on the decals. Since I build a lot of race cars, the decal scheme wasn’t too intimidating, but it might be a handful for someone without experience.