SPA Modeler

Wow, Monty! She's gonna be beaut! Curious... what are the dimensions of the kit be fully assembled?

Thomas_M wrote:What a start! BTW: getting side tracked is a part of our hobby. I know what I am talking of!

What amazes me is that you paint the small detail in a Tamiya colour. These are not really known for being suited to brush painting, at least for me. What's the secret? Lot´s of thinning?

Forgot to tell you all I used Tamiya enamel paints For paint brushing. Doesnt require much except a few drops of thinner, just to make it like consistancy of cream vs milk

The only way i can do paint brushing for Tamiya acrylics if I added a drop of Tamiya Paint Retarder.

Oh yeah!! An Israeli F-16!!

That pit looks awesome!!!

the Sufa from Academy is a Block 52 with the small mouth intakes. hfff.. needed some reading at F-16.net.



I think the intake is the only complicated item in the kit, whicj requires many parts.



An image of how the (almost) seamless intake of the Sufa are put together. The fit is great... but... you need to timely fit the front and end part almost at the sama time... before the glue dries. Then... you have to have a way to keep everything down until thw glue solidifies.

BlackSheep214 wrote:Wow, Monty! She's gonna be beaut! Curious... what are the dimensions of the kit be fully assembled?

Hi BlackSheep - length is about 44 cm; width is about 33 cm. eats up a lot of my small working space!

Medicman71 wrote:Oh yeah!! An Israeli F-16!!

That pit looks awesome!!!

Cant resist the camouflage. unique one of a kind. the whole thing looks really aggressive!

Bit of the weak spot on this kit is the dorsal spine. The dorsal spine has a relatively weak fitting. I had trouble gluing the two halves of the dorsal. They just don't match perfectly.



And when I mated the spine to the upper fuselage, I saw a long gaps both on the starboard and port side. very dissapointing as I wanted to make this a quick build. what can I do....



I tried hard to bond the gap, but the starboard side (this picture) is really bad. It has already been inserted a piece of styrene (0.5mm) and covered up with Tamiya epoxy putty. Just hope I can save as much detail as possible.



Initially I tried to use Tamiya extra thin cement to bond them together. But the gap was just too wide. I have already lost some surface details. So I will try not to loose some more as the issue came on both of the sides. Here is an image of the port side that I have added putty to close the gap, and used acetone to clean up the excess putty. The acetone help clean up the excess putty without having to loose any surface details.

Loooks like an excellent fix to a difficult problem. I use Mr. Surfacer 500 and Mr. Hobby Thinner to do a similar thing in areas where a sanding stick or paper would obliterate detail. Looks like you nailed it. Keep plugging man!

Mumble mumble mumble
I'm not a fan of IAF, F-16 or larger scale... but it's a Monty wip then follow

got some time off to post more photos.

Some work in construction the exhaust section. Academy broke down this section into eight parts. it all went together smoothly without putty or sanding.



I still needed to increase the contrast on the burnt area inside the nozzle. Perhaps spraying light coats of Tamiya Buff with a drop of Flat White to increase the contrast