Hasegawa 1/48 F-16C

I went further down the rabbit hole with this Hasegawa F-16 detail-wise, something not helped by this recent purchase;

I missed out on the old Verlinden Lock-On book about the F-16 years ago as I didn’t have much interest in the aircraft at the time and now it commands some hefty prices as it has been out of print for years. The Daco book is still available I believe and will be a fantastic resource if it is anything like their Tomcat and F-104 books but while looking for the Daco book I found this alternative. I read a couple of reviews about it and for £20 UK (plus p&p) thought it would be worth getting so an order was sent to Bookworld Wholesale and it arrived the day after.

The book is very impressive and covers the F-16 in great detail, so along with this book and walkaround pictures from a Dutch IPMS site this is where I’m at with the main gear bays;

There are still some more bits to add but it’s surprising just how lacking in detail the kit is, then again the tooling is around the 30 year or more mark and at the time these kits were the benchmark however times have moved on with better kits such as those from Tamiya and Kinetic. Anyway I enjoy detailing so it’s not really a chore, having said that I have an Aries wheel bay set on the way as I have another Hasegawa F-16C in the stash that I may make a start on as I found the decal sheet I was going to use on this current build until I lost the enthusiasm with it a few years ago.

Regarding this particular kit, I’ve identified it as a Block 30C as although these aircraft were fitted with a General Electric engine, some of them were still fitted with the NSI (Normal Shock Inlet) air intake up until a particular airframe number after which airframes had the MCID (Modular Common Inlet Duct) ‘Wide Mouth’ air intake.

The particular airframe I’m going to finish the model as will be 86-227 which features on Xtradecal sheet 48-005 and is an F-16C from the 52nd TFW based at Spangdahlem during the late 80’s. The aircraft had a sharkmouth painted on the front fuselage and I’ve only managed to find a couple of pictures of the actual aircraft with it on as I believe the ‘powers-that-be’ ordered the sharkmouths to be removed around 1989/90. Spoilsports…anyway choosing this scheme means I can build the kit straight from the box, even without the strengthening plates as I can’t see any fitted in the pictures I have from this period. Then again at this point the airframe was only about two years old so probably didn’t need them, looking at the same airframe in later years however the plates were fitted as I think it ended its life with the Texas ANG (Air National Guard) around 2016 before going into storage at the ‘boneyard’.