The Venezuelan F-16's have a
unique and colourful scheme, very different to the commonly seen combination of
greys used by other countries' Vipers. Venezuela is still the only F-16 user of
the Western world besides USA, and last year the Venezuelan Air Force celebrated
the 20th Anniversary of Vipers' service with two colourful tails designed by
Jose Lugo and Victor Amaya. Our friends from Aztec Models promptly issued a very
high quality set of decals for both planes and after getting mine from Hannants
I decided to build the single seater.
This kit from Italeri is very
nicely done with rich engraved details and has been around in the market for a
while. The F-16A NATO version has the fin extension characteristic of the
Venezuelan planes so I built this kit OOB except for the addition of seat
harnesses. It's very easy to assemble and gives the modeller no troubles at all,
with very small quantities of filling and sanding required. Painting was done
with Tamiya acrylics, and the right colours were obtained by mixing several
paints using Dark Green and Tan as base and using actual photos of the real
aircraft as reference. Decals adhered really well to surface, and the model was
finally weathered with oil paints and Testors matt cote was applied.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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The Viper is one of my favourite
modern fighters and I've built some of them in 1/48... I still think that
Italeri is one of the best available in this scale and having the chance to do a
Venezuelan one with this attractive three tone scheme has always been really
enjoyable. The 20th Anniversary two seater is on its way, but for that one, a
lot of after market products are on the bench. If you like this remarkable
fighter, this would be a nice addition to your collection.
Finally, I'd like to thank my
friends from IPMS Toronto Chapter for the permission to use this photographs.
Omar
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