Seeing a picture on ARC taken at the recent U.S. Nationals got me to thinking about a model that has been sitting on my shelves for over a decade and a half.  This Israeli F-16 is based on the old Revell F-16A kit that dates back to the 1970's. I finished this model around 1988 for a local contest, where it took third place in it's class. Since then it has collected a lot of dust and the decals have begun to fade, along with my memory. It's hard for me to remember everything I did to modify the kit.

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The obvious modifications, such as the radar, avionics bay, and gun bay originated from a picture I found in a book.  I am not sure if such aftermarket parts existed at the time, but if they did, I wasn't aware of them. Imagine my surprise a few years later to see companies selling almost the same thing I had scratch built! Sheet plastic, stretched sprue, odd parts, and even some strands of hair pulled from paintbrushes were used in the open accesses. The remove before flight tags, FOD and instrumentation covers were made from aluminum foil.

The engine is the unit that actually came with the Revell kit, meant for external display on an engine cart. I removed the lower body covers with a knife and built the framework from sheet plastic.

Sometime during the building process I acquired the both the Hasegawa F-16A Plus kit, and the Fujimi F-16B kit. If I recall correctly, I lifted the triple ejector racks, and the Aces II ejection seat from the Hasegawa kit. I believe I took the wingtip launch rails from underwing units in the Fujimi F-16 kit, since the original Revell units were somewhat undersized. I think the landing gear and the engine exhaust cone both came from an ESCI F-16 kit.

The model was airbrushed with Testors Model Masters paints, and Superscale decals were used.

Billy

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