USAF F-16A Fighting Falcon Hasegawa 1/48

Hasegawa’s F-16A Fighting Falcon kit. The other day, I was looking for PlayStation 2 software and dug it together from the back of the closet. I found it with the Tamiya German Hs 123 I made the other day. This is a little too old. When did I buy this?

As you can see, the decal is probably not usable. In the past, if it was a little old, I used to use it in sunlight, but when it got to this point, I had to give up. I mean, I must have secured a replacement decal to make it someday. If I can’t use it until then, I’ll laugh a little. It is ideal to make decals as I like. However, inkjet printers have various restrictions and the color is not good.

I wish I could use this Super Scale Decal instead. This is also quite old.

It’s an old kit, and the box and instructions are browned, so I didn’t think I’d get into it, but the parts fit together pretty well. As expected of Hasegawa, the accuracy of the parts is good.

There is news that some NATO countries are considering sending troops to Ukraine on a two-country basis with Ukraine. Is this serious? Are they going to send some foreign troops from that country? Or pilot mercenaries, like Area 88. But unlike the Kingdom of Aslan, Ukraine has no budget. I don’t want to see NATO deployment, World War III, and nuclear war. I mean, Japan, where the U.S. military bases are, is not unharmed. Near my house, there is the Yokosuka Naval Base in the east, the U.S. Air Force’s Zama Base in the north, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s Fuji Camp to the west, and all bases except the southern coast. If a nuclear missile is fired, this area will be over. However since the NATO chief of staff and other member states quickly denied it, the possibility of dispatching troops is low. For now…
(2024/02/29)

There is an instruction to paint the cockpit with flat black panels after basic painting of the inside of the aircraft. In addition, various small details were finished with a brush. This time, I’m planning to assemble the canopy in a closed state, so I don’t think I need to paint it so finely.

Both the seat belt and the seat are green, so I thought it wouldn’t be effective even though I glued the separately sold seat belt together, but if it’s dark green and olive drab, I can recognize the difference in the color to a certain extent.

The cockpit was installed. The meter panel in the previous picture was in the wrong position. Those who have experience in making it will understand, but I can’t get into airframe parts with that. The part accuracy of the upper and lower large parts is also very good. It looks like a squid.

The description in the manual gives a sense of the times. Yes, I should keep my desk tidy frequently. Even if I think about it, it will be full of various tools before I realize it.

Now in Japan, Diet members create slush funds and evade taxes, and for other reasons, the public approval rating is only about 10%. It is terrible that such a cabinet is deciding the direction of the country. However, in the end, the approval rating of people who go to the election is an issue, so it might be meaningless if the approval rating is that of people who disapprove but do not go to the election. The Japanese have grown quiet and there have been no riots or demonstrations recently.
(2024/03/03)

I think it would be easier to re-carve the panel line a little later in the finishing work. But there are quite a lot of panel lines. I can’t decide what to do.

I glued all the parts to be painted with the same color on the back side of the aircraft.

I attached the landing gear as well. The rest are only missiles and canopies, and Pitot tubes for the nose.

There were no sidewinders. I think I used it for other kits myself. I remember using it to make other kits. When I built the F-18C Hornet a long time ago, I probably ripped off the sidewinder from this kit and stuck it in the back of the closet again. I feel sorry for this F-16A kit. Unusually, the F-18C did not include armed parts at all. So I got some extra missiles from my stock RF-4E Phantom II kit. In the case of a tank plastic model, it is difficult to decide what to do with the connecting tracks, but in the case of an airplane plastic model, it is difficult to decide what to do with the replacement decals and armaments. This is an interesting part, too.

In Japan, a new conservative party stands for the first time in a national by-election. If I lived in the district, I would vote, but unfortunately, it’s a different district. But I want to support them.
(2024/03/06)

These missiles are white, so I painted them first.

The landing gear and its compartment are also painted in white. Masking is in progress.

There was a parting line left in the middle of the canopy, so I scraped it and cleaned it with a compound. The dark smoke canopy is somewhat stylish. But I can’t see the detailed meter panel and switch. The compound is 8 years past, and the finishing compound is 14 years past, so the solvent has vaporized and is hard to handle. I was thinking about buying a new one at once, and when I looked up the price on the internet, it was about 1000 yen per tube, and I was scared at first. Amazon has too many traps. It was good because the mass retailer price was about 300 yen. In 2011, the final product did not cost 200 yen at the actual sale, so it must have been raised several times. I’m not a car modeler, so I don’t consume much.

After I finish gluing the canopy and other masking work, I can finally get into a proper paint operation. I hope it will be completed within the next week, but I don’t know what will happen.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, I heard that U.S. State Department Undersecretary Nuland is retiring soon. She’s the mastermind behind the conflict in Ukraine, so isn’t that a step forward in ending the war? She was involved in the Iraq War, the Libya War, and the Afghanistan War, and she’s a warmonger. If DS doesn’t assign a replacement, the war may be over for now, and I hope the war ends soon.
(2024/03/10)

I don’t know if the plastic in this kit is because the molding color is light or because there are thin parts, but it is quite see-through. I think it’s better to primer with black or dark paint. Usually, I don’t think about the necessity, and I always primer everything, but I thought this kit was really necessary.

When I glued the canopy parts, there was a level difference, and it was small, so I left it alone to see if there was no problem. When I blow the gray color, it is very noticeable, so I am fixing it by scraping a little. It was a double effort.

Well, it’s getting more and more like a U.S. aircraft.

I thought it would be easier to mask if I painted from the upper side, so it looks like this. I thought it would be better to mask the entire surface because I use an airbrush for the top, bottom, left, and right. In the past, I failed by omitting masking, so the paint goes around to the other side. I would rather do it now than recover without masking later.

The underside color of the aircraft was lost during the painting work. It uses four basic colors for a grayish and plain aircraft, so if one is not sufficient, the work will stop. I thought it was almost the same as the gray color of the Imperial Japanese Navy, but the blueness seems to be a little different. I have no choice but to buy it next time because I ran out of it when it was quite half-finished.

As for the Japanese economy, the Nikkei Stock Average has finally surpassed the bubble, but the number of people who do not feel the economic rise is over 90%. That’s right. 70% of the Nikkei Stock Average is bought by foreign hedge funds, and because the yen is weak, they’re just buying more of what they’ve lost in their dollar-denominated portfolios? The real economy index has been terrible for the last two years. Kishida, who says this is a positive cycle of the economy, is crazy. Even if the yen weakens and the number of foreign stocks I own increases a little, I’m half happy that goods prices will continue to rise.
(2024/03/13)

Finally, the old F-16A kit was completed. Superscale decals were not in good condition, so I coated them with liquid decal film. This film is very effective and prevents cracks almost perfectly. It is not clear how much the mark softer will affect the decal, so it is better to use water only at first, and then use it carefully on the floating part. When it dries, all the parts I coated will become a clear film, so it is difficult to handle. But it’s sure to be the savior of bad decals.

It’s because of the choice of decal I chose, but it’s all gray, so it’s a rather plain aircraft.

Marking is Gunsmoke Champs of the South Carolina ANG. ANG is the Air National Guard, which is the National Guard Air Force. It makes up the National Guard with the Army National Guard and is a reserve unit of the United States Air Force. Gunsmoke is the name of the air-to-ground gunnery competition held from 1949 to 1995.

The decals were so badly damaged that it was impossible to attach all the details. It is no use giving up such things for mental health.

Four sidewinders and two Sparrow missiles were installed on the underside of the fuselage, and a large tank was installed.

Even though the F-16 is a small one, I felt it was quite big when I was making it or taking photos. Maybe it’s because I haven’t made a very big airplane model since last year’s MiG -31. I managed to get into shape. It’s plain, but it’s cool.

For now, if I have another chance, I want to buy a kit like Tamiya that seems easy to make and start working quickly before the decal deteriorates.

I watched Top Gun 1 before watching Top Gun Maverick. I’m going to watch 1 and 2 continuously. It’s nostalgic, Tom Cruise, young and cool. But now I see it’s too a shallow womanizer… Rather, I thought that someone with a slightly cocky role as a rival would be cooler from start to finish and more likable without causing problems or making out with the instructor. Maybe in the anime Gundam, I used to like Amro, but at some point, I understand Bright’s hard work and sympathize with him. It’s an entertaining Hollywood movie that’s carefree and doesn’t think much about anything, This movie is amazing in an era without CG. But I was surprised that it was such an easy script. Maverick is highly rated, so I reviewed it in the previous movie. When I was a high school student, there were so many young people wearing flight jackets all over Japan because of this movie. I was one of them.
(2024/3/20)