Falcon - Finished!

Now that all the decals are in place, it was a simple matter of installing the fuel tanks, missiles and canopy.

I'm very happy with the result. I intended to place it inside a small display case on a strip of tarmac, but that will be a different project.

Kit: F-16 MLu (Mid-Life upgrade)
Scale: 1/72
Manufacturer: Revell (#04612)
Price: around €10 (second-hand)
Number of parts: 98
Time spent: 18 hours
Project completion time: exactly 1 year

Paint: (Vallejo)

• Black primer
• Pale grey blue (71.046) - belly
• Intermediate blue (71.005) - topside (partial)
• Various shades of grey (lost track)

Other products:

• Alclad II klear kote (semi-gloss before decals and matte afterwards)
• Formula '560' Canopy glue (for glueing transparent parts)

Findings or issues?

It was a pretty straightforward build, no fit issues that I recall. The small antennae at the rear tend to "disappear" but that's just my clumsiness.

It would have been finished a year ago had it not been for me losing interest in applying 200 decals.

Falcon - 199 decals later

Yes, I counted them : 199 decals on this little bird.

It took the better part of 7 hours to get them all in place. It's the main reason why the project ended up on the backburner late may of last year, but I'm glad I found renewed motivation to finish it.

Initial tests without a semi-gloss coat weren't good, but that was remedied. All other decals behaved well, with some application of Micro-Sol and -Set. The stripes on the sidewinders were the hardest to convince to sit still, but we were victorious in the end.

I added a final matte coat to remove (most of) the sheen on the surface.

Falcon - gloss before decals

Inspired by having absolutely nothing to do in this Corona-quarantine, I picked up the Falcon again for adding some decals.

Normally, I always gloss-coat (or semi-gloss) before decals, but everybody is always going on and on about this not being necessary, so I decided to skip this step this once.

However, even with multiple applications of Micro-Sol and -Set, the decal film was still showing white spots.
Is it air trapped underneath or just the film not settling nicely?
Do some paints (I use Vallejo, also a very contested topic) yield a smoother finish than others?
On the second picture, you also see the water-marks (for lack of a better term) left by the Micro-Set, something I don't recall seeing on earlier builds.

I don't know just what it was, but after a few decals, I decided to go back to my old habits and spray a coat of Alclad II klear kote "semi-matte". It sprays very rough ("orange peel" is the technical term) if you use it straight from the bottle, so I always thin it 50/50 with White Spirit (aka "mineral spirits").

After that, there should be no more silvering, no more marks left by the Micro-Sol.

Thinned this way, it sprays and settles perfectly smooth, BUT :

• take your time and apply multiple layers allowing each to dry (overnight, if you have the luxury of time). If you go too heavily, it stays sticky for ages.
• clean out your AB extra thoroughly afterwards. 
• I use Tamiya lacquer thinner as it seems to get rid of the Alclad best.
• Once cleaned, I give it another round, just to be sure.
• Remove the needle from the AB and let it sit overnight. It wouldn't be the first time that my needle is stuck in place because I didn't clean well enough.
  It's MUCH easier to remove the needle and next time, flush the AB with cleaner again before inserting the needle.
• I use an older airbrush - that I never really liked - strictly for Alclad klears, just to be on the very safe side.

If all these cautions tell you it's a shitty product, who am I to say that your wrong. But switching to Alclad was a huge improvement coming from Vallejo varnishes that I used at first. I'm open to recommendations for better products. At least I'm not using floor polish :-).

This will look beter once dry

Falcon - painting

I love painting models, but sometimes I hate the airbrush. Most of the time, it's probably just me, trying to rush something or not cleaning the AB enough when changing colour. Sometimes I'm convinced the thing has it in for me.
I have an Aztek airbrush, that works for what I do, but is bad at fine work. I SHOULD buy a new one (and also a better compressor), but I'm constantly arguing with myself about it costing too much money because I don't use it that often. I would probably use it more if it was a better one, but .... I'm sure many of you have had these internal debates.

On with the show!

Step 1 : protecting the already painted cockpit and gearbays. For irregularly shaped masking, I use my go-to Silly Putty.

Step 2 : priming in black and than the base-coat light-grey.

Step 3 : preparing for the blue-ish topcoat, while protecting the front and belly.

Step 4 : only the top-side of the nose left to do in slightly darker grey.

The easily recognizable round shape behind the cockpit should not be with too harsh a separation line, so I added a little "roll" of silly putty, making sure, it's still round where touching the model.

When spraying paint, I started from a backward angle spraying forward (direction of the nose), to get full coverage on the nose and sides.
Then slowly tilt the AB forward to paint closer to the silly putty, easy on the trigger, so the result is a soft transfer from grey to blue and not a harsh line.

I'm very happy with the result!

And because this is the point (May 2019) where you start adding 200+ decals, I lost interest.

Falcon - Assembly

The Falcon has been a proud part of Belgian's airforce for decades. We started out with 160 of them, which is a lot, knowing the size of Belgium on a global scale.
As a child (we're talking about the eighties), I could count on them to take a wide turn right over my house every thursday afternoon. They were just raking up flying hours, doing standard training maneuvers. Their airbase (Kleine Brogel) was 150 km away but for this bird, that's peanuts.

I learned later that pilots often called the same restaurant in Koksijde (Belgian coast, 230km from the airbase), to let them know they were "on their way".

These pilots were heroes into the eyes of many little boys (actually, they still are). Around 12 (I think?), I visited my first airshow with my parents and brother. At a later age, I started going alone and also started training for the physical entrance exam to become a fighter pilot myself. It never amounted to anything, but it still aches when I see a fighter plane or a pilot at an event.
I was heavily into fighter planes for a long time, and honestly, still am :-). (I just expanded my interests to include tanks).

From that first airshow, we brought home two F-16 models (I don't recall which, but probably Revell as that is the biggest distributor here in Europe and available in all toy stores), one for me and one for my brother. As I recall, my brother never finished his and I finished it up.

I have a picture of both from an attic-cataloguing operation 8 years ago. With all the spare bombs and fuel tanks I created a "bomb-rack". (It also contains missiles from other models.)

Looking at it closer now ... why are the AIM-9 sidewinders yellow? 

The kit shown below, is a 1/72 scale Revell F-16 that was part of a second hand batch I procured years ago. It was sitting happily in the stash, while I was building tanks.

MLU stands for Mid-Life Update, basically the early 90's upgrade to the cockpit and avionics to be on-par with current technology.

My girlfriend's boss was a big F-16 fan, so I decided to build this to display it on her desk at work. To protect it from viewers and cleaning personnel, I would put it in a display case, for which I scoured the web to find something big enough AND affordable. I was going to add a small strip of tarmac and maybe some grass.

I hadn't counted on losing interest in the project after painting, and her boss has moved on in the meantime. BUT, that was last year, and I am now putting the finishing touches on the model. It should be finished in a week or so (famous last words, I know).

For some reason, some of the decals are missing, but there are like 6-7 decal options still to choose from and the only thing really necessary that was missing, were the Belgian roundels, which are easily found on the aftermarket in this common scale. (little decal sheet to the right)

Construction was simple and straightforward, the way one assembles airplanes. Assemble and fully paint the cockpit, close the hull, count the number of mini antennae that have gone missing and we're ready for painting.