Budget aerospace fighter

Found this nifty little F16 kit in the local "around the £" shop this morning.  To be honest, I wasn't expecting much but I thought it might be useful for construction a crashed aerospace fighter objective marker.

"Based on" the General Dynamics F16 Falcon

 I was pleasantly surprised by the contents, a neat injection moulded styrene kit.  The instructions obviously haven't be written by anyone who has actually seen the kit (let alone assembled it - if followed, correct assembly is actually impossible!) but hey, it only has 8 parts so it's not actually very hard to work out.

Assembly step 1: throw away the instructions!

 It comes on 2 sprues (or "sheets" as the instructions refer to them!).  No mould release marks or sink marks, very well cast.

Assembly step 2: open packet and throw away awful stickers!

A couple of minutes with cutters and a craft knife and it's all assembled.  No undercarriage or other small details but it has got engraved panel lines which I thought was quite impressive for such a cheap kit.

Assembled and ready for action.

I'm very pleased with the end result, a great little fighter for a tiny price.  It won't need much work to "sci-fi" it up and turn it into a crashed 'plane.  If you wanted to create an airfield for games, these could cheaply and easily provide some extra scenery over which to fight.
 

15mm figure for scale.

Aircraft for 15mm games

 My 15mm armies will soon have some much-needed air support courtesy of Matchbox Skybusters.  First up we have a flight of 3 "Stealth Launch" fighters.  These will provide ideal fast air support and will also be able to guard against enemy aircraft.  I'd see them as air superiority fighters with a limited ground attack capability depending upon ordnance loading.  They seem to be a cross between a Grumman X-29 and the F-302 from Stargate.  A very nice sci-fi fighter, perhaps slightly small for 15mm scale but I'm very happy with them.  I've noticed them cropping up in a few other 15mm blogs too, so others obviously agree.

"Stealth Launch" jets

 I also have some lower tech prop planes.  These remind me of the Skyhawks from the Amtrak Wars books by Patrick Tilley, also the Boomerang spotter 'pane from BattleTech.  These will become spotter aircraft, slow flying but highly manoeuverable.  I'd envisage these being cheap and easy to maintain, the low technology base enabling them to keep running when the grid is being jammed.  They'd also be ideal for third world countries to add a couple of hard points enabling them to carry a pair of light machine guns or a couple of small bombs.  The pusher-propellor and twin-boom tail mean that even though it is low-tech, it still looks suitably futuristic.

"Sea Arrow" aircraft

At the time of writing, painting is already underway.  I feel an airfield attack coming, perhaps something along the lines of the Pebble Island raid...