REVELL 1:72 F-16C FIGHTING FALCON BLOCK 50/52
'INBOX Review'

 

Reviewer: Andre van der Hoek, Kurt Plummer  (taken from rec.models.scale newsgroup)

Kit:  MPM No.72074 1/72 Makajima Kikka

The second incarnation of Revells new F-16 tooling is out. A quick look.

First the bad news: there are *no* new bulged gear doors (although new door actuators are included!). This basically means the kit can't be completed as a Block 50/52, as these have the bigger heavy-duty landing gear which make these necessary.

On the plus side, the new HTS looks far less anemic than the Hasegawa version, a big improvement.

By the way, you get all F-16AM parts as well, with a couple of new parts on those sprues. Strangely, among these are the small pre-Block 15 horizontal stabilizers. If only Revell had included the correct main gear doors, this would truly be the all round single seat Viper kit! Perhaps one day they'll do a bulged gear doors, LANTIRN and ADF tail sprue. 8)

The new F-16C specific parts are:

The decals look good, giving a 52nd FW/22nd FS and a 389th FS/366th FW. The US national insignia look suspect, though. Also, as far as I know, the 366th flies Block 52s with the F100 engine. The instructions will have you use the F110 parts.

The kit will probably make a nice and accurate Block 30/32. I'll try and see how the Hasegawa 'F-16CJ' gear doors fit this kit.

Otherwise, I'll probably fill the HTS holes and mate the HTS to the Hasegawa kit.

Oh, I checked ("I'll try and see how the Hasegawa 'F-16CJ' gear doors fit this kit") and the bulged Hasegawa main gear doors are too small for the Revell kit.

Andre

(From "Jens" aka spook) There are several other things you have to change if you want to make a real block 10, e.g. the panels on the intakes and the flood light on the tail fin leading edge. It is correct that the vertical fin base of the A/B models are smaller than that of the C/D models. The fin itself is the same size on all versions. I posted a series of F-16A/B (and AM/BM) walk-around pictures at ACWalk (@Yahoogroups) some time ago.

HTH,
Jens

(From Chris Douglas) To be strictly accurate you'll also need a slightly smaller vertical fin, which was carried by A's through Block 15 (or so I seem to recall, though I wouldn't be surprised if somebody said it was block 10 only). So far as I know no kit includes this part.

On the bright side, I spent quite some time staring cross-eyed at photos of Israeli block 10's, and never could see the difference (and still can't). So this is one feature I feel comfortable relegating to the "screw it" zone.

Andre,

Nice review.

1. The GBU-10 is _not_ a 'Paveway III' and is highly inappropriate for a USAF .50 bird at the moment as they prefer to use fire and forget weapons while lacking a targeting pod (Maverick G or JSOW would have been better, ADM-160 /superb/).

2. They failed to include the ALE-50 on the port 8 station which most Spang  birds seem to have. At the same time, to do a modern ANG bird, the PIDS+ or whatever it's now called could have easily been included with all it's MAWS pimples.

3. There are none of the micro lumps and bumps for the forward and aft fuselage to do either the ASPIS or the Turkish ASPJ version (the wider tail fairing, as you mentioned).

4. It's hard to say for sure since the photo's Tom Weinel kindly sent me are a little perspective warped but the AIM-120C look like they have their proportions off.

5. It would be nice if the ALQ-131 was top-and-bottomed so that you didn't end up with a seam through the delicate antenna blades and intakes around the bullet nose. I think the 366th 'at Home' in the Mountain use the ALQ-184 Long with the V9 mod. I know ShaW does.

6. The light-grey backing of the Nats looks almost white in pictures, which will /not/ prove 'pleasant' over 36270 and is a disaster-awaits scenario for placement over 36118.

7. I'm not entirely sure what's with the 'new main panel' as the difference between the MLU and standard C/D MFD area is going to be tiny at this scale but I hope they fixed the prominent sink mark in the AM kit version and provided a little more relief (comparable to the tub's).

8. The MCID still looks hokey compared my photo around the upper corners.

9. I'd like to see the size (thickness) and wheel patterns of the bigger tires as these are easy to foul up.

Overall, from the sprue shots, it's a beautiful bird and one for which the lack of the bulges 'here and there' could be forgiven IF ONLY they had included a decent range of weapons. I applaud their using modern AMRAAM on all their kits (though it's less often seen on MLU) but the GBU-10 would have actually been more appropriate for the AM kit (with a Sharpshooter) while Mk.84 plus the short chord stabs and the side mount ALE-40 scabs would have given us an 'instant Osirak' mission raider that would be /far/ more appealing than FIVE versions of Euro-A's.

For the .50; the AIM-9X, Maverick, MALD and _SNIPER-XR_ to go with optional SSB-XR and JSOW/JDAM with BRU-57 VER would have been more appropriate and help fill those spares boxes others go on about with residual ordie. While the bird slicers are actually appropriate for some of the export .50's and will CCIP gradually make an AIFF appearance on some of ours, I would have also included a Falcon Knight nav-FLIR and camelback CFT so that we could get an instant-leap head start on a .60 (which, knowing the model companies is /another/ 10 years away...

Kurt Plummer

 

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