Forum: Scale Models - F-16, F-35, F/A-22, F-2

I'm getting ready to start my Viper project now that I have my Foxone decals, but, I'm torn between which kit. I've built a few 32nd Tamiya kits, last one being the F-15E, so I'm familiar with Tamiya quality. However, I have read some good reviews on the new Academy 32nd F-16, anyone here build this or know of it's quality?

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If you don't know a whole lot about vipers, you'll be OK with the Academy. If you know what they look like and the details of them, the kit has some problem areas that detract from it.

Overall its a decent kit with some fairly big goofs. Glareshileld. nose, nosewheel, main gear doors....just to start.

I'm still waiting for a out-of-the-box Block 30 Rolling Eyes

Well, I was crew chief on one for a short time, so I'd prob be annoyed by the descrepencies you mentioned. I did notice the funky nose wheel in some review shots. Anyway, thanks.

Here's the deal: If accuracy and quality is of even the slightest concern in models criteria, I would not even consider the Academy kit! I will post my review on the Academy kit and also, a link to LSP forum, where I also posted some comparison pics.

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index ... =6792&st=0

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There's no comparison, as Tamiya's Viper BLOWS away Academy in every detail, shape, engineering, and quality. There is only one area on the Academy that is done more correctly over the Tamiya F-16CJ kit; the left upper aft strake panel lines. As we all know, this area on the Tamiya kit is copied from the right side that has the wider Flaperon ISA panel. The Left side should be narrower, as Academy has done more accruately, but not 100%, though they did mold the fuel depressurization poppet panel upside down. Beyond that, there's nothing better in the same respect to the Tamiya kit. Here is the list of major descrepancies I have found to date. There are still more little things going on, but this is the beef of it. I also included some pics to better explain some of the technical aspect of things

COCKPIT:
The glare shield is totally wrong. It actually looks more like the aft cockpit glare shield on the D model. In fact the whole cockpit shape and length is wrong. The sloped consoles panels are too symmetrical, as the left should have more angle and thus, should not have all that shelf space before the instrument panel. The instrament panel is way off, being a cross of the rear and front panels and the shape is quite bad too, a result of the glare shield being so poorly shaped. The seat reclines back just at an extreme angle. The cockpit sill sides (where the canopy meets) are just to thin, making for a wide cockpit opening. Best fix to drop a Black Box cockpit in. But wait, after the rest of the major problems are listed, you may want to reconsider getting the kit in the first place, if quality or accuracy is of any importance/concern to you.

FUSELAGE:
-No block 40 plating! An essential characteristic for all current USAF (and some FMS)Block 40/42’s
-The stabs do not have enough unhedral, but it is nothing that bad. It is however, missing the characteristic "flare-out" of the upper aft strake.
-Tail dorsal base is way too wide and the side angles (where it angles up to the center leading edge) are way too sharp. The angle should be smooth and graceful.
-There is a crest on the upper backbone, right behind the aft transparency. I have no idea why that is there, but it needs to be sanded away.
-The tooling of the fuselage is somewhat soft and quite pebblely. It has some tooling flaws as follows; most of the fastener and panel line details have problems with fading out, as well as some bad panel line spreading, mainly on the avionics doors. Note that Academy had “gate” tooled their Viper kit for an eventually D model as well, but that leaves a raised ridge/step spanning across the gun bay to the strakes to eliminate. This is some pretty rough tooling for a kit this day and age.
-The lower aft fuselage is too rounded, where the ventral area is. It is also too wide here.
-The nose section, from the mid-canopy on, is tapered to an extreme. With that fact noted, that also means the front of the canopy is to narrow as well. I don’t know why Academy did this, as it gives the nose a too pointed profile, right down to the radome. I can run my fingers on the sides of the forward upper fuselage and feel a dip that’s not supposed to be there.
-The radome bulkhead is way off, being too rounded on the top, then to much taper on the upper sides.

INTAKES:
-This is the single worst area on the kit! Academy really blew it here, among other things.
-The NSI & MCID intake mouth profiles are off. The gape is too wide on both, and the corners of the MCID intake are just too tight, or pinched. Even worse is the wedge splitter plate, (the triangle plate between the upper intake and lower fuselage) is extremely shallow, as it’s not even close to being the height/thickness it should be. This is evident on both the NSI and MCIOD intakes, but worse on the MCID example. On top of that, there’s no side RAM scoop representation, at all!
-Both intake light base plates are so faint, you can hardly notice they are there. The barely visible base plates are also too thin, and so are the intake NAV lights.
-All of these MAJOR profile errors give the intakes a real funky look. Just to give an idea on the magnitude of Academy's error, not even Italeri's 48th scale Vipers missed it that bad,

WHEEL WELLS & NLG/MLG:
-The bulges on the MLG doors are completely wrong. Also, the doors are oversized in height.
-341 Bulkhead (Where the MLG Struts mount) webbing is way too shallow.
-The dog link that connects the swivel collar on the Tension Strut (the strut under the MLG strut) to the brake housing is engineered the wrong way. The connection is off, out of proportion and mounts to far up the Drag Brace (the brace that connects from the mid lower well, to the Tension Strut) structure.
- The MLG wheels suffer from being “out of proportional aspect”. The wheel hub is too small giving a “balloon” like look to the nose wheel assembly, even though the height is right. The center hub area is recessed in, the opposite of what the real wheel is. It comes off looking like an original a larger Block 30 wheel, without tie bolts.
-Brake detail is generic and nothing like the accurately tooled brakes on the Tamiya kit. The brakes are totally recessed in the wheel, below flush of the MLG tire. This is not right at all, since the most of the brake housing extends past flush of the MLG tire sidewalls.

-The NLG wheel suffers from the same proportional aspect problem as the MLG wheels. The wheel hub detail is pretty weak on top of that.
-NLG Torque links are ridiculously small, like near 48th scale. Also, the upper mounted position is wrong. In fact, the whole NLG strut has suffers from a major proportional layout. The upper “T” structure is too short, which makes the rest of the strut look quite odd. The added solid mount tab looks to extend the NLG strut to high. The NLG fork is way to thin and not only does it look out of scale, but will most likely be prone to breaking once the model is complete.
-The previous factors may be why the model as an a$$-end squat to it.

NOZZLES
-The GE Nozzle interior Divergent/Convergent Flap/Seal segment details are over done and plagued with punch marks and nasty seams. At least this area is easily worked in the Tamiya Divergent/Convergent segments. The Divergent flap/seals are not broke down into 2 separate segments (Divergent/Convergent), but rather an over run of the Divergent flap/seals. This also is why there is little to no “convergance” on the inside nozzle. This is where the Conv/Dive segments meet and breaks to channel the nozzle, thus to raise the nozzle pressure on the real thing. This is mainly the result of some corner cutting on Academy’s part, as the turkey feathers are molded with the Divergent segments as one part. Academy’s attempt at the engine cone/flame holder/mixing duct/ and turbine (LPT) is just sad and does not even come close to capturing the look.
-The GE nozzle doughnut panel (the part where the Turkey Feather/Divergent assembly mounts) looks funky on the bottom and is to long!
-The Pratt nozzles fairs a little better, but suffers from the same “Non-Convergance” problem as the GE nozzle.
-The Pratt flame holder & turbine wheel details are acceptable, but will not be near as accurate or as nice as the Tamiya Pratt parts, of their Thunderbird kit.
-The exhaust liner duct (most refer to this as the burner can) has generic thin ribbing to represent the rolled-rounded detail of the real liner duct. Tamiya again captured this quite well and even though it is a hard to clean up area, it will be no where near the nightmare to clean up as the Academy exhaust duct!
-Also note, the Pratt nozzle represents a Pratt F100-220, and not a -229 that the Block 52 (and some ANG Block 42’s!) use.

MISCELLANEOUS:
-The HTS pod looks good, but is on the small side.
-LAU-129 (AIM-120) rails are to thin, being as thin as the standard 210 (AIM-9) rails, which is quite wrong. The nose of the LAU-129 rails should be more blunt as well.
-The Gun muzzle vent slots are too small and have no angle
-With the LAU-129 rails to thin, so are the ALE-50 pylons!
-Academy molded highly raised ribbing on the 370gal wing tanks to represent the weld beads. Unfortunately this is not pulled off well as then ribbing is way overdone and the mid section circumference ribbing is not a weld bead at all. It should be a pair recessed panel lines, as that’s where the nose section is banded to the rest of the tank.
-There are no main tie bolts represented for the ventrals.
-The ALQ -184 pod just looks weak when compared.

On the Positive side:
-Academy provides a very nice decal sheet, much better than Tamiya’s.
-LANTIRN & NAV Pods
-A nice decal sheet

Everything that is wrong with the Academy 32nd F-16 kit, Tamiya nailed on theirs! As you can see, it’s not even close when the two kits are compared. Usually, I present the descrepancies and let the modeler decide with no suggestions on what to buy, but this is the exception. I do not recommend the Academy kit for not only the major errors in shape and accuracy, but also because in this day and age of modeling, we should expect a hell of a lot more from a manufacture, and certainly after one who just produced a very nice Hornet kit!

It's real sad when the Academy F-16 shape still takes a back seat to the 25 year old + Hasegawa kit! This kit is very bit the cliché of “You get what you pay for”, and even worse in this case. Don’t waste your money! Even though the Academy kit is a lot cheaper, it’s just not worth the major problems that come with it. It’s much more worth it to get the Tamiya kit that’s as close to perfect as an injection molded kit can get. I honestly believe even Trumpeter would have done a better job of a 32nd Viper, than Academy did.

Mike Valdez

Has anyone compared the Academy's glareshield to the glareshield in the backseat of a real Viper?
From the pic's I've seen, it looks like they used the rear one for reference.

I have, and it looks like Academy screwed up by using the aft glare shield shape for the front. This is also why the Instrament panel looks so odd, and is off quite a bit.

Mike V

Hi, I'm Rickster. I'm also a scale modeler with limited resources. I have on hand an Academy 1/48 F-16A/C kit number 1688. Beyond the decals, are there some things need to be done for it to become an F-16C Blk 30 with serial number 87-0310?

By the way, I hesitate to buy the Tamiya 1/48 Viper because of the canopy's mold line, but my friend bought me one lately. How do you guys remove it?

rickster25 wrote:

Hi, I'm Rickster. I'm also a scale modeler with limited resources. I have on hand an Academy 1/48 F-16A/C kit number 1688. Beyond the decals, are there some things need to be done for it to become an F-16C Blk 30 with serial number 87-0310?

Mate, 1688 needs a lots of putty, undersides, wings joints, some sanding, nothing wrong with the kit no, big dramas just some more love than the others.
Would say save some $$$ and get a Hasegawa.

Cheers.

rickster25 wrote:

By the way, I hesitate to buy the Tamiya 1/48 Viper because of the canopy's mold line, but my friend bought me one lately. How do you guys remove it?

Sand it off with 600 grit sandpaper. Then gradually polish it out with finer grits, 1000,1200,2000,3000,8000, 12000. Then use a polishing compound to add shine. Finally, dip it on Future, or Johnson's Kleer, as it's known in some places.

Habu wrote:

rickster25 wrote:

By the way, I hesitate to buy the Tamiya 1/48 Viper because of the canopy's mold line, but my friend bought me one lately. How do you guys remove it?

Sand it off with 600 grit sandpaper. Then gradually polish it out with finer grits, 1000,1200,2000,3000,8000, 12000. Then use a polishing compound to add shine. Finally, dip it on Future, or Johnson's Kleer, as it's known in some places.

Roger copy that and thanks for the tip, sir Habu. Very Happy

Welcome! Like is always said, basic techniques yield advanced results Wink

rickster25 wrote:

Hi, I'm Rickster. I'm also a scale modeler with limited resources. I have on hand an Academy 1/48 F-16A/C kit number 1688. Beyond the decals, are there some things need to be done for it to become an F-16C Blk 30 with serial number 87-0310?

For starters, you're going to need GE exhaust and Big mouth (MCID) intake, of which the Academy 48th scale kit does not have. There's there's some little details like scoops and antennas you may want to add, especially the LEF RWRs.

You'd be better off starting with a Hasegawa Block 50CJ kit, as it not only ahs the GE exhaust, but the MCID intake as well

Mike V

Forum: Scale Models - F-16, F-35, F/A-22, F-2

Academy or Tamiya