SCALE MODEL NEWS

NEARLY 4600 F-16 FIGHTING FALCONS have been built since 1973. Today the US Air Force still flies the F-16, as do 25 other air arms. And that ubiquity is matched by model manufacturers, including Hasegawa. SMN report: Hasegawa makes excellent F-16 kits in various scales, and they are all good to put together. A recent Hasegawa release is an F-16D in Polish Tiger markings. The F-16 is known in Poland as the Goshawk, though early faults and reliability issues led to the nickname 'neilot' which is a Polish word for flightless bird. However, those troubles have largely passed, and today the F-16D provides a powerful defensive punch. The aircraft is also a regular visitor at Tiger Meets, gatherings of fighter squadrons whose crest includes a tiger. The Hasegawa release is a limited edition kit combo that features liveries used at the 2013 and 2014 Tiger Meets. This video ( below ) courtesy YouTuber ScaleModelAircraft, gives an interesting outline of a typical Hasegawa F-16 build. Th...

WE LIKE FLIGHT AND FLYING so offer no excuses for showing this short-short movie clip, shot on a GoPro from the front seat of an F-16 Fighting Falcon combat jet. SMN report: Note the way the pilot flicks the plane off the deck, then holds it straight and level for a few seconds to build up speed and energy. Then a firm pull back on the stick, twin vortexes swirl from the wing leading edges, and whoosh... up he goes, ending the brief climb with a nice victory roll off the top. Local airfield, clear the flight line. We feel a need... a need for speed... The F-16 is well represented in the ranks of plastic kits, with some really good productions out there. It should be of course, as with production in excess of 4500 airframes, the aircraft is by far the most produced Western combat jet ever made. Of all those available, the Tamiya 1:32 F-16 CJ is probably our favourite. The Tamiya F-16 F-16 CJ Block 50 Fighting Falcon is one of the company's 1:32 scale lineup that includes the F-4 Ph...

You keen on modelling the F-16? Ever spent time painting and positioning the wingtip missiles? Well, here's a chance to see what one looks like for real as it flies 'off the rail' at a target. Royal Danish Air Force pilot (RDAF) Thomas Kristensen made this selfie using a GoPro camera, just as he fired the starboard AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missile from his F-16 Fighting Falcon. Kristensen was flying on military exercise over the North Sea, in October, 2012. The missile was fired at a flare, which had been dropped for heat-seeker practise - the Sidewinder tracks its target using an infra-red tracker head - by an RDAF Challenger twin-jet. Each AIM-9L missile costs some 575,000 Danish Kroner ($107,000 USD), which is 'sorta' expensive. In order to keep their their training up to scratch, Danish pilots get to fire one every third year - yep, just one-third of a Sidewinder per year.

SMN couch potato time: This is ‘sorta amazing’ as advertising concepts go and it’s also a creative take on the many Japanese transformer toys and model kits available. Here we have a Turkish Air Force jet-jockette (and, it has to be said, very fetching) mother who manages to leave her coffee mug at home before the day’s mission. Vestel dishwasher to the rescue Luckily, her Vestel Jetwash dishwasher can transform into a hyper-maneouvrable flying robot, who not only gives her daughter a ride in its marsupial-style protection pod, but also engages mother’s F-16 in an aerobatics-only non-lethal dogfight.  Flying robot Meantime, our fighter pilot’s daughter - who mysteriously manages to resist massive G-forces while aboard the transforming dishwasher - becomes quite the heroine, as she delivers the missing coffee mug at mission’s end. Mind you, our tasty flygirl does manage a winsome raised eyebrow when she sees the robot, now retransformed back into its Vestel Jetwash image, sitting ...

The General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) F-16 Fighting Falcon first flew on February 2, 1974, and since its active entry in August four years later, has been in continuous service ever since. From lightweight fighter to heavyweight attacker The F-16 was developed originally as a lightweight day fighter, but has evolved into a much bigger, heavier, and more powerful beast since then - it’s now a highly successful all-weather multirole machine  that is flown by the air arms of some 26 different countries. For a jet fighter, production numbers are eyebrow-raising at 4450 manufactured so far, with more orders to come. However, to put that production number into perspective, Russia’s MiG-15 tops the charts with a likely total of some 18,000-plus, though a precise figure doesn’t seem to be available. 1:48 scale F-16 kits to buy There are more F-16 kits than you can shake a stick at, so we’re just going to pick three of our faves - they come from Hasegawa, and are in big scales. Th...

David Jefferis reports The first production-standard F-16 fighter jet flew 36 years ago this month, and the type is still in front-line service across the world, with more than 4400 having been built, and customers still lining up for new ones. The basic design has been improved vastly over the years, especially where electronics and mission capabilities are concerned, but the basic shape and size remains much the same, a testament to the General Dynamics team that designed the aircraft back in the 1970s. New markings from Italeri Model manufacturers number the F-16 as one of their most popular modern jet subjects, and new kits continue to be released. This time it’s a very neat Italeri 1:48 scale offering, and it’s been given an excellent set of markings, called ‘Special Colors’ on the box. The decals are quite excellent, neatly and accurately printed, and give you a choice of tails - we rate the brooding tiger especially - or green-and-black chequerboard display markings. In the box ...