What happens when.................
...you have a hot June day, a vellux window, a magnifying lamp and your current project sat on the modelling bench in perfect alignment...? The model gets the full sun lamp treatment!
This model has been a bit of an episode for me, three in fact. The first attempt I tried to be to clever for my own good and add a load of Aires resin to an already stupendous Tamiya kit...didn,t work, the resin didn,t fit properly distorted the fuselage, and left big holes, so at almost the final bell (yes it was as far as decalling) it went in the bin...lesson number one...don,t mess with the best, they don,t need it!
Not to be defeated, and that I had finished all the sub assemblies to finish the model, and I was really rather pleased with my efforts on finishing the stories, I bought a replacement, but that ended up as the casualty in the picture...lesson two...summer and modelling don,t mix!
Third time lucky... I picked up another kit, from Amazon this time...and built it as the other finished pics show. The only add ons are a Pavla seat and Master pitot and AoA probes. I also changed the decals to an aircraft flying from Italy over the Balkans in the 1990s.
By this time paranoia was starting to kick in, and I didn,t deviate from how the kit was supposed to be built (even though I now have more F-16 spares than the USAF!), and just aimed for it to be built, I hardly even weathered it.
Anyway, lots of lessons learned from the very extended process, and notwithstanding my distinctly hamfisted efforts, this builds very easily into a stunning model.
Enjoy, but be warned...bring me back those cold dark winter nights! D,oh!
I'm sure we all have disaster story's, I always say "the best model builders are also the best repairmen". Way to hang in there. looks good.
Talk about third time bein' a charm, huh...? The "final solution" looks pretty good! It looks to me (from the 'background' items) that it's a 32nd kit (?). If so, this turned out to be a rather expensive object lesson - come to think of it, seein's how it's a Tamiya kit, three 48th scale kits wouldn't be all that cheap, either. I can understand the [melted] first mishap, but why did adding resin aftermarket cause damage?
Now your excellent model comes with a story……..
I'm glad I'm not the only one facing occasional catastrophes - and usually at my one hand!
Great recovery!
Ian, good job, better when you had to overcome problems that would have stopped me in my tracks. Shame about that sun damage.
One of our club members was entered in a show locally, and this other guy was taking a photo of his model on the table. The light he was using caused the model to fold up. It wasn't a naval aircraft. A sincere exchange of views ensued.
In answer to some of your queries, it is the 1/48 Tamiya kit, which retails for about £30, however, take three attempts plus nearly £30 in resin and it was getting quite expensive, but I just could,t let it lie!
As far as why the resin didn,t fit, without putting myself in a litigious position, I don,t have a lot of luck in the particular manufacturers after market products, they look stunning, but rarely fit without some fairly intrusive surgery, and the fit on this kit was particularly bad, the cockpit didn,t fill the cockpit rim, I had to sand away the entire floor to get it to fit vertically, and it still distorted the forward fuselage. I thought I might have got away with hiding the bloopers under a closed canopy, but with the fuselage distortion, the canopy was miles away. Then there was the tailpipe, and this is a word of warning to future builders of this kit, there are two distinct variants, with different engines, and in accordance with the law of Sod, the tailpipe was for the version I didn,t have, and it isn,t defined on the packaging of said resin part! So a note of caution there.
In all, trying to be a smarty pants just led me down a path of pain, frustration and serious overspend, on what is, without any mods, a stunning kit. The only criticism I could make of the kit itself, is that Tamiya tend to provide decals which are overly thick, so I replaced them.
Upshot is I now have the worlds supply of spares for this kit (or most F-16 kits with a little fettling probably), including decals, so if anyone wants them, please make me a reasonable offer (he says, trying to recoup some costs!) and I,ll post thme off to you.
I don't think that it would be appropriate to us any strong language on this site, although I would have lost it in a big way, 10 out of 10 for perseverance, third time lucky looks good, well done.
This reminds me of the time I super glued a Spit to my left hand.
If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all...well, you show great fortitude, most guys would have lit it on fire and made a diorama out of it. Nice looking "third effort", persistence pays off!
As Elvis Costello says: "Accidents will happen" and I can say with great reassurance that we modellers live in this status! However it is amazing when we persist and get things done.
All the best!