Here is another entry for the F-16 Group.

I will be building two of these at the same time. Both are the Monogram kit, and will be an out of the box build with nothing special done to them.

This is the box art of the original model that was issued in the late 1970's. Jeff bailey was kind enough to send this one to me a while back. Thanks Jeff ! It is molded in White plastic.

I will be using these decals. Josh Patterson sent them to me around the same time that Jeff sent me the kit. Josh used some of the decals, so they are not complete. There is enough present to where I should be able to cobble together something using them. Thanks Josh !

And this one is a model that I picked up shortly after I returned to the hobby in the mid 1990's. It is molded in Gray, and is based on the original molds... and at first glance one would think these two are identical.

But they are not.
There are some subtle changes that I have picked up on already. The newer edition has a little more flash present on the parts. I expected that, but there's a little more if we dig a bit deeper.

This photo shows the completed cockpit assemblies. You will notice the original F-16 prototype kit has an intake compressor face included in the parts.

** UPDATE ***
This last statement is false. I accidentally mixed up a Tamiya part in with the original Monogram White plastic kit parts. It was easy to do, since both kits were molded in the same color.

The fact is the intake compressor blades are a Tamiya item, and not a Monogram as I had originally posted. Sorry for any confusion here...

The later kit's don't have this feature.

The cockpit tubs were assembled too. They are super basic, especially after building the Tamiya version.

Here too, they look the same... but again they are not.

The original kit has no surface details at all on the instrument panels. The White plastic parts are molded flat, and rely upon the supplied decals to make it look something like a F-16 cockpit.

I'm not quite sure yet what version I want to paint the second kit up as. I might try to make it look different, and do the "cloud" scheme of various Light Blues and Whites. The jury is still out on this decision. The kit supplied decals have some cool looking tail art on them too. But I have not had much success with Monogram decals from this era.

Time will tell.

So please follow along with me as I relive a small part of my childhood and build the same model all over again. One thing that will be a lot different this time, is that I will not be brush painting it like I did on the first time around.

That plus I won't be slamming this one together in an afternoon's worth of building like we did back then.

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by.

Excellent double entry, my friend @lgardner! Looking forward to both!

Here is what was accomplished tonight on the pair of Monogram 16's.

Surfing the internet told me the cockpits on these planes were painted in a Dark Gull Gray, FS 36231 color. Thankfully I still had a bottle of it in my Model Master enamel stash... and it was still good !



The cockpits were sprayed in this color. Now you have to look really close to see which one was the original release version that was molded in a White plastic. I have marked the original one in these pictures.


Immediately upon spraying the fuselage and cockpit parts for the Viper that was molded in Gray plastic I noticed something.

The color of the paint I was spraying was very close in appearance to the color that the Gray plastic was molded in. If a person really wanted to, they could probably get away with simply leaving the cockpit color "as is", not painting it and just roll with it. I probably would have, if I didn't have the paint already mixed up and ready to spray. I'm trying to be stingy with my dwindling stash of Model Master paint here.

I assembled the exhaust cans. They were painted at the same time as the Tamiya parts were. Here they are drying.

This photo shows the finished product. If a person wanted to, they could replace this part because it's not very well replicated in miniature. But we need to keep in mind this is an old kit, and this was the norm back then. I'm keeping this as is, being an out of the box build. There is definitely room for improvement if one wanted to go down the rabbit hole.

I'm building these for fun, so not this time.

This is what the internals look like on the exhaust can. It will do... 🙂

Here I have a better photo showing a comparison between the Tamiya parts on the right side, with the Monogram on the left.

One last thing I should mention. Earlier on I mentioned how the original kit that is molded in White plastic came with an intake compressor blade front. I was wrong. It does not.

I made a mistake and accidentally placed the Tamiya part in with the original Monogram parts. My bad. It was easy to do since both of them were molded in a White plastic.

However, the other differences I mentioned about the face of the IP is still valid. You can see it clearly in a few of the pictures I posted.

If you have some spare time, please check out the Tamiya F-16 build journal. I made an update on it tonight as well. Thanks in advance.

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by.

Have fun with these kits Louis.

Blue camo has my vote.

Here is the latest update on the pair on original issue Monogram F-16's.

The reason why I say these are the original issue, is that later on there was another newer version of the F-16 that was offered by Monogram according to Scalemates. I didn't realize this until I started looking at the plastic in the box of my F-16 Air Defense Fighter kit. I was actually thinking about building it too, then I decided against this as I have way too many projects going on as it is now. This newer kit has a better looking cockpit and several other things that were molded with more details than these two kits have. But it should, because the ADF version is about 15 or more years newer, and much progress was made during this time.

Both kits have this molded inside the wing, and on the lower flap near the fuselage. I was looking for a date but I didn't find one. These kits were made in the USA too, and that's something we don't see too much of lately.


The air intakes were assembled. This is an easy step, with only a few parts. Once this was done. I let them dry overnight.
The next day I spent more time cleaning up the seam on the outside.

I'm not going to worry about the seams on the inside of the intake. Instead I will take the easy way out, and use the kit provided FOD cover. I'll paint them Red and attach a "Remove Before Flight" tag on them.

One thing immediately caught my eye, and I thought it had to be a mistake... There is a big and highly visible "step" on the side of the intake where it meets the fuselage. I started sanding it off, but then I thought I should do a little research before going any further... and I'm glad I did.

On the real F-16A, the same notch is present... and I left things alone from this point on.

The intakes were glued in place on the lower fuselage / wing sections. Both kits were allowed to dry overnight.


The simple cockpits were painted. I had some leftover PE parts from a 1/32 scale F4 Phantom II, so I decided to use some of these placards to jazz up the otherwise plain interior. These are purely fictional but it looks better than nothing. I added a few more placards on the sidewall consoles and sides of the IP. Unfortunately I didn't grab a photo of them.

These two babies here are definitely having the canopies closed ! 😉

This shows how they looked now at this point in the game. The lower fuselage section was ready to be joined to the upper half.

So I glued the rudder / fin assemblies together, and allowed them to dry some. While waiting for these parts to dry sufficiently, I decided to go ahead and glue the upper and lower sections together. Now things are really starting to move along fast.

Once the rudders were dry enough, I glued them in place.

This shows where both planes are at the moment. If things work out, then hopefully tomorrow I can get some more work done on them.

The Tamiya F-16 has been calling my name lately too...

As always, comments are encouraged. Thank you for stopping by.

Some amazing progress, Louis @lgardner
Glad you discovered that this notch should be there in time.
I think the date of this kit is shown on your first picture, MMI in Roman numbers is 2001.

OK the curiosity was getting the best of me... You know what they say about curiosity and the cat. 😉

So I cracked open the plastic parts bag in the newer 1998 vintage Revell - Monogram F-16 ADF. This is the kit number 85-4774.

Here is what I found:

Here are the new style instructions that are multi lingual. It has two different decal options, and both look cool.

Here you can see the artists rendering depicting an interception between a Soviet "Bear" bomber and a pair of ADF F-16's.

This is the one piece canopy. It is definitely not the same as the original. The originals were two parts.


These are the main fuselage wing section parts. These are also different from the originals. They assemble in a similar manner with an upper and a lower half, but the details on the parts are much different. There is some sort of funky looking waffle designed grid pattern present on the surface of the lower wings. I will be sanding all of this off when the time comes and this one hits the bench.

The upper wing fuselage half doesn't have the rocket rails present on the wing tips. The original issue kit does.

These two smaller parts trees were also included in the kit. The originals were again completely different. If you look closely, you can see the bulge present on the base of the fin. This reminds me of my own belly several years ago. 😉

So I am going to say these are definitely not the same parts as the original kit version was. Indeed they are much newer and look better for the most part, especially with the better details molded into them... (other than the waffle pattern on the lower wings) I don't know what was up with that. It's not a Space Shuttle with tiles.

This 1998 version is a more improved edition, and it has a lot of more detailed parts options, including smaller things like the so called "bird splitter".

OK.

Now we know... and now I have just tempted myself even further, since the plastic parts bag has now been opened.

I usually leave my kits sealed, at least the parts bags, until I am ready to build them...

So what do I do now ? Hmmm.

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by everyone.

I think the ADF kit is from Revell molds. Monogram and Revell both had F-16 kits pre merger. I bought one of those ADF kits that was in bad shape just for the decal sheet to do a ND ANG plane, utilizing an Italeri kit. The ADF had the bulge at the base of the fin for electronics related to the AIM-7 Sparrow. It also had a search light on the left side of the nose and the bird slicer antennas in front of the cockpit.