An awesome entry, my friend @lgardner! Looks to be a very nice kit, with your skills a masterpiece will emerge!

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
Thank you. It looks like an awesome kit right out of the box. If things go well, I might also built an old 1/48 scale Monogram F-16. This one will be the original issue kit from the late 1970's, that was given to me a while ago by Jeff Bailey. It's also molded in White plastic like this Tamiya kit is.

I have a newer set of Caracal decals for the old Monogram kit, that were sent to me by Josh Patterson. This will allow me to build up a model of one of the prototypes, something I have not done since I was a teenager. Josh used some of the decals for one of his builds, and sent me what was left over. I should be able to make it work.

These F-16's are beautiful planes, and I normally don't build things that don't have a propeller ! 🙂

If this does happen, I will be sure to start a new build journal for the 1/48 Monogram kit.

Thanks again.

Thanks my friends !

This is going to be a nice build to follow, Louis. An F-16 T-Bird has always been on my list (but in 1/72)
That Hasegawa kit does look awesome.
I think I know the Caracal decals for the prototype and they also look awesome, fingers crossed to see that build initiated soon.

Erik Gjørup (@airbum)
I have started cutting plastic... so there should be regular updates now. Thanks !

George Schembri (@georgeswork)
I have only built one F-16 model throughout my life. It was the original issue of the 1/48 scale Monogram kit. I'll be building it again, and I will be starting a separate build journal for it... with a little surprise to go with it.

These Tamiya kits are supposed to be excellent from what I have read. I will soon be finding out for myself !
So please stay tuned.

Alfred van Paaschen (@alfred)
Thank you, and I agree, the decals are intimidating. I hope this works out OK. Time will tell.

With that, I have started working on the Tamiya F-16.

I can tell you from my experience so far, as long as things continue as they are, this will be a good building model.

Here is an update coming right up next.

The cockpit looks awesome so far, my friend @lgardner!

Here is what I got done on the Tamiya F-16 today. I also made some good progress on the pair of Monogram F-16's, so I will be posting it on the other build journal that is underway here as part of this group.

I did a little internet surfing, and as best as I can tell, the cockpit on these F-16's were painted in a mixture of Dark Gull Gray, FS 36231 and Black. I still had a bottle of this left in my Model Master stash, and thankfully it was still OK to spray.

I carefully masked off the upper forward fuselage in preparation for painting. It was sprayed,

along with the rest of the cockpit parts. They are actually a little bit darker in real life. These pictures look a bit washed out, and are probably a result of the lighting.

The main gear well was assembled. Luckily for me, this one is molded in a White plastic, so it should be easier to detail later on. I also painted a small reservoir tank in a Flat Dull Aluminum color as called out in the instructions. I still have to add the decal on it.

The gear well assembly was glued in place on the main fuselage section.


The exhaust cone was assembled and painted too. The details here are outstanding I think. The intake turbine blades were painted at the same time. Earlier in another posting about the Monogram kits, I misidentified this part as being one from the prototype Monogram F-16 kit. I was wrong, as it definitely belongs to this Tamiya Viper.

The masking tape was removed from the upper nose section to reveal the Dark Gull Gray paint.

I also installed the Vulcan 20 MM cannon. This shows how the plane looks like right now.

It has been an absolute joy to build so far. I'm stoked.

I'll be posting an update on the pair of Monogram Vipers next, so if you have time, please check them out too. I would appreciate that. Thanks in advance.

As always, comments are encouraged.