Skip to main content

RNLAF F-16 NATO Tigermeet 1991

You may remember that I built some 1/144 scale jets last year. Well, it’s time for another jet now, only in 1/72 scale this time. This is one of two Dutch F-16’s of 313 squadron sent to the 1991 NATO Tigermeet at RAF Fairford. The two jets were given a special paint job for the occasion. Back then, 313 squadron was stationed at Twenthe Airbase at Enschede. The red banner with rampant horses on the tail is derived from the flag of Twenthe.

F-16 RNAF Tigermeet

The model is a rather old kit by Revell, which I picked up second-hand. The kit must have been made somewhere in the mid 90’s, but I remember reading somewhere that it was basically a reissue of a kit from 1976 with a small upgrade sprue and new decals to turn it into a Dutch F-16. Two big identifiers of the Dutch F-16’s made under licence by Fokker are the drogue parachute in the tail and the tinted glass of the canopy.

F-16 Tigermeet
The other of the two planes sent to the 1991 Tigermeet. 

Given that it is such an old kit, it went together pretty well. There was a serious gap between the canopy and the fuselage, however, which needed a lot of filler. I think I managed to hide it reasonably well. I basically built the kit straight out of the box, with the exception that I replaced the plastic pitot-tube on the nose with a metal one made out of a sewing pin. I simply drilled a small hole in the nose with a hand drill and glued the pin in place. It’s a bit thicker than the real one, but I knew the original pitot-tube would not survive my clumsy fingers.

The colour palette is fairly limited: 

Top, dark grey: Vallejo 70.868 Dark Sea Green (bit of an odd name for a grey, if you ask me)

Top and bottom, light grey: mix of 70.870 Medium Sea Grey and 70.883 Silver Grey

Grey for the nose: mix of 72.050 Cold Grey and 70.883 Silver Grey

Tail, fuel tank and missiles: 72.143 Heavy Blue 

I used Vallejo 73.201 Black Wash for panel lining, which turned out way too dark. To tone it back down again, I thinned the base colours with some water and applied it as a wash. I think it looks pretty nice now.

I painted the Sidewinder missiles blue to make them look like training weapons. For any rivet counters out there, I know Dutch training missiles do not have stabilising fins, but I think they look nicer this way.

F-16 Viper

I bought a metal stand from JC Wings to display it. The stand is designed for die cast models, so is unlikely to fall over with this much lighter, plastic kit resting on it. I did have quite a bit of trouble assembling the stand, though. None of the screws seemed to fit properly and my local DIY store does not sell screws small enough. In the end I simply glued it together, but of course I managed to spill super glue all over the base. This meant I had to sand it smooth and repaint it entirely...

Building and painting this kit was really fun, which got me thinking. Maybe I should build a 1/72 scale model of every jet used by the Royal Netherlands Air Force? There are quite a few, so that will keep me busy for the foreseeable future...

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More simple Warhammer 40k terrain: craters and rubble piles

Time for some more simple 40k scenery: craters and rubble piles. Both are pretty easy projects and pretty quick too, if unlike me you plan out your work a little so you don’t need to continuously correct your mistakes along the way! For the craters, I started with two old writeable dvd’s. I first closed off the central holes with mdf miniature bases. I then broke off semi-triangular wedges of cork from a pan coaster and hotglued these to the dvds, forming circles (see the picture below). I then applied wall filler to the craters to hide the mdf circles covering the central holes and to add some texture to the cork. I then glued smaller bits of cork in between the larger wedges and added coffee grounds for texture. After this step I noticed that the cork wedges didn’t look very natural. Tapering them off made them look a lot better (picture below). I then gave everything a coat of black paint:  I still thought the craters didn’t look quite right, though. They were a bit too uniform ...
2 comments
Read more

Holy cel-shaded abs, Batman!

I thought I’d do something a little different for my first post of 2023. I picked up this Batman figure second hand about 15 years ago. Back then he wore an all black suit with the Tim Burton yellow logo and a yellow utility belt.   I had repainted him years ago, but never really liked the result, so over the Christmas break I had another crack at it. I sculpted a new bat logo out of Miliput, filled in some of the joints, and repainted Batsy in a cel-shaded style somewhat similar to Mike Mignola’s artwork. I did this by illuminating the figure from the top left and then tracing the shadows. I tried to paint him so that the effect works from all angles, but I think it’s most effective from the front and left. The colour palette is very limited: Vallejo Medium Sea Grey 70.870 and Black 70.950 for the suit, Flat Earth 70.983 and Charred Brown 72.045 for the utility belt and Basic Skin Tone 70.815 for the skin. By the way, it may not come across in the pictures, but at 30 cm Batsy ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gloomhaven characters

Back in the winter of 2020/2021, my wife and I played a lot of Gloomhaven. After several months of playing multiple games a week we put it away for a while, but recently we picked it back up again.  Gloomhaven is probably one of the best tabletop games I’ve played. The only downside in my mind is that it can easily take you 15 minutes to set up a scenario, especially if you don’t invest in some aftermarket box inserts to organise the literally thousands of tiles, tokens, cards and standees. But once you’ve set everything up, the game plays really well. Plus, I really like that it is a cooperative game in which the players need to work together to get through a scenario.   Anyway, the game comes with 18 plastic ‘heroic’ 28 mm or 32 mm scale miniatures. The monochrome grey plastic really stands out against the beautifully colourful floor tiles, so obviously these had to be painted... The plastic is a bit softer than your average model kit, but a lot harder than the soft plas...
Post a Comment
Read more