Latest 1/48 release from Kinetic Models is the F-16A/B Adversary aircraft of NWASC. Heres a great chance to model either a single or twin seat Viper with the superb camouflage schemes found on the Navy, yes Navy F-16''s.

Link to Item

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

A few things to note:

The NSAWC F-16A/Bs are the ex-embargoed Pakistan F-16s. Not sure when, but eventually those jets will be returned to Pakistan, though not before being MLU upgraded as the previous Paki F-16A/Bs have been.
Here some areas of the Kinetic kit that still have significant accuracy errors:
- The F-16A/B dorsal is terribly inaccurate; being as wide as the larger C/D Dorsal!
- The Light Weight Gear is wrong in that it has the HWG lower tension strut to main shock strut structure. The upper main struts are too thin as well.
-The LWG MLG door inner structure are of the old Block 1-5 and early lot Block 10 F-16A/Bs
- Exaggerated spine hump, from the IFR door to the aft transparency.
- Aft strakes do not have the full 10 degree dihedral (closer to 6 degrees)
- There is absolutely no "angle of incidence" to the wing tips. In other words, no LE downward angle; a key characteristic of this subject!

The internal attachment part for the both the singe and 2 seta canopy is the canopy frame, not the seal. The canopy seal is the raised perimeter on the cockpit sill and rear decking

The F-16 has Leading Edge Flaps, not slats. These are almost always (99% of the time) in the 2 degrees nose up position is the static or non-powered mode. Making the LEFs as separate parts only adds to the complexity of the build and was not really necessary. The fit is anything but clean and almost always results in significant gaps at the LEF seal joints, which are not even traditional panel lines on the real jet, since the LEF to wing seals are overlapped. I haven’t seen an Kinetic F-16 kit built yet, that didn’t have a clean fit in the LEFs.

Check the instructions again, as I believe it has you install the parabrake or extended dorsal, which would be wrong for the NSAWC F-16A/B

“Fuselage: the great benefit of this release is the opportunity to create either the F-16A/B, something that Hasegawa and Tamiya would never dream of doing.”

That’s a bit misleading, especially since Kinetic for the most part copied Tamiya’s engineering layout; just not as good. All it would take for Tamiya to make an F-16A variant is to tool a new upper aft fuselage and wing assembly with the “proper” fuel cell saddle bay panels. I would be willing to bet that Tamiya would also make a much more accurate F-16A/B dorsal than what Kinetic did. Whether or not Tamiya will make an F-16A or B variant in the future is not really a case of if they will, but when….

A cool subject though and good review overall.

Mike V

Hi Mike'
Thanks for your input.




The kit has the optional parts to construct the parabrake fairing but parts E5 & E6 build into the correct base of the fin for a NWASC F-16A/B. Apologies for not making this clearer.
All the best.
tim

No problem, I wasn't quite sure on the vertical tail instructions.

I had hoped that at the very least Kinetic would have fixed the A/B vertical tail dorsal and tooled in the proper wingtip angle of incidence, but not this time.

Cheers
Mike