Yoav's F-16A, 1:33, with landing gear

[Erik Zwaan]

Time flies, and so do aircraft. Early this year Yoav surprised us with a great model of the F-16A and now my non-aircraft builds up so far this year are finished, I can finally start with this bird. Yoav scales his models 1:30 and designs them without landing gear, and these are basically the only deviations to the original I intend to make during the build:
· Rescaling the model to 1:33 means printing at 91% size of the original (30 divided by 33). 160 grams A4 size paper and in this case my own ink jet printer
· Using GPM’s IAF F-16C/D landing gear, requiring few modifications to the parts concerned as there is not a full match between both models. This is something one can expect, but surprisingly there are for instance significant size differences between the main landing gear doors of both models (and consequently the wheel bay), which makes me wonder if the main landing gear of the C/D versions is different from the A version. If that’s the case, well, then that’s what it is, and I will simply have to make any alteration required to have a proper or at least an acceptable fit
Regarding the building process, Yoav’s instructions are very clear and there is great reference available on this site (Josef’s magnificent build) and a link sent to me by Yoav of a Spanish fellow named David who also fitted Yoav's F-16A with a landing gear. I hope I can match the craftsmanship of both gentlemen!
So far for the introduction, let’s start with the upper fuselage. First, all the formers. Either glued on 0.9mm or 0.5mm thick board, as instructed. There are quite a few! Then, the structure of the central fuselage. Everything came together easily and I already fitted the bottom stiffeners S1 through S5 before placing the skins. There is no need to first glue the fuselage segments and then slide in the stiffeners in between. However, don’t forget (as instructed) to sand the edges of the stiffeners and I found it useful to here and there insert small filler strips of 0.5mm board along side to get a better grip on the side tabs during installation of the fuselage segments.
The trickiest segment is the front one, part no. 7, which required a little bit of trimming and correction at the arch on top for a good fit to segment no. 8.
Over time I have made it a habit to reinforce the inside skins with an additional layer of paper. In this case no fitting issues as the formers rest on the tabs rather than just behind them. By doing so damage to the skins if you accidentally press to hard on the paper during handling is prevented.
Erik

[Erik Zwaan]

A few more pictures. The upper fuselage is now finished.

[Vinalssergio155]

Excellent !! Great start Erik.

[asaf]

Great start!!!

[Rhaven Blaack]

You are off to a great start. It is really coming together beautifully!

[Isaac]

I am always interested seeing different building methods.

This will be a great build for you.

I wish that I discovered early enough in Yoav's models to realize they started ( by accident ) at 1/30 scale. Since most of my models are in 1/33 scale, I should have reduced Yoav's models to that scale. But, I am too committed and thus all his models will be built at 1/30 scale.


Great work so far Erik.


Isaac

[MacSongLi]

Great beginning Erik. Always nice to see one of Yoav's pieces of art come together.


Gary

[YOAVHOZMI]

good start Erik.

till now you are doing great work.

Read the notes in red carefully, they are very important in this model.
Also, the first introduction page of instructions is important for building this model.


about the landing gears....
They are more or less the same as a GPM model that represents a more advanced F-16 aircraft than my F-16A model
The more noticeable difference is in the front landing gear Headlight which different between F-16A and F-16D and F-16I


I hope you enjoy building this model.

Good luck


YOAV

[hyair]

Very good start Erik - how you manage to deal with the model size at this scale - placement issue ?

Yair

[Erik Zwaan]

Hello gents, and thank you so much for your interest!

@ Yoav: Don't worry, I'll be reading the red notes carefully...
@hyair: The bird is pretty big, I guess it will be around 45cm long when completed and to be honest, I have to make space at the expense of older stuff I'm afraid.

Well, the build continues with the bottom part of the fuselage. Fitting the wheel bays with the GPM model required a bit of trial and error and trimming of the required parts, but nothing undoable.

Compared to the upper section, the bottom parts came together quite easily. The engine exhaust also no problem but gluing the nozzle to the aft fuselage section was tricky. Difficult to apply the glue properly due to the little available space.

Finally some smaller parts, like the air brakes and air vents.

As mentioned before, I have doubled the skins by adding paper on the inside and the end result is a very rigid center assembly of the model.

Should not forget to add some weight in the nose when the time is there as the model might be tilting backwards when on its own legs. A concern for later though.

Apologies for the orange tone of the pictures, most of them were taken late at night...

Cheers,
Erik