Two Seat F-16xl Wild Weasle In 1/72nd

[Archangel]

I apologize up front for the quality of the pictures but I have a really cheap camera to start with. One of my first what If's was this F-16XL from Monogram which so many of us know has only one seat. I took the canopy frame from an Airfix F-16 kit that had both the A and the B canopies in the box. All I did was trim the two seaters canopy frame away and then stuck the back of the frame at the right position on the back after trying to cut open a space for a second cockpit.

I mianly wanted to do this as there were and still are not any two seater F-16XL kits let alone a good F-16XL. I left out the second F-16XL seat and painted over the rear half to hide the WSO and the fact there is no seat. I pressed fit the caopy to the body and it got close  to a good fit but not totally. If my skills at the time were better I'd have sanded the canopy down some more and got the fit right. I added 2X 30MM GEPODS, an AGM-88, 2X Aim-9 Sidewinders,4x Aim-120 AMRAAMs and a Standard ARM missile for weapons underneath.

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3239/005qo6.jpg

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3239/005qo6.jpg

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/8596/007jh7.jpg

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/8324/008yy7.jpg

[Archangel]

Here are the rest.

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/7436/009lj1.jpg

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2500/010gc0.jpg

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6969/011li5.jpg

The paint scheme was Light and Dark Ghost Grey in a pattern just like the early F-15's

[B777LR]

speeechless!  Great way to make a boring F-16 not so boring! Perhaps if you had used the entire nose section off the airfix F-16 it would be better, no?

[Archangel]

speeechless!  Great way to make a boring F-16 not so boring! Perhaps if you had used the entire nose section off the airfix F-16 it would be better, no?

I wanted to do it as an Israeli bird at first but didn't have the decals so I left it bare except for the paint. Now that you mention it I probably should have gone that route. Then again I had fun just getting it that far as I did. I am however looking for more F-16XL kits and I will redo it again and better. I also did a straight  F-16XL in Hill AFB markings because I didn't want to do it as the protoype single seater. If anything I know that I can alsways do a single seat version as a wild weasle just like the ones based in Germany. Wait till I take pics of my F-4D with Airwolf markings. That one really is a What If for sure.

[Rafael]

Any way you do it it's a fabulous bird. Way to go!!!    

Congrats!!!

Rafa

[Howard of Effingham]

excellent!

nice idea and backstory archangel.  B)  ^_^  

trevor

[Archangel]

Thanks  for the kind words everyone. The one bad thing about that F-16 XL is that I didn't fill the seam between the cockpit and the canopy that happened when I aded the canop to the kit. I had no idea at the time how to fix it and that was one of the things  I intend to do when I build another one along with the seams on the wings. Otherwise the kit itself has detail probles I have been told about that would be kind of hard to fix to make it accurate to the real Aircraft. I have some Airfix 1.144th scale F-16XLs now and I can at least build a single seat Wild Weasle fairly easy now.  

[Shasper]

Now we need someone to repop the old Mono kit for a resonable fee (ie not Anigrand  )

SHas B)

[Archangel]

You would think that they would be easy to find seeing as so many sat on  the shelves . Mongram could always re pop it themselves though if they had enough reason to.

[Svaz]

Excellent! Might have to add that to my 'to-do'  list.  ^_^ (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all...)

[Archangel]

Please do. I would like to see how yours turns out. Especially if you go the way of cutting the nose section off of one two seat F-16 kit to avoid the trouble I had originally with trying to fit the two seat canopy to the nose of the XL kit..