CHRIS CLIFFORD greets an old friend in the shape of Airfix’s original 1/72 F-16, now re-released as a Starter Set
Modellers of a certain age will doubtless remember Airfix’s F-16A/B from 1982, which allowed the building of a single- or twin-seat Fighting Falcon.
I, along with many other Cold War jet fans, spent happy hours assembling and painting what was one of my favourite aircraft at that time. It looked so futuristic that it captured my imagination intensely, and I loved the fact that you could build it with one or two seats. I had not actually laid eyes on the kit’s parts since then, until this re-released Starter Set (A55312) hit the keymodelworld desk.
Almost 40 years down the line it is, interestingly, better than I remembered and apart from the raised panel lines, is a reasonable facsimile of the ‘Alpha’ variant… a good product for the youngster or rank novice, especially as it comes with six pots of acrylic paint, two paintbrushes and Poly Cement. This kit provides markings solely for a single-seat US Air National Guard F-16A, but the ‘twin tub’ components are still supplied. This is a Block 10 F-16A, so has the smaller horizontal tails, and the wheel hubs are accurate for a ‘Viper’ – as the type became known ‒ from…