BASIC BUILD
Toby Page builds Hasegawa’s seasoned 1/48 F-16C kit, producing a display aircraft with a distinctly Greek flavour.
With staged upgrades, the F-16C Block 52+ arrived in Hellenic Air Force service around 2005 and is notable for the upper fuselage-mounted conformal fuel tanks (CFTs), which increase the aircraft’s fuel capacity... plus engine, radar, avionics and weaponry upgrades. Three HAF squadrons are equipped with this variant, two units being part of 115 Combat Wing at Souda, which provided the ‘Zeus’ display aircraft for the 2011-12 airshow seasons.
Hasegawa’s 1/48 scale F-16 was first released in 1983 as an A-variant and the company has updated and upgraded the components on an almost continuous basis to keep up with real-life airframe changes. Unfortunately, most of the later offerings have been in limited-edition format, and often these have sold out quickly, but thankfully there are sufficient versions plus aftermarket decals still available to allow this particular release to be replicated. The featured kit comprises 16 styrene runners and one clear frame, with notable differences in moulding quality between older and newer components, as evidenced by sporadic flash on the former.
Above: Among the new pa…
