I've been putting something together in my head for a few days now–namely, a review of a kit that doesn't seem to have been reviewed anywhere else. I'm usually hesitant to do reviews–what might be okay to me isn't to you, and what you find acceptable is glaringly bad to me. Also, I've already told you that unless I see something badly out of whack on a model when compared to a photo of the 1:1, I won't lose sleep over it. Others, though, can't live unless every panel line and rivet is an exact 1/72 scale copy of the original. All I am really looking for in a review is what the kit has, what it doesn't have, and what I need to do to fix it. I'll decide from there.
Anyway, here goes:
I picked up a copy of the Kinetic 1/72 F-16I "Sufa" (Kit 72001) recently. We'll cover The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly…
The Good: It is a 1/72 Sufa, complete with a selection of ordnance for the low, low price of about $30 US Dollars–and if you shop around, you can find it cheaper. Previous rumblings on the Interwebs about their 1/48 scale F-16's indicated that the nose drooped excessively, but the 1/72 scale kit didn't seem to have this problem when I compared it to a built-up Hasegawa Barak.
The Bad: It is based heavily on Hasegawa's decades-old F-16 kit. The cockpit, like Hasegawa's kits, is rather basic with the same anemic ACES II seats. Also, Kinetic must not have realized that the Sufa was based on the Block 52 airframe and repeated what most of the other kit manufacturers have done in the past by not including the heavyweight landing gear–the Block 40/42 and Block 50/52 airframes all have this. Some of the detail is also on the soft side, including some of the characteristic lumps and bumps that make it a Sufa.
The Ugly: I think I know where the Matchbox trench digger is now. The panel lines aren't quite as wide and deep as Matchbox's kits used to have, but again, for a kit tooled in 2010 they should be sharper and more petite. Actually, the same goes for the rest of the detailing, a lot of which is on the soft side. The static dischargers look like tree branches. There were also a few ejection towers inside the parts that need to be trimmed away.
Bottom line: Yeah, it's a Sufa, but it will take some of that modeling work to bring it up to snuff. Hasegawa also has a 1/72 Sufa kit, bit it too is based on their long-in-the-tooth F-16 molds. At $40 MSRP, you'll still have to pony up more cash for the Skunk Works Models IDF Weapons sets.
For me, I can deal with the soft detail–yeah, for $30 I shouldn't have to, but I knew going in that it was a Kinetic kit and the "Some Modeling Experience Helpful" label appeared in my head. The fact that it includes ordnance for $10 less that Hasegawa's kit goes a long way with me–I can do an awful lot of detailing and panel line filling for that $10 (plus whatever you have to shell out for the additional ordnance kit). The lack of the heavyweight landing gear is, to me, inexcusable–the Block 40 airframes have been out for some time now, so it isn't as if Lockheed Martin just decided to retrofit the fleet yesterday. You can't really fake it, either, as there is the attendant bulge that goes along with the gear. Hasegawa, in the past, has thrown in some struts, wheels, and bulged doors but in reality the bulge continues onto the fuselage. That's where this kit really falls down–lack of research and originality. Again, will the cost differential tilt your decision? A bit of epoxy putty should fix the bulge issue, but nobody has yet given the 1/72 scale modeler the proper heavyweight gear parts…
Someone mentioned that they hoped Revell AG would do the Sufa trick with their two-holer F-16 kit, but that kit represents a Bravo model. They'd have to do a Delta model, then add the spine, lumps, bumps, and CFT's before they could get a Sufa. And Revell, add the heavyweight gear when you do…
Until someone tools up an up-to-date 1/72 F-16 series (Tamiya? They got the one-holers from Block 25-up covered in 1/48 scale, and the way those kits are broken down should make the station wagon an easy jump–then all they'd need to do is put it in the same shrinking machine they've used on their 1/48 P-51's, Corsairs, and a few of their other kits), we're left to choose between Kinetic and Hasegawa. And I'll probably get the Hasegawa kit at some point to compare and contrast with Kinetic's kit…either should make a nice companion to my Hasegawa Barak.
Thanks for reading. Be good to one another, and I bid you Peace.