Aires

1/48 F-16A MLU Cockpit Set For the Hasegawa kit

Stock Number: 4411

Reviewed By  Mike Howard, IPMS# 30741

MSRP: $23.95 Website: www.aires.cz Aires is well known for their finely detailed resin accessories and this new item continues this fine tradition. This cockpit set, designed for the Hasegawa F-16 series, contains a combination of resin, photo etched (PE) metal and printed acetate parts. As this is a mixed media set, with some kit surgery required, having some intermediate level modeling skills is highly advised before jumping into this one.

While the Hasegawa kit parts have a reasonable level of detailing, both the cockpit and ACESII ejection seat, the level of detail in the Aires parts is remarkable. Comparing the resin sidewalls and instrument panel to a photo of the actual cockpit shows that the multitude of buttons, knobs, switches and hoses are faithfully replicated. The printed acetate sections, for the dial on the gauges, look great when used with the PE.

Both the cockpit tub and ejection seat come with pour blocks that must be removed. This goes fairly quick with a large, medium tooth razor saw. There are three recessed tabs that will be used to align the tub to the lower fuselage half, so take care to not obliterate these during your cutting. The PE rudder pedals can be installed into the tub at this point with a couple of drops of CA (super glue). As the cockpit tub is cast with the joystick in place, I had to constantly be conscious to not break it off while adding parts and painting. To their credit, Aires does supply a new joy stick, should you manage to snap off the original.

The next step to making this set work is some simple painting. The cockpit colors of modern U.S. aircraft are generally a combination of gray and black. Since this cockpit will be going into an F-16A, all of my references indicated a base color of gray. I selected Model Master Dark Gull Gray for the cockpit tub and ACESII seat Tamiya NATO Black was used for side panels, instrument panel, area behind the seat and instrument coaming. Green drab was used for the various hoses and a bright green for the escape O2 bottle on the side of the seat. Various knobs, switches and buttons were touched with some red and yellow as needed. Also, for the instrument panel, you must bend and add one of the PE pieces (hood) and a piece of the printed acetate instrument backing (painting the back of the acetate white so that the black instrument faces can be seen). The ACES II ejection seat can be added now or at a later time. The guide bearings on the side of the seat will actually slide into the ejection rails so the seat location can't easily be messed up.

Once the cockpit has been painted, the surgery will be needed on the kit upper fuselage. The instructions show that the entire front coaming area of the kit part should be removed. I chose to use a scribing tool to outline the proper shape, using the new Aires coaming as my template. Using a combination of the scriber and a small X-Acto saw blade in a #11 handle, this section is readily removed. A little clean up with sanding sticks and needle files closes out this portion of the surgery.

Here is where the Aires instruction sheet falls short. Though it isn't shown or mentioned on any of the instruction sheets, the area at the back of the cockpit will need to be cut out to allow the resin cockpit tub to be fitted properly (I guess you could cut the rear section of the resin tub off instead, but this would lose you a lot of great detail). This one I removed using the inside of the fuselage as my template. A little more cutting, filing and sanding and this section is also cleared to accept the Aires tub.

I didn't add the separate sidewalls to the tub until just before I was ready to close up the fuselage. These were attached with CA and hit with some accelerator. With these in place, a recheck of the tub fitment was in order. I found several issues that kept the fuselage halves from fitting easily together. First, the overlap of the sidewalls on the tub caused the fit to the top of the fuselage to be poor (some quick sanding cures that one) and I found that my initial placement of the instrument panel/coaming was too far back and caused the IP to touch the side mounted joystick. More cutting, sanding and fitting brought this issue into line also. The final step needed to get a good fit of the cockpit was to scrape large amount of resin from the bottom of the tub. Without doing this, the upper and lower fuselage halves do not fit together well at all (I had to sand/scrape off enough that I ended up breaking through the bottom of the tub, below the ejection seat). On to the seat. The Aires ACES II ejection seat is leagues ahead of the Hasegawa kit part. There are several small PE pieces that need to be attached, excluding the seat belts. Of these five tiny items, I managed to lose 3 of them while moving them from my Hold-n-Fold to the seat. The air sensor probes (the "ears" on the top of the seat) require a 90 degree bend prior to installation. Without a PE bending tool, this operation could pose a problem trying to get these parts bent properly. Either way, these were lost and replaced with some "spare" PE parts on the tree. Ultimately I'll scratchbuild some replacement items, but for now these will do. The seatbelts are yet another exercise in small PE work. There are 4 lap belts plus the shoulder straps and their retaining straps. Each belt is made up of several PE pieces that need to be bent, folded and glued. While the completed items look good, I personally find harnesses cast into the seat to be much simpler (but then I'm a klutz with small PE!). Again, the seat details benefit greatly from some careful painting, washes and drybrushing. As noted previously, the seat can be added at any time, before the canopy is attached. It slides right down the ejection guide rails, so getting it in the proper place is very easy.

The last parts to be added are PE HUD and the canopy support mechanism. The HUD is made up of two PE sections and a small acetate piece. The PE parts require a small bend on two tabs prior to being installed. Once glued in place, the small acetate "screen" is slid between them and glued in place. For some reason the HUD frame sits so high that the canopy will not close, so this will need to be corrected. I hadn't gotten to the point of adding the canopy when this article was written, but the two parts for the pivot and support mechanism look like they will provide the needed strength. Also included with this MLU (Mid Life Upgrade) cockpit set are the IFF antennae known as "bird slicers". These are supplied as four separate resin pieces, along with a PE alignment guide. In conclusion, the Aires cockpit set, though requiring some applied and vaunted modeling skills, is a major improvement over the Hasegawa kit parts. Some careful planning and lots of dry fitting will go a long way towards getting a good fit and avoiding to frustrations.

A big "Thanks" goes out to Aires and IPMS USA for this recommended review sample.