Kenneth-V
Lockheed Martin/ IAI F-16I 'Sufa' - WIP 1
Hello all! It's been a while since my last post. The last few years were pretty intense (mostly in a positive way). Due to the successful pursuit of several career opportunities, me relocating to another town and the COVID pandemic, my hobbies had to be put on hold. And now, after an extensive timeout, I thought it was time to get "back on the horse", starting with one of the most (if not the most) iconic fighter aircraft of all time.
Ever since I began building LEGO MOC planes I wanted an F-16 in my collection because of its near-legendary status. It was until about a month ago that I came across some very cool close-up in flight pictures of a fully armed F-16 with Conformal Fuel Tanks, which intrigued me. And after doing some research, my mind was made up: My newest model was going to be the F-16I “Sufa” (Storm in English) of the Israel Air Force (IAF).
On top of the features mentioned in the second paragraph, the Israeli tricolor camouflage scheme made my choice for the Sufa pretty straightforward. However, converting those colors into LEGO colors turned out to be quite a challenge. At first I searched for other IAF LEGO models, but I soon discovered there aren’t many IAF MOC’s out there. In fact, Ralph’s F-4 “Kurnass” and Einon’s collection are the only real-life built MOCs of IAF aircraft I could find. Since then (Ralph's F-4 was built in 2016 and Einon's last photo of his IAF collection was in 2018) LEGO has drastically increased its assortment of colors and the brick variety in those colors. Eventually I decided to use Tan, Sand Green and Dark Orange as my go-to colors for the brick built camouflage.
All in all, I made good progress in just a couple of weeks. I completely built the underside apart from the intake. In addition, the aft fuselage, both the horizontal and vertical tails and the nosecone are nearly done. I was able to make the horizontal tails gently droop just as on the real aircraft.
Lockheed Martin/ IAI F-16I 'Sufa' - WIP 1
Hello all! It's been a while since my last post. The last few years were pretty intense (mostly in a positive way). Due to the successful pursuit of several career opportunities, me relocating to another town and the COVID pandemic, my hobbies had to be put on hold. And now, after an extensive timeout, I thought it was time to get "back on the horse", starting with one of the most (if not the most) iconic fighter aircraft of all time.
Ever since I began building LEGO MOC planes I wanted an F-16 in my collection because of its near-legendary status. It was until about a month ago that I came across some very cool close-up in flight pictures of a fully armed F-16 with Conformal Fuel Tanks, which intrigued me. And after doing some research, my mind was made up: My newest model was going to be the F-16I “Sufa” (Storm in English) of the Israel Air Force (IAF).
On top of the features mentioned in the second paragraph, the Israeli tricolor camouflage scheme made my choice for the Sufa pretty straightforward. However, converting those colors into LEGO colors turned out to be quite a challenge. At first I searched for other IAF LEGO models, but I soon discovered there aren’t many IAF MOC’s out there. In fact, Ralph’s F-4 “Kurnass” and Einon’s collection are the only real-life built MOCs of IAF aircraft I could find. Since then (Ralph's F-4 was built in 2016 and Einon's last photo of his IAF collection was in 2018) LEGO has drastically increased its assortment of colors and the brick variety in those colors. Eventually I decided to use Tan, Sand Green and Dark Orange as my go-to colors for the brick built camouflage.
All in all, I made good progress in just a couple of weeks. I completely built the underside apart from the intake. In addition, the aft fuselage, both the horizontal and vertical tails and the nosecone are nearly done. I was able to make the horizontal tails gently droop just as on the real aircraft.