F-16C Fighting Falcon

Ron Garcia
A few recommendations for this kit:

Make sure to always keep your aircraft "clean" when building any of the Idolm@ster kits. Any external sensors, air ducts, antennas, etc. will invariably interfere with decal placement somewhere. You can always add them at the end if you feel the need. With the decals dominating these planes, no one will notice if they are missing or not anyway. In fact, I didn't even bother to do the surgery to replace the wing missile launchers the instructions recommends on this particular kit. Accuracy for these kits takes a back seat to visual flair as far as I'm concerned.

Decide if you want to paint the white areas white or use the decals. The decals are fine but they don't wrap around the edges of the wings or tail fin. If you paint the white areas, be prepared to do surgery on the stripe decals as they overlap the white sections. Having tried both, I think painting the white sections make the kit look better, but trimming the decals are tricky because they are fragile!

Some of the decals overlap others and you will invariably discover this as you are applying them. I'd say carefully study the decal instructions before applying them, but with so much going on, that's difficult! My best suggestion is to work in small areas so you have enough time to carefully move a decal (or two) if necessary before they fully adhere.

For this kit, the mixing ratios are fine except for the green. I started to tone it back a bit to make the yellow stand out more. The color I ended up with was a light puke green which I thought was off. However, it matched the decals almost spot on so it worked out. Maybe 5% green would be best.

Overall, a nice looking kit next to my other F-16s. My wife called it "cute" which is a big compliment coming from her!