I-16 type 28, Hasegawa 1/72
Model by Massimo Tessitori
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This I-16 was obtained from the Hasegawa type 24 kit, 1/72.
This model has some good characteristics, as the clean moulding and pleasant building up, but it has some heavy defects too.
The most visible defect is the wing platform, that is a bit too rastremated, even if not as strongly as on the older Revell kit. As a result, the wings appear a bit too pointed.
One can choose to ignore this, but I preferred to correct the problem. I had to:
 
  • carefully remove the ailerons;
  • cut a piece of rear wing edge from the upper wing half, then glue it moved back on the lower half; glue plasticard on the remaining space;
  • add stripes of plasticard on the back of the aileron recess;
  • glue with cyanoacrilate, fill with nitro putty mixed to cyanoacrilate;
  • reshape accurately, recover details, rejoint ailerons.

The main wheel bay is too flat, it has to be opened; a new bottom will be added with plasticard, glued and painted with a thick layer of paint in such way to be filleted to the sidewalls; a nervure and a small hole will be the only details required.
The landing gear doors have to be thinned, and their nervures built with sprue.
The exhaust stacks are not too satisfying, I preferred to remove them, drill the fuselage and install new pipes made by plastic tube. The upper left recess and both lower ones have two pipes each, the other recessed have only one pipe.
The air outlet of the oil radiator under the nose has to be modified; it should have a strongly oblique outlet.
Some details of the cockpit have to be added, the gunsight in particular.
The guns and Venturi holes were made by a small drill tool.
The pitot can be replaced by a metallic probe to increase strength.
The attachments for the camera gun have to be added on the fuselage back.

The camouflage scheme was from http://vvs.hobbyvista.com/Markings/I16/artdeco-i16.php  This aircraft was in service with the 13 IAP-KBF during the Winter of 1941-42, near Leningrad. The pilot could be Aleksandr Mironenko.
The painting technique was by hand brush, with panel lines darkened with a mix of acrilic black, alcohol and gloss trasparent. Some drybrushing was made on the details of the landing gear and the cockpit.
 
 

References for this model:
Polikarpov fighters in Action part 2, by Hans-Heiri Stapfer
Polikarpov I-16 fighter of Y.Gordon and K. Dexter
Soviet Air force Fighting Colors 1941-1945 of Erik Pilawskii
Barbarossa Victims of Tomasz Kopanski
Storia dell'Aviazione
Letectvi Kosmonautika
http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/
http://vvs.hobbyvista.com/ModelArticles/I-16/index.php
http://www.airwar.ru/other/draw.html
http://www.airwarfareforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=3024