Cutting Edge 1/48
F-16A Parapack Tail Conversion

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is an agile fighter, but has little room left in the airframe for additional avionics. When some of the NATO countries determined that they wanted the option for parachute braking on landing on their new F-16As, General Dynamics developed a stretched tail base that would accommodate a parachute. This ended up solving two problems instead of one. While one country ended up using the parachutes (at least initially), another saw that open cavity as an ideal location to add their own self-protection avionics. As more countries adopted the F-16, more also adopted the parabrake housing tail for their own avionics.

Cutting Edge has released a conversion for the Hasegawa, Academy, and Italeri/Revell F-16A kits. This conversion includes the parabrake housing tail base and tail and strobe light lens for the top of the tail. The resin tree contains your choice of parachute pack or ECM box for the inside of the tail housing.

The only down side to this conversion is the lack of instructions. While many folks who would use this conversion would also have some knowledge of the aircraft, it would have been useful to have a diagram or two showing the placement and orientation of the avionics box inside the tail housing.

This set is definitely recommended!

My sincere thanks to Meteor Productions for this review sample!