1/48 Kitech F-CK-1 Ching-kuo

Gallery Article by K Diamond on Apr 16 2012

 

 

This was a very interesting kit...  It's a model of the F-CK-1 Ching-kuo Indigenous Defense Fighter used by the ROCAF.  I had heard of this aircraft and it looked like a mix between a F-16 and F-18, so it peaked my curiosity.  Other than a resin 1/72 kit, the only other kits available for this aircraft are the 1/48 and 1/72 Kitech/Zhenghdefu kits.  I found the 1/48 version for less than $10 shipped via eBay.

 

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The kit itself is typical Kitech quality.  Poor detail, bare cockpit, bad decals and atrocious fit.  I filled in most of the deep and wide panel lines, and rescribed them while adding more.  I also added fastener detail throughout.  Due to its similarities to the F-16, I dressed it up with some spare Hasegawa F-16 parts.  The AIM-9s, missile rails, antennas, and wheels were F-16 spares.  The kit came with some missiles that looked similar to AGM-84s, so I replaced them with shortened AGM-84s from the Hasegawa weapons set.  The kit came with a pair of undersized and incorrect fuel tanks, and I didn't recognize the type used at the time.  So I scratchbuilt the tanks by combining spare centerline F-16 tanks, and adding the fins from the kit tanks.  After finishing the kit, I realized the fuel tanks used were probably identical to the type found on F-5s.

The decals were homemade, with the exception of the white number decals and the formation lights.  The formation lights were from a CAM sheet, and the actual formation light strips were added by me.  Since the cockpit was bare and the ejection seats were toy like, I replaced them with a F-16I PE set from Eduard and a pair of True Details NACES ejection seats.  The interior PE set and resin seats really helped this kit a lot.

K Diamond

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Photos and text © by K Diamond