03/02/2026
I posted this GW F-16I review on the FB F-16 Builders suort group, so thought I'd share it here also.
Add to it anything else you guys notice.
The GW F-16 came suddenly, and it has all the earmarks of a rush job. I was expecting this kit to be better than this, coming off their excellent A-10 kit!
First impressions, the kitās well defined surface detail, if slightly on the soft side. Test fitting thus far has been excellent, a result of a well-engineered kit. But hereās the quick Gig list I found:
- Radome lacking the fwd. lower profile bulge
- No canopy seal on sill
- No 2 degrees nose up, for the LEFs
- MLG doors NOT bulged
- Missing wing root bulges
- Mirrored the upper aft fuselage panel lines
- Speed brake ISA bulges too big
- Missing the Nacelle ejector ports
- No angle of incidence (wingtip cant) to the wings
- Tail cap a little narrow/short
- Tail logo lights domed/should be flush
- Stabs missing pivot pin notches
- Gun muzzle panel misshapen, missing inner panel, gun muzzle too far forward, slots too big
MAIN GEAR:
The gear wells are nicely detailed, but GW completely missed the bulged MLG doors! They are flat but oddly have the bulged door (Heavy weight Gear) retract brackets. The LG is decent, though ā¦ā¦ The wheels are over-scaled, but the tire diameter is ok. I donāt like their ā1 pieceā main wheel hub, the inboard rims have fine flash to deal with. Wheel hubs are best split in half! Great Wall provides both standard HWG and Extended HWG nose struts. The āwider NLG wheel/Tireā and NLG Strut fork standard for Block 52+ on. GW did provide the NLG bay bump to the intake.
MAIN FUSELAGE:
The radome is a one-piece part and looks ok, but itās lacking that slight lower bulge, midway. This isnāt that noticeable unless next to the Tamiya radome, who captured the shape quite well.
Moving on to the main fuselage, the first thing I noticed was that Great Wall made the same mistake Tamiya did with their 32nd F-16C/CJ: they mirrored the upper aft fuselage panel lines! Maybe they used the DACO drawings? They also omitted the wing root bulges, standard for F-16 wings, Block 40 on up!
The Stab ISA bulges are exaggerated and look more like ECM bolt on bulges, than a smooth fair in panel bugle. GW does not provide the Nacelle ejector ports between the speed brakes and donut panel, that area is solid plastic.
It looks like they attempted to tool in the LEFs to the proper ā2-degress nose-upā positions, (as they always set powered off), but itās hardly noticeable. The LEFs also have a significant gap between the IB LEF flat and strake! You can fix it by razor-sawing the LEFs to get the gap. Now you can bend the LEFs up to the proper ā2-degress nose-upā.
The worst eye sore is the misshapen gun muzzle panel! The bulbous outline, the inner gun panel is only half there, the 2 port slots are too big and square corners! They provide a gun muzzle insert, but they obviously had no clue about this area, as once installed the gun muzzle is visible through the panel slots!
Great wall molded in the static dischargers to the TE wings, tail, and stabs. I donāt know why manufacturers continue to do this on F-16 kits, as they are grossly over scaled and most of them will be broken off during assembly anyways. The stabs are shaped well but they are missing the āpivot pin notchesā. For comparison see here, where Tamiya captured this feature.
I donāt like how they tooled the turtle shell panel, right aft of the canopy. They notched the sides to take the front spine panel. This makes it very difficult to make a standard F-16D model from this kit. I imagine when they get around to doing the earlier blocks, they will have to address this.
The vertical Tail cap too narrow and a little short, though most probably wonāt notice it. They also omitted the notch on the lower left side of the rudder, but this can be carved out. The vertical tail logo lights on the upper aft fuselage are ādomedā and should be flush.
The wingtips lack the āAngle of incidenceā, as they are for the most part, parallel to the ground
The main intake duct is a 4-piece assembly, same as Tamiya and Kinetic. The shape of the NSI intake mouth in good and they also included the wider NLG strut bump, on the lower front ramp.
COCKPIT:
The canopy clean with little distortion. The canopy frame is included, but the corresponding canopy seal is completely missing from the cockpit sill.
Cockpit console detail is nice, just a little on the soft side. The seats are a little blocky and over-scaled just like their A-10 ACES II. The glare shield is decent, just a little out of shape and under scaled. No crew ladder is provided.
The canopy clean with little distortion They provide a canopy frame with extra details a nice tough, however the corresponding canopy seal is completely missing from the cockpit sill.
EXHAUST:
The Prat -229 Exhaust petals are nicely done, though they should have separated the nozzle from the donut panel. The real -229 feathers are carbon fiber, so should be smooth as the kit has it. I did notice that they messed up on the base of the feathers though. They didnāt represent the āfinger sealsā properly. Instead, they have these weird deep notches. This isnāt supposed to be like that. The 2-piece exhaust duct is way too long, and they tapered it to make that āforce perspectiveā effect. This was totally unnecessary. Itās a 2-piece Exhaust duct (not practical to begin with as itās impossible to clean up the seams) and itās also too long. This is just an odd engineering approachā¦ The flame holder and turbine are poorly done and are quite under-scaled, being set so far back it will be harder to notice.
I also noted that once installed, the nozzle protrudes too far aft of the speed brakes by a couple mm
EXTERNALS:
First up the stores. Here they cheeped out. Most of the stores seem as though they were tooled by old trumpeter, as the panel lines got the āred Pillā treatment: BIG! The wing and centerline tanks got it the worst. See here compared to Tamiya. The 370 wing tank pylons are decent, but not sure what this half-round bulge at the pylon sway pad joint???
The main āWing Weapons Pylonsā are decent but like Tamiya, they are too short: approximately 3.5mm. They separated the upper mount sway block and MAU-12 fairing, though it does not have the MAU-12 thread bars. The pylon locations on the lower wings are good, unlike Kinetic. However, they only provide 2 pylons. This isnāt that big a deal as itās rare to see a 4 WWP load as the late block F-16s hardly ever fly in that configuration.
