Platz

1/48 JASDF F-2B JASDF 50th Anniversary

Sheet Number: JD48-22

Reviewed by  Fred A. Amos , IPMS# 6672

MSRP: ¥2400 (~$26.00) Website: www.platz-hobby.com This decal is one of the most colorful I have seen in quite sometime and that includes my favorite, the 15,000th markings for the P-40 N. The Japanese F-2B is the 2 seat version of the F-16 modified for Japanese Self Defense Force uses. The decal sheet is very colorful and in perfect registry. There are only enough decals for the one aircraft but they are on an almost six by eleven inch page and include the stencils. The instructions are completely in Japanese so it will require some very close attention to detail. One of the oddities of these markings is that some of them on the right side of the fuselage are a mirror image of the left. The instruction call out for the colors is suspect. It calls for the darker blue to be FS 35042, Dark Sea Blue, which I can believe in but for the lighter of the blues it calls for FS 35164, Intermediate Blue that I wonder about. So I have included a photograph of an F-2B in the correct colors. Personally I would add some of the Dark Blue to the Intermediate Blue until it matches the picture. So there you have it, a very colorful aircraft in anniversary markings. My thanks to Miwa Matsubayashi and Platz for a great little build.