COBI F-16AM Fighting Falcon Set 5896

COBI's F-16AM Fighting Falcon is a 1:48 model built from 425 blocks, 31 cm long, in Royal Netherlands Air Force colours. AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles are included and detach for use on other Armed Forces models. A Dutch pilot figure with helmet, oxygen mask and hose is supplied, with printed Netherlands Air Force and F-16 squadron patches, plus a display stand with a plate carrying the national flag and the Lockheed Martin logo.

Look at the canopy

There is no frame across the front of it. The F-16's canopy is a single piece of polycarbonate curving from the nose back over the pilot's head, and in 1974 that was startling.

Every fighter before it had a windscreen with a frame, and the frame sat exactly where a pilot looking for an enemy needed to see. Pilots learned to move their heads around it constantly — and in a dogfight, the aircraft you lose sight of for two seconds is the one that kills you.

Removing the frame meant solving real problems: the canopy had to survive a bird strike at low level on its own, and it had to be optically good enough that a pilot looking through a curved surface did not see a distorted target. It also put the pilot's head above the fuselage line, which is why an F-16 pilot can look almost straight back over his own shoulder.

Combined with the reclined seat and the side-stick, the cockpit was designed around what a human body can do under g rather than around the airframe. Every fighter since has copied it.

The AM

AM marks the Mid-Life Update given to the European F-16A fleets in the 1990s: new radar, modern cockpit displays and current weapons on an airframe from the early 1980s. The Netherlands flew them until 2024 and transferred a number to Ukraine.

In the COBI range

Set 5913 is the Norwegian F-16AM, 5893 the Ukrainian one, 5910 the Polish F-16C, 5914 the two-seat D and 5892 the YF-16 prototype.

Specifications

Pieces: 425 · Figures: 1 pilot · Scale: 1:48 · Detachable weapons · Display stand and plate
Model dimensions: 31 × 22 × 11.5 cm (12.2 × 8.7 × 4.5 in)