Aires is probably the best known provider of resin aftermarket accessories. Well, they’re certainly the most prolific. And I still haven’t figured out how they make the detail so fine. I’d almost swear they have little one-inch tall guys making this stuff. This set is an exhaust for the F-16I Sufa kit from Hasegawa. The set consists of five finely cast resin parts, two to make up the exhaust petals, one for the exhaust chamber, one for the aft compressor blades, one for the engine ring on the fuselage and one photoetched piece to represent the flame holder of the afterburner.

As the attached photos show, the Aires set is much more detailed than the kit part. After removing the pour blocks from the resin parts and the flame holder from the photoetch sheet, the flame holder is placed on the compressor blade section. This is then placed into the exhaust chamber section to close off the back end and represent the after end of the engine. The exhaust chamber has detail throughout the length of the tube. The engine ring is placed over the exhaust chamber, awaiting the addition of the exhaust petals. The inner exhaust petals are placed inside the outer petals and this assembly is attached to the after end of the exhaust chamber assembly. The engine ring is then slid aft to its correct location over the exhaust petals. This entire assembly provides full, authentic details of the dirty end of a jet engine. A proper paint job, a couple of washes, some powders and drybrushing, and it looks like the real thing.

Kudos to Aires on another winning set. Many thanks to them for providing the accessory for review and to IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review it.