F-16 intake cover question

[james84]

Hello all,
I am bound to receive a 1/72 Hasegawa F-16C Block 50 kit from Honk Kong in the next few days.
If you have an experience in making models you know how painful masking modern aircrafts' air intakes for painting is, and if you add that the intake duct is SHORT in the model I'm getting, I thought I could as well make an intake cover in order to save time and avoid a tedious job.
I've seen lots of photos depicting two kind of intake covers: one is canvas made and I've seen it applied both on aircrafts with a "big" and a "small mouth" intake
http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Ai ... 1445426470

the latter is a solid one, generally painted red, like this
http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Ai ... 0abc18feea

I don't feel like making the soft canvas one, which would require shaping some paper tissue with white glue and water over the model, so I thought I would do the "solid" one, but I've seen it applied only on "small mouth" intakes. Do you know whether it is applied on "big mouths" (that is on Block 50s) too?
Another question: what's the purpose of this thing?
http://www.kunsan.af.mil/shared/media/p ... 8S-202.jpg

[hawk_sh]

Another question: what's the purpose of this thing?

In the description of the picture it is called run screen. It prevents foreign objects (and people) from being sucked into the engine during engine tests.

[james84]

Another question: what's the purpose of this thing?

In the description of the picture it is called run screen. It prevents foreign objects (and people) from being sucked into the engine during engine tests.

Thanks!
Of course you can't do anything if the object is small enough to pass across the screen!