XF-104 Starfighter prototype

[John R]

I have long had a wish for the Starfighter amongst my collection of prototypes but never thought that I had enough information to produce one until I came across this drawing which, apart from the lack of anhedral, purported to represent the proposed layout of the F104.

 

The first drawing matched an old Monogram 1/72 F104C, which was never finished, sufficiently well to show that the latter would be a good source of parts for an XF-104. However the fin looked wrong and the second drawing seemed better in that respect.

The original model would have to be shortened and would require a new rear fuselage and intakes. The fuselage spine would have to be removed and the front u/c leg moved forward as the XF-104 had a rearward retracting leg. The cannon would need to be faired in.

The centre section, nose and tail unit looked as if they could be used “as is”.

Whilst the model looked OK in the plan view it looked a bit thin from the side and when I cut off the tail section I could see that the cross section was oval, rather than round, as I expected. I decided that there was nothing I could do about this. Anyone contemplating doing one of these might well be advised to start with a different model.

 

What follows is not a proper WIP as I wanted to see if my ideas would work before going into print. I have got sufficiently far to show that it is feasible even if things go pear-shaped from now on. Note that all of these modifications are based on unauthenticated drawings, what photos I could find and the ‘Mark 1 Eyeball’.

 

The first step was to cut the fuselage, throw away the rear section and shorten the front section.

Next step was to simply remove the intake bullets and add the ‘fence’ ahead of the intake. To say that this did not work would be an understatement. The bullets are hollow and whilst this might have worked if using parts straight from the sprue I couldn’t manage it with them fitted to the model.

The intakes were removed and the inside sections created by first wrapping thin sheet around a curved former and dunking it in hot water. They were then glued to the outer sections. To get the shape matched to the fuselage the inside and outside sections were held against the fuselage side whilst the glueing took place. Once set they were removed and trimmed to shape.

 

Next the boundary layer slot had to be made. The main problem here was trying to determine what was going on between the intake and fuselage. I could find no information and what I ended up with was a ‘best guess’. There appears to be a slot so two roughly shaped pieces of about the right thickness were glued to the fuselage with a gap between them to represent what appeared to be a slot for (cooling?) air. These were then trimmed to a shape which matched the intake.

 

 

 

Next came the rear fuselage. I made a tailpipe by turning a former out of balsa wood, covering this with Micromask and then tacking pieces of plastic road together to form a sheet and then wrapping it around the former to make a tube which was then attached to the rear bulkhead.

Pieces of sheet were then glued to the tube and shaped to give the right outline in side and overhead views.

Circumferential formers were added and shaped ‘by eye’ and then the assembly was ‘planked’

 

 However when offering up the tail assembly it became apparent that it had not been tilted up sufficiently so it was cut off and corrected. I then found that the rear fuselage now seemed to be a bit too short (Mark 1 eyeball again) so it was cut off again and a piece of thick sheet inserted to bring it up to the ‘right’ length.

The fin had pieces of sheet glued to the bottom to match the shape of the rear fuselage

One unresolved problem is what to do about the fairing between the fin and the exhaust nozzle. It seems to be just a cover over the rear fuselage rather than being part of the fuselage and thus the leading edge would stand proud of the fuselage surface. Does anyone know the answer?

 

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by John R

[corsaircorp]

Hello John,

Yeees ! I like that kind of job,

I'll follow it with attention.

Nice job on this one, I'm amused by the russian's plan of such an U.S fighter.

Sincerely.

Corsaircorp

[Finn]

There is this pic:

 

 

Jari

[Crossofiron1971]

Now, THAT'S A PROJECT!

 

[Biggles87]

It certainly is, but you've made a great start.

[John R]

OH *****! My query about the tail in the Cold War section has led to a number of videos which confirmed my suspicions about the lack of fuselage roundness. If I carry on with the project in this form is it going to end up looking too slim?

Incidentally many of the videos show that it did not have the fairing for the first flight.

Edited March 3, 2017 by John R

[Caerbannog]

If it is not a trick to the eye the upper side of the rear fuselage is straight, but on your extension it looks curved down.

 

Great project - will follow with interest. Maybe the Lindberg kit is of use?

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234923582-lindberg-148-f-104c-to-xf-104/

There is also a link to an XF-104 in 1:72 on a Japanese site.

 

René

[John R]

 

If it is not a trick to the eye the upper side of the rear fuselage is straight, but on your extension it looks curved down.

I am having great trouble working out where,and how much, it turns down. I think that I have managed to correct it - watch this space

Great project - will follow with interest. Maybe the Lindberg kit is of use?

Unfortunately its 1/48, mine is 1/72. I should have said this in the main post

There is also a link to an XF-104 in 1:72 on a Japanese site.

Do you mean this one? It's 1/32 not 1/72

http://fg786.blog87.fc2.com/blog-entry-2011.html

[John R]

After viewing several videos I came across one showing pictures of the rear end as it was on the first flight so I am going with this configuration. What I have produced is not quite right for reasons that I cannot at the moment determine. I think that by the time this is finished I wil have learned enough to do a proper job....but would I want to?

 

 

Current state of play. Left unprimed so you can see all the bodges.

 

 

 

John

 

 

[Caerbannog]

On 3.3.2017 at 10:25 PM, John R said:

 

If it is not a trick to the eye the upper side of the rear fuselage is straight, but on your extension it looks curved down.

I am having great trouble working out where,and how much, it turns down. I think that I have managed to correct it - watch this space

Great project - will follow with interest. Maybe the Lindberg kit is of use?

Unfortunately its 1/48, mine is 1/72. I should have said this in the main post

There is also a link to an XF-104 in 1:72 on a Japanese site.

Do you mean this one? It's 1/32 not 1/72

http://fg786.blog87.fc2.com/blog-entry-2011.html

 

Ok - did not realize the scale.

 

I meant this link: http://f104.ath.cx/f-104/xf-104.htm

Nice work.

[John R]

3 hours ago, Caerbannog said:

I meant this link: http://f104.ath.cx/f-104/xf-104.htm

Nice work.

 It seems to have some of the features of later 104s. The intakes look a bit big and the rear fuselage looks upswept but who cares? It's a nice model - probably better workmanship than I could manage.

One interesting thing is that I started from what claims to be a F-104C which has a J79 engine but the intakes are XF-104 size. Maybe this is because the fuselage depth is not right. It makes me wonder if my earlier statemant about starting with another manufacturers kit would have been less trouble.

John

[John R]

Rob de Bie (in Cold War section) came up with the dimensions of the rear fuselage just aft of the wing and this comparison between the kit and the aircraft shows that the kit fuselage is too shallow

 

 

To adjust it a glued a 1mm strip along the lower part and applied filler before sanding it to shape. Modifying the topside looked too daunting so it was left as it was (Chicken!)

 

 

Next step was to produce the nose probe (no pictures I'm afraid). It consisted of three sections of brass tube 1mm, 0.8mm and 0.6mm diameter fitted together to give a rough shape. This was covered in filler and sanded to give a smooth taper and then fitted to the fuselage. I had grave misgivings about this as I normally fit these sort of things as close to the end of assembly as possible to prevent damage but amazingly of all the things that went wrong subseqently it survived unsullied.

 

It was then painted using Xtreme metal polished aluminium over gloss black enamel. I then masked off and painted the black anti-glare panel on the nose - and that's where the trouble started.

I had to produce my own decals for the numbers but before making them I offered up a plain printout of FG 786 for the forward fuselage and found it would not fit between the sealed off gun barrel and the anti-glare panel. It was too deep and adjusting the depth made it much too short. Obviously a problem associated with the shallowness of the fuselage. I decided to sand off the anti-glare section and repaint it to make room but all the sanding and handling ruined the paint job so a repaint was needed.

I then did something stupid. The original paint job had highlighted some rough bits so I gave it a coat of Tamiya primer to smooth things out - which ruined everything - horrible blistering all over. I was close to chucking it in the bin but decided to try rescuing it...and found that almost the whole coat had been softened and it was possible to remove most with a modelling knife, using it as a sort of chisel! Whilst I was doing this I had to remove and replace the canopy as a piece of plastic swarf had found its way in. It was rubbed down, primed and given several gloss coats of Plastikote to give a gloss finish. Most of the panel lines had been obliterated by all this but some some of the important upper ones were rescribed and it was then sprayed with Xtreme enamel.

Next came the decals. For some reason I had great trouble getting them to be printed without smearing. I have made some in the past but whether it's me or the latest printer inks I had an awful time. Anyway the FG 786 was made slightly smaller and I put these on before painting the anti-glare panel - which was a nervous time as it meant applying masking tape over the decals but there was no trouble.

So what else could go wrong? Well, after removing the masking from the canopy some primer had found its way through the Micromask and had to be polished off and after fitting the nosewheel, which had to be turned 180 degrees, I realised the the leg was on the wrong side. Obvious, with hindsight, but with some careful sawing I was able to remove the wheel and fashion a new leg.

And that's it! See RFI for the finsihed article

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235020271-xf-104-starfighter-prototype-172/

John

 

 

[Tailspin Turtle]

The three-view drawing at the beginning is the Lockheed Model L-242, which was proposed to the U.S. Navy. See https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2017/04/a-carrier-based-zipper.html

[John R]

Hi Tommy,

I asked about that drawing when I first started this project as I put L-242 into google and found it was for a naval version. I asked about it here

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234989856-starfighter-prototype-xf104/

which led to more information coming to light.

John

[Tailspin Turtle]

6 hours ago, John R said:

Hi Tommy,

I asked about that drawing when I first started this project as I put L-242 into google and found it was for a naval version. I asked about it here

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234989856-starfighter-prototype-xf104/

which led to more information coming to light.

John

Thanks for the link

Edited May 2, 2017 by Tailspin Turtle