stalal

What a fantastic piece of art!! This is outstanding effort and I have no word of praise that could suitably describe it. I have never seen such a realistic scale model built from scratch.

Yes! You read it right. Tamiya is bringing a D version f F-14. For F-14 enthusiasts, a great news http://www.tamiya.com/english/shs/shs2018/newitems.htm http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?/topic/303452-148-tamiya-f-14d/&page=3&tab=comments#comment-2907845

I think what I said was in the documentary.

I m still building my F-104. Not finished yet. Difficult to keep GB timelines with family and personal engagements.

Wondering if this reference will be any help. http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/stuff_eng_colorcharts_uk.htm

An aircraft inspired by Ju87G and designed with input from Hans Rudel. A great compliment to German ingenuity indeed.

For Japanese products, I have Hobby Link Japan to be the cheapest. Even after having the item mailed to Canada, its still cheaper than local retail stores.

I have Iwata Revolution for the past decade. I have used it for fine camo paint to overall coat on the model kits. The quality is just awesome and its super reliable. Its cheap too! http://www.Iwata/products/iwata-airbrushes/revolution/cr/cr-specs/

Depending upon which F-104 boxing you have, Hasegawa has both kinds of bay doors on the sprue. If you need flat ones, I can send them over to you, free. Please let me know.

Excellent build and very inspiring too. After all, KH seems to have done a good job in making this kit.

I cant agree more! If I m paying this type of money, I m expecting a 100% accurate kit without lazy instructions layout errors and compromises in engineering.

While aligning the pitot tube to the resin nose, I had sanded a bit too much and there was a visible sink. Filled it with a thin plastic piece and then sanded over to blend it. Created the tiny locking tabs on the sides of the top covers. Painting progress of the fuselage. A grey primer covers the whole body with black panel lines painted over. The underside is painted Gunze H311 and H316. Fuselage top side colors. Some gaps, some over spray needs fixing. Its all free hand so a couple of passes needed to fix those little paint issues. Also I intend to fade the colors slightly.

This is also quite a helpful review. http://www.themodellingnews.com/2018/02/inbox-dry-build-gary-fits-extra-seat-in.html

Thanks you guys for the responses.

So to sum it up, can someone please just list the pros and cons of buying and building this kit? I have been looking forward to build at least one Fitter and Kopro and its different brand incarnations has its basket full of own issues. I thought a new Fitter from another manufacturer will be able to address those issues but it seems KH has created more issues. So please I need some clarity from you experts

Does anyone know if a ladder specific to F-104 is available in plastic or photo etch?

Which kind of rear undercarriage doors did Belgian F-104G have? Were they the bulged out doors or were they normal flat doors?

Taking myself away from the rigors of installing the electronics bay behind cockpit (which I will cover later), I began to focus on the gun bay. The gun bay is a very interesting feature in the CMK kit with very good, sharp details. After painting the gun bay with Gunze H311 Light gray, I painted the valleys in the detail with Gunze H316 White. Its a creamy white so it makes the bay look dirty. Picking up small details in the bay with metallic shades completes painting. The gun magazine is held in position in the bay to align the barrels with the front part. This also helps in getting a measure how deep the gun barrel should be inserted in the magazine and how deep you will need to drill the hole. Once the first barrel is aligned, I removed the gun assembly from the bay and added the other 5 gun barrels making sure all the barrels pass through the round disc with 6 holes in it and also drop in with front of each barrel aligned at the correct length. The guns looks very real once complete. According to the Lock On 1 F-104 book, which I m using as a reference in this project, the gun magazine has a covering. To create this in scale, I used a 2 ply, good quality paper towel that wont disintegrate soaked in water. Then ripping away one sheet, I colored it Tamiya Deck Tan and let it dry. After that, I cut and shaped a piece to fit around the gun magazine. This piece was then soaked in a mixture of liquid white glue and water and wrapped around the gun magazine. Once dry, its stiff and takes the shape of the magazine. Another challenge in the CMK kit is the nose part of the plane. Its detail is too good to pass too but its brittle edges, came broken in the package. Its been time consuming to fill in and sand and cut pieces to fill in the gaps that conform to the shape. Besides CMK kit, Hasegawa F-104 is a fantastic kit. Its fit is awesome and its details are sharp. Except that there are some pin impressions in the flaps and rudder that need to filled and sanded. When I was installing the kit part underside of the nose, CMK instructions suggest to cut at a certain point. I did that and the part turned out to be short by a few millimeters. Never follow after market instructions, make sure you measure it yourself first before making an incision. Learning that lesson, I m making a cut to the ventral fin only after sizing it up against the CMK part to ensure I dont make that mistake again. More to follow.

Over the weekend I kept thinking about solution to the gap problem between fuselage halves and gun & electronic bay resin parts. I thought of first filling the gap with liquid putty but that would need a lot of sanding and there is very little room there to run a filing stick. Enter Evergreen plastic strips! This size is a perfect fit to fill that gap. But to fit the strip in, I needed to create a support so that the strips stick in a straight line and at a level. To do that, I cut small pieces from the same strip and glued them over the top of the resin part on inside of the fuselage. It then was an easy task to lay the strips down on the support base. The gap at the front of the gun bay needs to be revisited. The kit has thin photo etch strips with bolt pattern that will fit around the perimeter. That would just might fill the gap at the front. I m not there yet, so I cant decisively say how much filling will still need to be done, if at all. Since I m using two CMK detail sets, they both dont seem to talk to each other CMK kit 4098 was meant to have kit's cockpit with electronic bay tub fitting at the back end of it. Kit's cockpit part R25 is the front of the electronics bay. The resin cockpit from CMK 4099 doesnt have the slot under which the front of the bay fits. Hence there was a gap. In this image, kit part R25 is at the front of the bay. It seems the gap between resin cockpit and electronics bay is the same width as the top section of the kit part R25.

They are too short. Its two CMK sets. I think they were made independent of each other. Merging them in a one build is a challenge. The machine gun bay is short in length. The bin like electronics bay behind the fuselage is also short. If I had moved the resin cockpit back slightly and glued it there, the wheel well then wouldn't fit. So its a trade off. Need to think how to fit the electronics bay behind the cockpit so that the gap is not as perceptible as it is now.

The electronics bay fits at the rear bulkhead of the cockpit. But it will fit at an angle as there is tab only at the top. In order to prevent that, I have put a spacer for the fir to be straight. There are lot of issues in fitting these parts. The electronics bay leaves a lot of space at the front or at the back. This is despite careful test fitting of fuselage. The fit of the machine gun bay and the electronics bay on the fuselage inst that great either. The machine gun bay was warped and is short of the total length of the bay. A bath in hot water fixed its warp. Then a lot of sanding at the back made it to fit in the space. The starboard side electronics bay isnt such a bad fit Looking at the amount of detail there is to paint and fit, my original plan was to complete the fuselage bays first, detail them and then fit them. But it looks like I will have to reach a compromise between detailing them and fitting. As some details will be lost or need to be redone. Fitting the resin parts is not as straight forward as it first seemed. There is a reason why CMK has provided the front wheel well. The original part will not fit with the resin cockpit. And if original part is sanded, part of the wheel well will be lost. In terms of details, the kit part is as good and as sharp as the resin part.

Not much to report today as its time consuming to fill gaps, wait for putty to dry and then sanding. I perfectly aligned the resin wheel wheel and it perfectly fitted the inner fuselage on port side. When the two halves of fuselage were joined together, there is a gap between the part and fuselage. Its not big but it still needs to be filled.

Most of Hasegawa F-104 version state the undercarriage color to be silver/aluminum. However, looking through Lock On Starfighter book on Belgian Air Force Starfighter, it seems the undercarriage color is light grey or white. Can some expert on F-104 here verify what the color of undercarriage on Belgian F-104s?

With all the 'handicraft' lights installed in the fuselage, its now time to look to stitch together the fuselage halves. But this is a step that should be executed with care. There are three instruction sets here - 2 from CMK detail sets and one from the kit. The CMK set instructions at some steps contradict each other. So I have been cautious to not mess up something. The intake halves need a slight amount of filling as ends leave a little gap. The engine block at the top is very thick and it comes in the way of the wing tabs. Its important to find where the wing tabs will overlap with the resin block. So one of the test fittings was to set a rough area on top of engine block to sand down and mark the area on the wing tab to cut. Once that is done, the engine block is aligned and fitted on one half of the fuselage. Parts K9 and K11 should be cut as per instruction and fitted on the wheel wells resin block. After carefully painting the engine, its unfortunate how little will be seen of it when the fuselage halves are glued together. Looking down the fuselage one last time With so many resin parts going in, its not possible to glue the fuselage in one go. So its the rear of the fuselage being glued first.