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I’m building this for a dear friend I’ve known since we were in Air Cadets. Ken and I have talked on the phone for hours, many times. We both have a passion for aircraft, and modelling them. Ken had his commercial license and was off to a great career when he became mentally ill, and his life changed dramatically. He could no longer work, so he played at many events and restaurants with his accordion, to earn a bit of extra money. We both built models of aircraft, including rubber powered and later RC, however Ken liked my paintwork and I ended up giving him a lot of my built models and even painted a few of his builds. We both love the CF-104 Starfighter and have seen and heard them fly, many times. Ken bought a 1/32 Revell Starfighter that was already built, in the CAF Tiger Meet scheme, and he wondered if I could strip the paint off and redo it in regular RCAF bare metal. I have stripped many models, but the yellow paint must have been industrial grade paint. It took a long time with many applications. I have worked on it on and off for a while, the kit was poorly moulded with a lot of sink marks. So I purchased a used Hasegawa kit for Ken and I am building it here because I have to finish it asap. Ken was recently diagnosed with cancer, I promised him I would build the Starfighter and if there’s enough time the Airfix Mk.IX Spitfire in Buzz Beurling’s markings. So I am dedicating all of my time to getting these done so he can enjoy them and display them in his apartment. Sorry for the long intro, I just felt I needed to do that. So here we have the Hasegawa kit and I have already desprued everything, removed parting lines and wet sanded the raised detail off. The nice thing about silver plastic is that when you sand off the details you can see clearly exactly where they were, so scribing goes quickly. I have scribed the wings and they should be ready to paint tomorrow, I can also do the red stabilater. I try to paint first before foiling to avoid having to put masking tape on the foil. I have put together the ejection seat and cockpit tub, and cemented the empennage together, as well as the engine. The kit is designed to have a removable empennage so the engine can be displayed. I also custom mixed that 501-109 greeny bluey grey for under the wings, I added some transparent teal to Tamiya XF-12 IJN Grey and I’m happy with the result. The basket case Revell Starfighter above is going back to the closet. The Hasegawa 1/32 Starfighter is off to a good start. Not sure about the engine yet, but Ken wants a period correct pilot. The pilot figure just to the left of the engine has the early style helmet with the unprotected visor, so it can be detailed and look good in the cockpit. Having a pilot in the cockpit negates the need for all the remove before flight paraphernalia if one is going to display it parked on the tarmac. Ken actually had a lengthy phone conversation with Wing Commander Bob Middlemiss, talking about Buzz Beurling and the Starfighter. There’s a photo of Bob Middlemiss in the cockpit of one of the first CF-104’s, and he has the early helmet, so I’ll try to make the pilot figure closer to what I see in early RCAF photos. More tomorrow… Cheers Jeff