Otaki 1/144 North American F-100D Super Sabre RDAF

[Speedman]

You know when you buy a kit, open it up and think "This is going to be a lot of work."... This wasn't one of those kits. My first reaction was "I'm binning it!", and I did. Seriously, I threw it away. A couple of hours later I decided to take another look at it, I had paid £3.69 inc. delivery for it off eBay after all!

I decided to just build it OOB for a quick project but as usual I got carried away and started to compare it to scale drawings and realised it wasn't as far off as I imagined. The wing chord was short and the fin needed correcting but apart from that it was fairly accurate. It had raised panel lines so I had to scribe it which was not an easy task as the plastic was very brittle and felt more like resin to work with. All external detail had to be scratch built apart from the refuelling probe, tanks & pitot, those came from a F-Toys model which I converted to an early F-100A. (I've got a topic up for that one already) The canopy was a joke, it was almost like Otaki had never seen a F-100, so that had to be cut down, re-profiled (along with the surrounding area) and due to this I ended up without a usable clear part. Plasticard and Milliput helped patch it up and save the day, I ended up just painting the canopy glazing on.

The kit's decals were yellowed beyond use so I decided to do it in Royal Danish Air Force markings. I've always loved the early all over green due to the fact it weathered really badly and it would be a challenge in this scale. I made the decals out of spare sheets with a set of punches and the fin flash is two thin strips over a red base. I've included a couple of shots showing just how bad the kit was to start with and how much I had to make for it, I hope you all don't mind.

[3DStewart]

Tremendous job! I like the burnt-off paint on the rear of the aircraft.