1/32 F-104 Starfighters - how many?

[John]

Curious to know - how many 1/32 scale Starfighter moulds are there out there and what are their relative merits?

I built the Hasegawa kit what seems like eons ago (very late 1970s?) and finished it as a "J", It was this boxing, if memory serves me correctly:

http://oldmodelkits.com/jpegs/Has%20S1%20F104G.JPG

and it was mightily impressive for its time.

I know there have been a few Revell boxings as well - are they this kit or something else?

John

[Tiger331]

I am no expert on the Revell boxings although I suspect at least one will be a re-box of the Hasegawa kit - Revell have re-released several Hasegawa moulds over the years including the F-5E Tiger II and Fw-190 D-9 so they have a history but IIRC they had their own mould of the F-104 Starfighter too. These kits have been largely 'surpassed' by the more recent Italeri offering but I use the term lightly since Italeri, to some, have missed a golden opportunity to really sew up the 1:32 F-104 Starfighter market. Many were looking forward to a state-of-the-art kit from Italeri and felt let down when the kit was released. It is deemed expensive for what you get and given that it is a bit of a curate's egg (i.e. good in parts) this is probably a fair assessment. It is not, however, 'unbuildable' as some would have you believe but it does need a lot of work to reproduce a stunning replica. One of the members of my former club has been wrestling with this kit for a while and regularly brought it to club meetings so we could view progress…It was not a 'shake and bake' but neither was it unbuildable. Some of the surface detail is a bit hit and miss….some is very good…..other parts of the airframe give the impression that the final product was 'rushed'. It does have a good set of stores, a truly superb decal sheet with lots of choice and it does look good when its finished. As I say, I deem it to be the best Starfighter in this scale at the moment. There has been a rumor that AFV Club were going to release another 1:32 scale kit of the F-104 but this story is now over two years old and I doubt anything will come of it. Tamiya were also planning to re-release the Italeri kit under their own label (as they have done with other aircraft and AFV kits) but this has not come to fruition yet either. Italeri are releasing the two-seat TF-104G variant later on this year too.

HTH

[Wez]

Revell and Hasegawa had boxings of the F-104 in 1/32nd long before Revell ever released anything by Hasegawa in their own box, I therefore suspect that they are their own respective moulds although I've made neither so have no 1st hand knowledge.

There's the recent Italeri kit which has been criticised.

As Tiger331 said, AFV Club announced an F-104 roughly about the same time as Italeri announced theirs. There was some discussion about whether it would be the same kit but the CAD views of the respective kits showed significant differences, to my mind the AFV Club kit showed more promise.

If you do a search through the Rumourmonger thread you should be able to find details of the AFV Club kit.

Unfortunately, the Italeri failed to hit the nail upon the head (there are reviews on this forum). Personally, I'm still holding out for the AFV Club kit.

[John]

Thanks.

I think that's correct about Revell having a kit long before the Hasegawa reboxings. This one, for rxample:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/REVELL-1-32nd-SCALE-LOCKHEED-CF-104-C-G-CANADIAN-STARFIGHTER-4708-73-/161978179585?hash=item25b6a6e001:g:fNAAAOSwYaFWcQSO

Wasn't there also a mould by one of the Korean companies, Ace perhaps?

John

[onosendai]

The AFV is 99,99% dead project, imho.

despite some early criticisms the Italeri F-104 is a good model after all, with a bit of A/M look good.

[mirageiv]

The Hasegawa and Revell are two different tools. The former being overall better for an earlier G. Its missing the latter seat though! Cannot remember if Revell includes both but either way Hasgawa has more pros than cons compared to Revell.

That said Italeri is seemingly the best of the bunch and depending on how crazy you go, it may need an AM seat and exhaust (I would only replace these and work on the rest). I saw on another forum that the Italeri kit is also over a cm longer than the Hasegawa kit, throughout the fuselage length and to me it looks correct, if you are bothered about that sort of thing.

I'm building the Hase kit now and it is very nice given the age of the tooling, you don't even really have to rescribe it as the raised detail is probably the best I have seen on a kit, very fine and quite fitting to the smooth surface of the F-104. I will build an Italeri one though as it seems the AFV kit is gonna be a while at the least.

Edited March 14, 2016 by mirageiv

[tempestfan]

IIRC there are also boxings of the Revell kit for a C (small tail), but I don't know if the kit really represents all differences (especially wheels). Here's a Revell G kit ready, and the WIP thread may give some insight on the merits or otherwise of the kit, though I think George primarily wrestled with the paint scheme and especially new bits of info coming to light requiring repaints. IMHO the Revell kit is one of their best "old school" 1/32 moulds, quite clean & tidy, and you will be able to get it cheaply, usually. I haven't yet built one of the Revell kits, but I bought a complete wreck (complete meaning just about all parts are present) of one at a flea market for 50 €cents last year, and it keeps calling at me.

[Giorgio N]

Both the Hasegawa and the Revell kit were reviewed in the D&S book on the F-104 with the japanese kit mentioned as the best of the two. The Revell kit in particular was criticised for the lack of details. IIRC the first Revell issue had parts for both the C and the G variant, later boxes were of one or the other variant (same as Hasegawa did with their kit).

All in all the Italeri kit is the best overall. Personally I've not been impressed with this kit, it's not unbuildable of course and I believe that a great model can be built from it. At the same time the quality is not what I'd have expected from a mainstream manufacturer in 2014 while the price was not cheap. Finding roundels of the wrong size and similar problems in the decal sheet is also something I can't excuse in what was a €100 kit, unfortunately Italeri does not seem to excel when it comes to researching decals. Still the shapes seem to be good and this to me is always a good starting point.

It should be said that the later 1/32 Mirage III seems to be better moulded than the Starfighter, hopefully Italeri is learning

[Whisky Papa]

Timeline according to scalemates.

;-) WP

Edited March 14, 2016 by Whisky Papa

[meindert]

You can see some of these 1/32 scale F-104 kits on my page here:

https://designer.home.xs4all.nl/models/f104/f104.htm

Yep, I have the new Italeri kit as well (but not yet started) and also await the announced TF-104G (though scratch built a kit more than a decade ago)