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1/72 Aeronautica Militare F-104G and F-104S


Andrew

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On 11/24/2017 at 9:35 PM, Giorgio N said:

...Maybe it's time we see a new kit that improves on the hasegawa offering ?

I vote that Tamiya or Eduard should release one; if they release it without delay (say, by Christmas?) I promise to say very nice things about them.

 

As to the missing gun vent grilles, I'm going to attempt to address that very issue with the assistance of some or all of the following:

 

24798580198_8e5f2cc435_b.jpg

 

Those circled in red seem particularly relevant, as if someone was thinking of the Hase kit when they produced these templates... wish me well.

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20 hours ago, RidgeRunner said:

... Also I've been to Villafranca and have a number of flight line images of the "RF"s in operation. PM me if you need.

Thanks very much Martin. I think it highly likely I'll be sending you a PM...

19 hours ago, jean said:

...Just a stupid question: I do remember reading somewhere that the rivets covering the back of the aircraft should be back-filled on the model, as they are either not there in reality or too marked on the model (forgot which one it is!).

What is your take on this.

Thanks JR. I think that Hasegawa's rendition of the rear end rivets are only marginally too pronounced, but I have to confess to not being too bothered by this. My only concern is the rivet detail near the underside join seam - as you may have noticed above (it's especially true on the F-104S kit, but also present on the F-104G to a lesser extent), I've had to do a bit of filling of the seam aft of the ventral fin, just to achieve a uniform surface. The rivet detail that was present has been partially erased in the process and I now have inconsistent coverage, so I think that I'll end up filling what rivet detail remains, but only within the panels that include the centreline - I'm aiming for consistency, not complete accuracy...

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2 hours ago, Andrew said:

 

Thanks JR. I think that Hasegawa's rendition of the rear end rivets are only marginally too pronounced, but I have to confess to not being too bothered by this. My only concern is the rivet detail near the underside join seam - as you may have noticed above (it's especially true on the F-104S kit, but also present on the F-104G to a lesser extent), I've had to do a bit of filling of the seam aft of the ventral fin, just to achieve a uniform surface. The rivet detail that was present has been partially erased in the process and I now have inconsistent coverage, so I think that I'll end up filling what rivet detail remains, but only within the panels that include the centreline - I'm aiming for consistency, not complete accuracy...

Hi Andrew,

consistency is good!

I am not a rivet man, so Mr Surfacer may be called to the rescue to remove the whole lot. I am still 6000 miles from the kit, so patience is the order of the day.

Thank you for your feel on the mad riveter's job.

JR

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  • 3 weeks later...

Some more progress on this pair:-

 

Intakes fitted, joins smoothed and paint applied to the instrument coaming and panel immediately aft of the cockpit -

 

38115752905_84b1309523_b.jpg

 

Holes on the underside of the wings for outer pylons were filled (better to do it now, rather than when they're attached to the fuselage) -

 

38286565714_4afe845bc7_b.jpg

 

I was going to add the wings this morning, but wanted to fix the F-104S' additional ventral fins into place first. I soon discovered that the mounting holes, as opened in the fuselage a while ago, are not in right spot, so I'll fill these and locate better spots for these fins. There's always something...

 

cheers,

 

Andrew.

 

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I've relocated the mounting points for the -S's extra ventral fins ever so slightly downwards and added the fins:

 

38432441254_f3d118d2e3_o.jpg

 

38259492205_06b6c96e2e_o.jpg

 

I've also added the wings to both jets and started to prepare the stores (fuel tanks and the -G's recce pod):

 

38259491295_a9b7a48eb5_o.jpg

 

38432440054_08fda6d2c4_o.jpg

 

Thanks for looking.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Best breathe some life into this thread.... Some necessary work on canopies prior to priming:-

 

38610569855_9d68342a81_o.jpg

 

And Primification for each of the jets (plus their tails):-

 

25635946638_28495bcace_o.jpg

 

25635946328_9d072ee1c2_o.jpg

 

I painted the radomes and anti-glare panels first, but forgot to take a photo at that time. Over the last couple of days I've applied a metallic finish to the underside of both jets (in a few layers to depict a bit of natural variation between panels - which of course assumes that the underside wasn't a painted finish on the real thing!) and the next shot shows the jets as they stand this morning.

 

25635946178_94363d8983_o.jpg

 

Better not forget to paint the tanks...

 

38610565565_00e464f801_o.jpg

 

Masking for upper surface colours will be the next order of business.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

 

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They are looking good, Andrew. I'm looking forward to seeing them done. I loved the Italian Stars, and particularly when they were fully loaded with four tanks and an Orpheus. :).

 

Martin

The undersides were painted, by the way, not natural metal.

 

Martin

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Sorry to have missed this post earlier... as martin said, the undersides of Italian F-104s were indeed painted and not in natural metal. The paint used from the '70s til the introduction of the grey scheme tended to become quite dull too (official name was Alluminio Opaco 26, matt aluminum 26).

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13 hours ago, RidgeRunner said:

They are looking good, Andrew. I'm looking forward to seeing them done. I loved the Italian Stars, and particularly when they were fully loaded with four tanks and an Orpheus. :).

 

Martin

The undersides were painted, by the way, not natural metal.

 

Martin

 

1 hour ago, Giorgio N said:

Sorry to have missed this post earlier... as martin said, the undersides of Italian F-104s were indeed painted and not in natural metal. The paint used from the '70s til the introduction of the grey scheme tended to become quite dull too (official name was Alluminio Opaco 26, matt aluminum 26).

It's all good and thanks kindly for the information, gents - I should have asked prior to painting (!), but in nearly all of the photos I looked at, there was a very metallic sheen to the underside so just assumed that the underside was not painted. Nevertheless, I'm happy with the undersurfaces on the two jets as they stand (in that they are fairly monochromatic) and I will attempt to weather the models' finish into the dullness of the real article. If nothing else, modulating the initial painted coat was great practise for the real natural metal Starfighter in the other thread. I used a mixture of Gaianotes silver and aluminium lacquers primarily and found their finish to be very tough; there's be no sign so far that tape will lift the paint or that they can't handle usual handling - I'm very chuffed.

 

10 hours ago, CliffB said:

Looking very nice Andrew.  How are you enjoying building two at the same time?

Cliff

Thanks Cliff. Funny you should ask about the dual build just now as it's has become a bugbear recently, despite making solid progress with the painting. Although a dual build saves on some effort by 'batching' steps throughout the project, there are certainly drawbacks to this process, such as the necessary repetition of masking (my current chore; it always takes a lot longer than I estimate to mask all that's required for each colour, so I start to resent the time and effort it takes to do it twice, and my concentration definitely wanders...). However, if I can push through these next steps, the result(s) should be well worth it, plus I must remember that this was my choice... Thanks again for your interest and encouragement.

 

Andrew.

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5 minutes ago, Andrew said:

It's all good and thanks kindly for the information, gents - I should have asked prior to painting (!), but in nearly all of the photos I looked at, there was a very metallic sheen to the underside so just assumed that the underside was not painted. Nevertheless, I'm happy with the undersurfaces on the two jets as they stand (in that they are fairly monochromatic) and I will attempt to weather the models' finish into the dullness of the real article. If nothing else, modulating the initial painted coat was great practise for the real natural metal Starfighter in the other thread. I used a mixture of Gaianotes silver and aluminium lacquers primarily and found their finish to be very tough; there's be no sign so far that tape will lift the paint or that they can't handle usual handling - I'm very chuffed.

 

Hi Andrew!

 

a coat of Matt varnish will set it right. To be honest I did exactly that with my Turkish F-84F a while ago which had demanded silver-grey under surfaces in the Luftwaffe style. It came out fine. Yours will too.

 

Martin

 

 

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12 hours ago, Andrew said:

Thanks Cliff. Funny you should ask about the dual build just now as it's has become a bugbear recently, despite making solid progress with the painting. Although a dual build saves on some effort by 'batching' steps throughout the project, there are certainly drawbacks to this process, such as the necessary repetition of masking (my current chore; it always takes a lot longer than I estimate to mask all that's required for each colour, so I start to resent the time and effort it takes to do it twice, and my concentration definitely wanders...). However, if I can push through these next steps, the result(s) should be well worth it, plus I must remember that this was my choice... Thanks again for your interest and encouragement.

 

Andrew.

 

I'm doing a double-build too Andrew (albeit much simpler than yours), and am experiencing similar reservations - it will be nice having the pair of them though, when finished :coolio:

 

Cliff

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And this caravan slowly moves on....

 

After much masking (the underside of both jets and their tails), I was finally able to apply the uppersurface grey colour (only the F-104S is shown below, but I'm sure you get the idea):

 

24742772857_a3713d6aa2_b.jpg

 

Next step was to mask the grey for application of the dark green and this started with masking the undersides of two sets of four tanks, followed by the disruptive camouflage pattern for each jet.

 

Here's the F-104G being masked and painted, as well as what I used to mask the pattern demarcation:

 

Given that the camouflage scheme on Italian Starfighters looks to have a tight demarcation, I needed a way of maksing this... cue use of the newish Tamiya 'Masking Tape for Curves' and a nifty device called the 'Gyro-Cut' (puchased some time ago with this application in mind, but this project is the first time I've used it).

 

39610830441_0138d9efc3_b.jpg

 

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As you'll see, the rest of the masking was achieved with patches of standard Tamiya-esque masking tape.

 

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Both the 'tape for curves' and Gryocut worked very well and I'm very pleased with the outcome...

 

24742772147_bdffaeeb54_b.jpg

 

Of course, there's going to be a bit of scrap material at the end of the process:

 

24742771147_14f7936d31_b.jpg

 

At the time of writing, I've only managed to paint the F-104G - it's a slow process indeed and the low-tack tape I use wasn't willing to wait to do both, so I just got on with it... This morning's task has been to replicate the masking on the F-104S and it's still not finished - there's at least another 45 mins yet to spend on 'blocking-in' the masked areas. At least after this step there'll only be some smaller areas to paint (and so hopefully significantly easier to mask) and I then can get on with decalling.

 

Mmmmm, decals....

 

Thanks again for looking in.

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  • 1 month later...

Thanks David, nice of you to say. I'm sure they'll get finished, but I don't know when... I was well-and-truly distracted away from these kits by the new Airfix Phantom, but have been regretting that decision for a few weeks now. It's entirely feasible that a new distraction will be found to divert my attention from my latest project and so, if the circular nature of life is valid, I should be back at the Starfighters in a matter of months.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...
On 11/19/2017 at 7:47 PM, Andrew said:

I've made some progress on these kits over the last few days, including work on the cockpits...

 

... starting with black primer (Gunze's Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black):

 

38475453792_eea9c4bddb_b.jpg

 

... then some cockpit grey (FS36231, or Dark Gull Grey), also courtesy of Mr Color:

 

24635281068_ddf81733a5_b.jpg

 

... and a dark grey wash (mix of Future, water and Tamiya acrylic colours):

 

38475452572_a2061df295_b.jpg

 

... and finally some black/very dark grey (Tamiya acrylic mix) and detail colours (Tamiya enamels) applied to the consoles and instrument panels:

 

38475452222_42b41c0e06_b.jpg

 

 

I've also devoted a bit of time to the other end of the jets, as the exhaust ducts and turbine faces need to be painted and glued in place before the aft fuselage halves are joined. In fact, I've probably spent too much time on these exhausts, as I doubt that much will be seen (or that many will go looking once the jets are finished) down the dark length of these 'tubes', but I couldn't help myself and I had fun trying to achieve the appearance of the hot end.

 

Again with the Mr Surfacer 1500 Black:

 

37792043164_ff236dfe50_b.jpg

 

and some graded green (dark to light), utilising Hataka's newish lacquer paints in appropriate tones:

 

38475453512_3cd514274d_b.jpg

 

then some dark metallic colour at the escape opening and 'dotted' along the length of the tube/duct (the latter to represent what I think are cooling perforations in the real thing):

 

38475452972_60e72fdf18_b.jpg

 

This is how I achieved the 'dots' - the piece of etched grille has been bent to shape to sit inside the tube half and I sprayed the dark colour through it. It fits the bill very well and was a serendipitous find while trawling through one of many 'boxes of bits':

 

37792043074_457f9bca7f_b.jpg

 

In fact, the whole process was so enjoyable that I did a couple more sets...

 

38475453712_f0df45052b_b.jpg

 

... it would be reasonable to assume that another couple of F-104s will soon make an appearance appear on the bench...

 

thanks for looking,

 

Andrew.

Wow that was very inspiring, sorry for late feedback but I only saw that today!!!

 

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  • 2 months later...

Really enjoying your build Andrew - nice job on both! I’m starting Italeri’s kit in Italian markings as a quick OOB build and was wondering what colors you used for the grey and green on yours. The FS numbers in the Italeri instructions don’t seem quite right . . .

Thanks!

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