stalal Posted December 9, 2017 Author Share Posted December 9, 2017 (edited) 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. Edited December 9, 2017 by stalal 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted December 23, 2017 Author Share Posted December 23, 2017 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exdraken Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 part detail looks good! but are they too small? or more a problem of where and what to cut? cheers and headsup! Werner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted December 23, 2017 Author Share Posted December 23, 2017 26 minutes ago, exdraken said: part detail looks good! but are they too small? or more a problem of where and what to cut? cheers and headsup! Werner 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exdraken Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 Thanks! Hmm... sounds lika a challenge! Or modelling skills par excellence... Good luck!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted December 31, 2017 Author Share Posted December 31, 2017 (edited) 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. Edited December 31, 2017 by stalal 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CliffB Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 There's a lot of work going on here stalal - the result should be impressive Cliff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 This seems to be a case of CMK not checking the size of the kit for which the set is meant... annoying but I see that you're sorting the problem nicely ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted January 22, 2018 Author Share Posted January 22, 2018 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. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exdraken Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 great job on the gun and bay!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted January 26, 2018 Author Share Posted January 26, 2018 Which kind of rear undercarriage doors did Belgian F-104G have? Were they the bulged out doors or were they normal flat doors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modelling minion Posted January 26, 2018 Share Posted January 26, 2018 8 hours ago, stalal said: Which kind of rear undercarriage doors did Belgian F-104G have? Were they the bulged out doors or were they normal flat doors? They would be the bulged doors. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted February 11, 2018 Author Share Posted February 11, 2018 Does anyone know if a ladder specific to F-104 is available in plastic or photo etch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lex77 Posted February 11, 2018 Share Posted February 11, 2018 Yes there is; https://www.scalemates.com/kits/190940-daco-products-dcc4808-baf-f-104g-access-ladder-mk-2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exdraken Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 On 11.2.2018 at 1:25 PM, stalal said: Does anyone know if a ladder specific to F-104 is available in plastic or photo etch? The Daco set also has one 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted March 10, 2018 Author Share Posted March 10, 2018 (edited) 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. Edited March 10, 2018 by stalal 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exdraken Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 Camo looks spot on! Thanks for showing your progress!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F-32 Posted May 16, 2018 Share Posted May 16, 2018 Looks great, the paint work is first class Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mick_Gannon Posted August 27, 2018 Share Posted August 27, 2018 (edited) Hi is this what you are looking for, Plus Model 1/48 Ladder for Lockheed F-104 Starfighter (Plastic Injected kit) on ebay 401569951494 Edited August 27, 2018 by Mick_Gannon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted October 18, 2018 Author Share Posted October 18, 2018 (edited) I wanted how the nose cone of F-104 was stored when removed from aircraft? Was there a support base for it? Or was it a hinging mechanism that let the technicians open the cone for access to radar. Any picture will greatly help. Edited October 18, 2018 by stalal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted October 21, 2019 Author Share Posted October 21, 2019 Reconstructive surgery of the radar dish. It was broken in the package with its parts strewn in small pieces. So I cut a sliver from plastic card and bonded it to the bottom of the radar. Then filled it with glue and used Dremel tool to smooth over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hook Posted November 2, 2019 Share Posted November 2, 2019 Great work so far. One thing if I may, the Tan of Belgian 104s was FS30227, not 30219. Cheers, Andre 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted November 3, 2019 Author Share Posted November 3, 2019 (edited) Yes, I heard that tan on Belgian kits is slightly different. Its not a SEA camouflage. Did some research. According to this link, I have used SEA camo colors. The lighter green and tan seem to be fine. Its the darker green which needs to be fixed. The darker green is FS34064 which I cant seem to find in Gunze range I have. However, looking back at DACO instructions, I found these are the recommended colors. Regardless, I will need to make some modifications in camouflage scheme. Edited November 3, 2019 by stalal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stalal Posted May 27, 2021 Author Share Posted May 27, 2021 I need some good reference pictures of the cockpit frame where there is some kind of pipe going around the inside of the cockpit frame. This is where this build is stuck currently. Is it a pipe for pressurizing the cockpit or is it air conditioning system? Also, is there any after market that makes that part? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
franky boy Posted May 27, 2021 Share Posted May 27, 2021 17 minutes ago, stalal said: I need some good reference pictures of the cockpit frame where there is some kind of pipe going around the inside of the cockpit frame. This is where this build is stuck currently. Is it a pipe for pressurizing the cockpit or is it air conditioning system? Also, is there any after market that makes that part? Those pipes are for de fogging the cockpit glazing. The only aftermarket that I know for them is in the Daco set for the Hasegawa kit. You can buy the different sprues separately if needs be. HTH James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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