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Marineflieger RF-104G


mirageiv

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Thanks for the kind words chaps!

 

Slowly getting there, I've missed my aim of paint last? weekend by some margin but soon hopefully. Oddly different from my previous Hasegawa F-104 builds, I found the fit not so great for a lot of the fuselage parts on this one. It is a pretty simple kit so I'm not sure why but I found I needed to fill and sand pretty much every join with super glue and quite a few panel line needed cleaning up, maybe this Eduard rebox of the Hasegawa plastic is showing the actual age of this tooling, who knows, anyways most of the boring stuff is now done.

 

I added the other major airframe mod for this particular RF-104G version, the under fuselage camera housing. This Marineflieger variant had a larger bulge than normal RF-104Gs and was provided by the Daco update set, it looks bang on compared to the real thing. 

 

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Below you can see the small aerodynamic fairings for the bulge attached to the nose gear bay doors, still need a little blending in. I also stripped the paint off my older fuel tanks (a very easy job with Mr.Color thinner) and then added some raised weld seams (or strength rings?) with stretched sprue and a few other things for a more 3D appearance, I might lightly sand the seams but will decide after some primer. Unlike the fuselage fit, the wings were perfect, no filler needed I think. I've pretty much filled most of the rivets on all the wing parts and added a few fine ones here and there, not that the picture really shows it tbh

 

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Another little fit problem was the rudder was noticeable thinner than the vertical stab, I should have sanded the fuselage pieces a bit more to make a thinner join a guess. Anyhow to make less of a step I glued a thin bit of plasticard to one side to build up the thickness then offset the rudder slightly according to pictures, I might fill the join and scribe a new hinge for a cleaner look. That is one of the Daco chaff/flare dispensers also mounted on these late Marine F-104s, just test fitting, fits pretty well to the contours of the fuselage but I think I might make them a bit sharper.  

 

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We are looking like this now. I think I'll paint all the control surfaces separately and attach them later which IIRC will make masking much easier than last time. Hmm what left to do, glue/fill canopies, master pitot probe and some small antennae mounts to make, so the next update hopefully I'll have it painted. I've began to scratch some German specific intake covers but I'll show them later. I think I'm just going to load wing tanks for a clean look.

 

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Thanks for looking,

 

David. 

Edited by mirageiv
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Beautiful work.

 

Marineflieger F-104's are my favourite of the type .............. must have been due to my miss-spent youth watching and being completely dumb struck by the Vikings F-104 duo at various air shows!

 

Terry

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Excellent work David - really showing us how to build a Starfighter!

51 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

Beautiful work.

 

Marineflieger F-104's are my favourite of the type .............. must have been due to my miss-spent youth watching and being completely dumb struck by the Vikings F-104 duo at various air shows!

 

Terry

The Vikings stand out in my memory of my first trip to Fairford - IAT’85 - they made some noise!

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As if by magic a Starfighter appears!

Amazing how quickly these take shape once the interior work is done, even with the fit not being as good as previous ones you have built.

Can't see you leaving that chaff dispenser alone :) , agree with you about leaving her clean other than the tanks as it really emphasises the missile like look of the real thing, and she is a recce bird after all.

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Great work as always David.

 

I hear what your saying about the fit of these later boxing of this kit. The J version that I'm currently building (very slowly) for the Lockheed GB definitely has more flash around some of the parts than previous builds and as you say the fit of certain panels isn't quite as crisp as it once was. Age I guess?

 

Looking forward to seeing her with some paint on.

 

James

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Thanks for all the nice words folks, glad you like the progress! 

 

James--Yep I agree, also the surface details are more sloppy compared to my earlier boxings. The fit on mine isn't bad (far worse out there), just out enough though even after test fitting adjusting etc..to require some work. I've found if you can get hold of the earlier releases like the German Nato boxings etc...the quality is noticeably better overall. Even though the Hasegawa F-104 is a great kit, I could see one of the manufactures now doing one better for sure with more weapons/options etc...that are covered in the Daco set. 

 

A nice clip of the Vikings here btw! :

 

 

 

Edited by mirageiv
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1 hour ago, mirageiv said:

Thanks for all the nice words folks, glad you like the progress! 

 

James--Yep I agree, also the surface details are more sloppy compared to my earlier boxings. The fit on mine isn't bad (far worse out there), just out enough though even after test fitting adjusting etc..to require some work. I've found if you can get hold of the earlier releases like the German Nato boxings etc...the quality is noticeably better overall. Even though the Hasegawa F-104 is a great kit, I could see one of the manufactures now doing one better for sure with more weapons/options etc...that are covered in the Daco set. 

 

A nice clip of the Vikings here btw! :

 

 

 

I’ve got one of the Italian S boxing’s in the loft. I need to check that against a newer boxing. Some of those older boxing’s go for silly money on e bay now. I’m sure I read that one of the newer manufacturers, think it may have been AFV Club, were producing a new 104 but it may be in 32nd.

 

Cool video too.

 

James

Edited by franky boy
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13 hours ago, franky boy said:

I’ve got one of the Italian S boxing’s in the loft. I need to check that against a newer boxing. Some of those older boxing’s go for silly money on e bay now. I’m sure I read that one of the newer manufacturers, think it may have been AFV Club, were producing a new 104 but it may be in 32nd.

 

Cool video too.

 

James

 

Yep on UK ebay the prices are getting high, maybe the new Italeri rebox will be better hopefully, at least with some nice decals. I've been waiting for the 1/32 AFV kit for years, seems to be a very very slow development but I don't mind that if they make the 'ultimate' F-104 in plastic eventually, the Italeri kit is not very good imho, the Hasegawa 1/48 is much better. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi guys, I managed to start the paint recently . 

 

First a few little things I remembered to take photos of. 

 

Some details to the inside of the front canopy, dangerous work glueing these without cocking things up! 

 

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Some antennae mounts, I drilled out the light and will just use Klear to make the lens here with a foil backing later on,

 

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Lots of masking for the canopies when spraying the various seals,  also the small cover for the IR sensor in front of the canopy. The canopies were like the rest of the build, the fit was not too great and required some tricky filling and sanding then polishing. 

 

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Canopies masked again for the top colour, oval SOB camera window mask, lights sprayed with various Tamiya clears then masked and Master pitot glued and blended in. I think it took a week in just masking off little things!

 

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Some preshading with Mr. Color EDSG, I'll do more weathering/fading when painting the main colour but it helps just break up things for me,

 

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Then the bottom colour, RAL 9001, using Xtracolor. I find this paint a perfect match, it looks maybe too metallic now but from prior experience using it after the weathering processes and final matt/satin layers, it tones down nicely to a grey-ish silver as this colour can be tricky to get right. I did obliterate the preshading with it so I'll weather it later on with very thin greys etc..after the decals go on. 

 

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In preparation of the RAL 2005 (dayglo orange) tanks I first sprayed Tamiya white then yellow as a good base, levelling thinner gives a great finish for the matt paints. 

 

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On a previous Marineflieger F-104 build I did a rather weathered and faded example. I like it, but on my shelf (where it spends 99.9% of its time) I find it looks a bit dull tbh, almost 'too scale' and maybe a bit bland if that makes sense and the Day-glo looses some of it's charm when it is heavily faded for me. Also as a side note I used the Xtracolor RAL 9006 on this build too and you can see how faded it becomes in the end. 

 

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So this time I've gone for a fresh pair of eye-catching jugs, using Colourcoats RAL 2005. Trust me they aren't this bright as the photo shows but they are proper Day-glo, my camera is having mucho trouble here but the Colourcoats match I must say is very good in the flesh for some freshly applied RAL 2005. I had Xtracolor and also Revell but this got the orange and slight tiny hue of red just right.  

 

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Maybe I will reluctantly have to tone them down later if they just look too bright, I will decide later, but they look pretty cool like this imho regardless of scale!

 

Thanks for looking, I know not 'painted' yet but 'paint applied' at least :) .

 

David

 

Edited by mirageiv
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Thank you and I'm glad you guys are enjoying the thread!

 

Here is a quick (and not too great-sorry!) photo of the main painting mostly done. I've gone for quite a fresh look but with some of the more noticeable spray touch ups around commonly worked on panels and some fading in particular areas seen in photographs. I'll get some better pics soon, hopefully with the decals on too. 

 

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Thanks for looking,

 

David 

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Just been catching up David and she looks excellent!

Another of your F-104 masterpieces in the making, I think the new dayglo tanks will look great and make a good contrast to your previous build with the weathered tanks. The paint on the airframe looks very good, interesting but not over weathered.

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Thank you Craig for your kind words but I fear I may have strip the paint off the model after applying the Aqua Gloss tonight. My fault really as I've fell foul of this before and should have known better as when using some Revell enamels from my experience (for the top grey), they can darken considerably after gloss varnish and then not lighten back up for the final matt layers. It looked ok in the above photo and in the flesh but now after the gloss it just looks plain wrong to the point it will always probably bug me...way way too dark a grey now...Urghh :undecided: , this is going to be tight to finish it now in the GB deadline. 

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Dam that's a shame as the finish is just so nice!!!

 

But I have had that happen before with clear coats (does the same with Tamiya greys), for me it really just depends on the colour I've used, but greys do seem to be more affected by gloss.

 

I do know that in some cases the flat clear coat can lighten up the colour again. But you need to spray right on the edge of too much clear, where it starts to almost become a white colour. I found this by accident....but not something I'd recommend.

 

You can't miss over some really thinned light coats of a lighter grey to try and lighten it up? 

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I know what you mean Rich with Tamiya too as I've had it myself, however I've found Revell enamel can change a lot more even (not all but some), they can really shift colour and absolutely refuse to come back regardless how how much matt varnish they receive. I did know about this as I've had it bite me before but I failed to remember how much they can change, so much so when you apply the colour you need to go lighter than what looks correct in order for the final colour to look right, not the most error free way of painting imho.

 

I've already sprayed 2-3 layers of colour, each with shading so plenty of paint, as I kept getting the colour wrong anyway and now the panel lines and fine rivets have suffered quite a bit, another layer of paint and it probably will not take a wash very well. If only I had used MRP this wouldn't have been a problem, typical! :doh: 

 

This photo is quite complimentary by my camera, in real life it is a few notches darker again,

 

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As disputable as it is comparing to photos with unknown light, camera settings etc...this real example looks a lot different to my eyes,

 

21+17 Alconbury 14-8-1982

 

I'm going to repaint it, time to break out the Mr.Color thinners!

 

David

 

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That's a real shame. I'm not used to Revell enamels other than their dayglo, so have not experienced what you refer to. @trickyrich's suggested approach might be ok, as stripping off is more work?

 

Terry

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