Italian Starfighter in 72

[SoftScience]

Sto facendo, eh?

 

The Hasegawa F-104S. I have no experience with Hasegawa F-104 kits, and im not sure what to expect.

 

But it's a Lockheed design and it sure is pretty.

 

[SoftScience]

And the first bits are together. 

 

The kit fuselage is broken into four sections. Typically I would have glued thr front and rear halves together first, but I'm following the advice of Fabien Antonetti on the fanakit.fr site (Seriously, check out the jaw dropping 1/72 models on that page - stunning photos throughout).

 

So in went the engine innards

 

 

And then the two halves of the rear fuselage came together. I tried to line everything up, but the ventral midline needed some filler. The mouldings are pretty worn out.

 

 

 

 

[stevehnz]

I'll keep an eye on your build if I may, I've a couple of these in stock. I've long been under the impression they go together pretty well but its always good to get prior warning of any traps.  

Steve.

[SoftScience]

It's been pretty good so far, Steven. Typical Hasegawa; okay but not flawless fit.

 

 

Today I worked on the cockpit. Im going to add some lead foil harneses, but need to find a good reference photo first.

Oh, and have to add the bumblebee stripes to the ejection rings.

 

 

[SoftScience]

The finished ejection seat. It's not great, but good enough for a closed canopy.

 

 

The front and back halves fit ok, but will need sanding. Which means rescribing. 

Dang!

 

[Peter Lloyd]

Ah, Hasegawa's 'modular' period! Four- and six-part fuselages everywhere!

[SoftScience]

Was that prior to their releasing the same modular kits but with new decals and new prices period?

[SoftScience]

Not much to report. I have been cleaning up and rescribing lines. I was almost done when my scriber madly slipped on the intake panel line and the attempts to fix it made things even worse. 

 

Fill sand and repeat.

 

 

[SoftScience]

Now it's beginning to take shape.

 

 

And a question for the experts - what's the time.period when the italians flew these in green and gray camouflage?

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Not 100% for sure but i believe through the mid/late 70's if not later. I seem to remember the transition to grey's, maybe came about with the upgrades to the "S" standard ? But I'm sure someone will be along to verify that.

 

Dennis

[Giorgio N]

Green and grey lasted from the mid '60s, after a brief initial phase in Natural Metal, until the mid '90s. To be accurate, the very first F-104 in overall grey was delivered in July 1995, Repainting in the grey scheme occurred during revisions, so it took a while for the whole fleet to wear this scheme.

Now if you're building an S these entered service in the early '70s, so no need to worry about the schemes used earlier. Anyway there were actually two different grey/green schemes, or better one scheme that used two different sets of colours. The early scheme was quite similar to the then current RAF scheme, with semigloss paints. The later scheme used different paints, both matt. The S variant IIRC exclusively used the later scheme, where the green was browner and the grey less blue compared to the previous scheme. Both colours weathered quite a bit, particularly on machines based in Southern Italy, where the sun can be scorching.

Undersurfaces were always in aluminum paint, glossier in the early scheme and dull in the later.

Codes were white for most of the career of the type but in the '90s they started to be reduced in size and became light grey with a narrow black edge.

 

Now what paints are best for the grey green scheme ? Lifecolor makes a very good green, code is UA106. Closest FS is 34086.

I've never found a really perfect grey, I know that closest FS is 36132. What I generally do is spray FS 36231 and then add a light mist of 36118 on top, adding more along panel lines. The grey tended to weather more than the green, so this approach leads to a realistic finish.

For the lower surfaces I mix silver with some light grey.

Of course there may be other paints around that look good enough straight from the tin, a lot depends on how obsessioned each modeller is with these things.

 

I've built a few Hasegawa Starfighters, and IMHO this is a nice kit. The main problem area is where the intakes meet the fuselage and you've sorted this nicely.

One thing that must be corrected for an S is the ventral fin: this is slightly smaller on the S compared to the G and Hasegawa forgot to mention this. The correction is very, very simple: the leading edge of the fin on the S has a 45° angle, so all you need is to cut a small bitof the leading edge following that angle.

Then there are several other details that differ between subvariants of the S and between the various update programs. Hasegawa correctly indicates to remove some antennas for some of the aircraft proposed, as these antennas arrived with the ASA update program. There are several other small differences, if you're interested I can go through these.

[Shalako]

Ah, la bella Italiana ragazza!!!

 

This kit is superb!

 

Looking forward to see it complete!!

 

Cheers

 

Bill

[Terry1954]

I'll sit in on this one as I just love F-104's, and those Italian schemes were some of my favourite. Excellent colour background there from @Giorgio N, very helpful indeed. I have several F-104's in the stash, unusually for me they are all 1/48.

 

Terry

[SoftScience]

@Giorgio N thanks for the excellent info. Your comments are extremely helpful.

 

 

And here we are, about to start the fun part.

 

[SoftScience]

Step one.

 

[SoftScience]

And step two.

 

[Shalako]

Which brand's metallic colour have you applied on your F-104, because the result is very realistic!

[SoftScience]

2 hours ago, Shalako said:

Which brand's metallic colour have you applied on your F-104, because the result is very realistic!

Thanks. That is Gunze H8 silver

[Shalako]

2 hours ago, SoftScience said:

Thanks. That is Gunze H8 silver

No way!!! That's Gunze's H-8??? Honestly, the result is more than good!!!

[SoftScience]

3 hours ago, Shalako said:

No way!!! That's Gunze's H-8??? Honestly, the result is more than good!!!

yup. About 3 parts Mr Leveling thinner to two parts paint, over the base coat of gloss black. 

[Nikolay Polyakov]

19 hours ago, SoftScience said:

And step two.

Yeah! Looks outstanding! 

[SoftScience]

I dropped the kit while masking, and shattered the landing gear. 

 

I think I can fix it, but this was another blow to my already wavering modelling mojo. 

[helios16v]

They were finicky landing in real life too.

 

Keep at.  Minor setback.  You WILL persevere.  

[RidgeRunner]

On 5/11/2019 at 11:39 PM, SoftScience said:

The mouldings are pretty worn out.

definitely but a great kit! It also has the various parts for early machines as well as J-models, plus the different seats, etc. All round a great kit that can be bought very cheaply, even direct from Japan.

 

Martin

Edited June 12, 2019 by RidgeRunner

[RidgeRunner]

On 5/22/2019 at 12:38 PM, Shalako said:

This kit is superb!

Agreed!