ROCAF F-104G Starfighter Hasegawa/Eduard 1/48

[bianfuxia]

Looking good so far, and +1 for Bestfong - what a great company! I have several of their sheets (I did a 1/200 C-130 and I also have sheets for the Yemen conflict F-5 flown by Taiwanese pilots and also for some ROCAF F-86).

[modelling minion]

16 hours ago, bianfuxia said:

Looking good so far, and +1 for Bestfong - what a great company! I have several of their sheets (I did a 1/200 C-130 and I also have sheets for the Yemen conflict F-5 flown by Taiwanese pilots and also for some ROCAF F-86).

Very much appreciated, and some great choices of decals you have from Bestfong, I will be adding a ROCAF F-86 and a Yemeni F-5E to my collection in due course, amongst others!

 

Well on to the Starfighter, and she very much looks like a Starfighter now as all the main components have been assembled, apart from the tail surfaces for ease of painting, and all the joints sorted out which really didn't take that long at all and am now left with this;

 

 

The cockpit area is nearly finished but still needs the seat building up and installing (I don't like building seats) and the coaming needs finishing off by the addition of some tissue paper and white glue to better represent the canvas covers to be found on the real aircraft, here is how it looks at the minute;

 

The wingtip fuel tanks have also been built up and the few little areas that need filler sorted out, these are now ready for primer/paint;

 

The canopy parts have been dipped in Klear and then masked (after they had dried!), a quick dry fit shows that there will be a little fettling involved to get a perfect fit and I'm still not sure whether to have the lid open or not, here are the parts after masking;

 

An interesting side note is that all the pictures above were taken on the same cutting mat at the same time in the same lighting conditions and with the same camera, the camera never lies eh!

 

Thats it for today, thanks for looking in (and your patience) and as usual all comments and criticisms are gratefully received.

 

Craig. 

[exdraken]

nice progress!

looks like a dart, true!

 

any ordnance planned on this one?

 

[Hewy]

Seeing this come together so quickly puts my model building time of late to shame,

Very nicely done so far craig,  do you have the  kinetic 104 ? I hear its very well done,

, i suppose like you I'll  have to dig my eduard nato 104 out of the stash now and get stuck in

[modelling minion]

19 hours ago, exdraken said:

nice progress!

looks like a dart, true!

 

any ordnance planned on this one?

 

Thanks Werner, the only ordnance I will be putting on her will be a pair of AIM-9's on the twin under-fuselage launch rails.

2 hours ago, Hewy said:

Seeing this come together so quickly puts my model building time of late to shame,

Very nicely done so far craig,  do you have the  kinetic 104 ? I hear its very well done,

, i suppose like you I'll  have to dig my eduard nato 104 out of the stash now and get stuck in

Cheers Glynn, would love to see what you can do with one of these kits, I'm keeping mine very simple due to time constraints (working long hours at the minute so little or no modelling time in the week + it makes me exhausted) but there is scope for lots of extra work if you want to.

I don't have the Kinetic kit (yet!) and not sure how much they will cost over here but they do look like very nice kits.

[Hewy]

21 hours ago, modelling minion said:

don't have the Kinetic kit (yet!) and not sure how much they will cost over here but they do look like very nice kits.

I'm sure it'll end up a stunner there'll be no worries there,aim 9's sound good ,  i may get the chance to build mine in an upcoming  gb soon ish  ,all being well,  . 🤗"Mike" will import the kenetic kit for you , 

[modelling minion]

14 minutes ago, Hewy said:

 i may get the chance to build mine in an upcoming  gb soon ish  ,all being well,  . 🤗"Mike" will import the kenetic kit for you , 

Very interesting, which GB might that be Glynn?

Yes Mike was my go to choice for the Kinetic kit, though I will see if there are any at the nationals first.

[Hewy]

Yes theres a good chance there'll be plenty at telford, the 104 ? I like the Norwegian version anyway craig, and it so happens there's a scandinavian gb next year ,i do believe norway falls within the constraints, so I'm  locked and loaded,actually looking forward to another bmf, also i belive it fits within the interceptor gb  bracket so I've got  options

[PlaStix]

Hi Craig. Hope you are well. Good to see you are making good progress now. Certainly is looking like it should!

I meant to ask before - did you end up going to the Victory Show? As it happened, we made a last minute decision to go on the Saturday afternoon. We had a very pleasant time but felt it seemed a little quieter than last year. Also the Tiran 5 and T34 were not in attendance - for the first time in a couple of years - and I had planned on taking lots of photos of them both as there's two STGBs coming up were some detailed photos would have been useful. Ah well.

Kind regards,

Stix

[modelling minion]

2 hours ago, PlaStix said:

Hi Craig. Hope you are well. Good to see you are making good progress now. Certainly is looking like it should!

I meant to ask before - did you end up going to the Victory Show? As it happened, we made a last minute decision to go on the Saturday afternoon. We had a very pleasant time but felt it seemed a little quieter than last year. Also the Tiran 5 and T34 were not in attendance - for the first time in a couple of years - and I had planned on taking lots of photos of them both as there's two STGBs coming up were some detailed photos would have been useful. Ah well.

Kind regards,

Stix

Hi Stix, yes I'm fine thanks and yes the F-104 is looking a lot more like a Starfighter now, only had a couple of hours modelling time this week so hardly any progress at all unfortunately.

 

Yes I did make it to the Victory Show and I agree with you that it was a little quieter than previous years, I was there Saturday too. There were less aircraft than there was supposed to be and you're right about there being less armour but it was still a good show and I really liked the Catalina and was most impressed by how quickly it could take off. Next year I will go on the Sunday as there seems to be more aircraft there on Sunday, there was this year apparently.

 

Love your Tiger/Typhoon diorama by the way, absolutely superb!

[PlaStix]

Hi Craig. I'm glad you were able to go. Yes my son and his girlfriend went on the Sunday and said there seemed to be a lot more going on generally compared to what we'd described for the Saturday. No extra armour though.

I agree about the Catalina. I got lots of photos of it and was very impressed by it. It had a real presence.

Hope you have a good weekend. 

Kind regards,

Stix 

[modelling minion]

Sorry for taking so long to post updates and in fact make any difference to the model itself, I'm afraid that real life is seriously getting in the way at the moment but I have made some progress.

The cockpit area has been finished by adding the canvas cover to the coaming and everything being given a light weathering so that it looked like this;

 

And a closer look at the coaming area;

 

Every good cockpit needs an ejector seat and this has taken a fair bit of work and is the C-2 seat from the kit with the etched brass belts and other bits added, even though the seat is designed for this kit it still needed a fair bit removing from the bottom to enable it to actually fit with the cockpit closed, and here it is;

 

 

And with the seat finished I have been able to fit it in the cockpit and fit the front and rear glazing, I have left the main piece off to allow the super glue to dry with no fear of it fogging anything;

 

One further addition I have made is a pitot probe by Master which has been fitted and faired in;

 

And that is it for today, next job will be to fit the main canopy piece and then get some primer on. So thanks for looking in and as usual all comments and criticisms are gratefully received.

 

Craig.

 

[Hewy]

Good lord that pitot looks sharp, I'd definitely have that through my thumb at some point, the  cockpits looking good now too

[modelling minion]

Cheers Glynn, yes it is a bit pointy isn't it but so far no injuries!

[mirageiv]

Beautiful work again Craig, I really admire how you make OOB kit cockpits with the little help of a resin seat and some top scratch building look like a whole resin cockpit set, super stuff! What did you fill the rivets on the wings with? Ah the Master pitot, on my F-104 builds I've broken it off without fail every time usually whilst applying the decals , it is just so easy to catch on things around the bench when moving the model, I hope you are more dextrous than me and it makes it! I do think faring in the pitot is a good idea though, it just imho makes everything more scale. 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2019 by mirageiv

[modelling minion]

Thanks David, you are far too kind as usual.

I know what you mean about knocking the pitot off as I've nearly caught it a couple of times already, but at least with a metal one it will survive unlike the kits plastic one which just snaps.

The wing rivets are filled with Perfect Plastic Putty, they aren't filled fully (it always sinks a bit) but they are at least knocked back a bit from how they are depicted in the kit.

[Dansk]

Great work craig, the coaming and hud look ace

[modelling minion]

Had a little more time to spend on the F-104 and have added the remaining canopy piece and faired it in and with that it was time for the first coat of paint in the form of the fs36622 grey for the undersurfaces. Now this nearly didn't happen as despite an exhaustive search of my paint stocks it turned out that it is the only shade of grey I don't actually have, but fortunately a quick search of my son's stock found some in a Vietnam War set by Hataka, the only issue being that it is from their range designed to be brush painted, oh well I had nothing to lose so I gave it a go through the airbrush (after thinning it) and it worked okay, not brilliant but perfectly acceptable and gave me an F-104 that looks like this;

 

And a closer look;

 

Not too bad at all really. I need to give it at least 24 hours before I can start the masking process for the upper surface colours.

 

Thanks for looking in and as usual all comments and criticisms are gratefully received.

 

Craig.

 

 

[PlaStix]

Hi Craig. Hope you are well. Good to see you are making progress and it looks to be coming together rather nicely and is looking impressive in it's first layer of paint.

Kind regards,

Stix

[modelling minion]

1 hour ago, PlaStix said:

Hi Craig. Hope you are well. Good to see you are making progress and it looks to be coming together rather nicely and is looking impressive in it's first layer of paint.

Kind regards,

Stix

Cheers Stix, should be getting the Tan on this evening. Way behind schedule with this one, hope to be able to catch up a bit over the weekend.

[Covjets13]

Looking good Craig, that grey looks spot on

[modelling minion]

2 hours ago, Covjets13 said:

Looking good Craig, that grey looks spot on

Thanks Simon. got the Tan done this evening so hopefully will get the medium green done tomorrow.

[modelling minion]

Really sorry for the lack of updates as life has really been getting in the way recently and spending most of this weekend at the hospital with my son (he had his appendix out) when I had planned a modelling weekend hasn't helped at all but I have made progress and all the colours are now on and the radome area painted too. I used Gunze for the Tan and Dark Green which worked great but I only had Xtracrlylix for the Medium Green which I can't get the same quality of finish with and to be honest I think it looks a bit too dark, but enough waffling here are some pics of how she looks at the minute as I'm just about to start glossing her, and apologies for the poor lighting in the pics;

 

 

 

 

 

And that is how she looks, not sure if my attempts at weathering by varying the amount of paint used in places is apparent but there will be more weathering to follow.

 

Thanks for looking in and as usual all comments and criticisms are gratefully received.

 

Craig.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Hello Craig... Im sorry to hear of your sons appendix. I pass on my wishes for a speedy recovery. The 104 is looking very good. When weathering Vietnam Ive always used a red dusty color, as the soil is red clay based. I usually mix red/orange pastel chalk with a light brown/dark tan and get the desired color. I hope I'm helping and not over-stepping ? 

Edited October 15, 2019 by Corsairfoxfouruncle

[modelling minion]

2 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Hello Craig... Im sorry to hear of your sons appendix. I pass on my wishes for a speedy recovery. The 104 is looking very good. When weathering Vietnam Ive always used a red dusty color, as the soil is red clay based. I usually mix red/orange pastel chalk with a light brown/dark tan and get the desired color. I hope I'm helping and not over-stepping ? 

Thanks Dennis much appreciated, he's on the mend but it will take a few weeks before he's 100%.

Vietnam camo but not Vietnam based, not sure what the soil colour is in Taiwan, I'll thank of something, and no you most definitely are not over-stepping, advice is always welcome my friend.