Of all the
century series of fighters I've always thought that the F-104 was the sleekest
and most beautiful and I've always liked the subject. No matter what angle you
look at this plane at, it just looks fast! I started this project some time
ago but shelved it because I couldn't decide on a color scheme for it. I knew I
wanted to color it up in US markings with a NMF paint job but finding
decals in a US paint scheme for this scale are to say the least,
non-existent. After building up a 1/32 scale X-15, I resurrected this F-104 to
the finishing table and decided to paint it up in an Edwards AFFTC chase plane.
Almost all the X-15 flights used the F-104 as a chase aircraft mostly because
the Starfighter could keep the same landing speeds and landing profile as the
X-15. Many pilots who flew these F-104 chase aircraft would eventually go
on to fly the X-15.
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on
images below to see larger images
Building the
Kit
Of the two kits
offered in this scale of the F-104, I decided to do the Hasegawa kit. The kit was
built basically out of the box except for some details I added to the cockpit. I
added a scratch-built instrument panel and some seat belts for the ejection
seat. For the instrument panel I cut the kit panel off at the radar screen and
built up the instrument panel from some .040 sheet plastic. I then added some
Waldron jet instruments and bezels to finish off the panel, painted and
detailed it, then re-cemented the radar screen to the scratch-built panel.
After
the cockpit was finished the forward fuselage halves were ready to put
together. Some weight was also added to the nose to keep the nose gear on the
ground. There's not a whole lot of room up in the nose area to add weight so I cut
to size some stain glass window lead and inserted it in the hollow spots
and glued it into place with CA cement. The kit went together very well and very
little sanding was required at the seams or the wing roots. The only real
problem areas were the jet intake inlets ahead of the wings and with a
little fitting these weren't even that bad to sand out after they were
glued into place. After everything was sanded I sprayed the entire model
with a couple good coats of some OEM auto grade Lacquer Primer-Surfacer.....and
it sat up in my closet for a couple months!
Painting and Decaling
For the natural metal finish I used Alclad White Aluminum and for the darker
shades around the afterburner I used Alclad Dura-Aluminum, after these had
set up and dried I used some Floquil Old Silver to simulate the lighter flatter
shades of aluminum on the wings and various access panels. After all these
silvers had dried I sprayed the entire model with some Testors Metalizer sealer
to protect the finish. Next was adding the International Orange fuselage bands
and the Orange areas to the wings. Orange paint never covers well by itself
over a NMF finish so to bring out the color I sprayed a base coat of flat white
under the orange, this worked well and very little orange paint was used to
bring out the color. So now would come the real challenge, coming up with the
decals. Many things can be said of the modelers decal box and I would certainly
be lost without mine. The National Insignia wasn't that hard to come up with or
was the U S Air Force for the forward fuselage. Thankfully an IPMS club
member came up with some buzz numbers for me but the serial numbers took some
creative thinking, but I made something work. The hardest marking to come up with
would be the USAF that goes on the wings. I finally had to draw up the wing
markings for the USAF and made a stencil out of some plain printer paper. I
soaked the stencil over a wet sponge with some water and a generous amount of
dish
soap and set it over some plain decal paper. The soap I thought would
give the stencil some added adhesion to the decal paper while I sprayed the
color. The technique worked nicely and the finished decal drew nice
defined color lines when I lifted the stencil. The finished aircraft is
Lockheed F-104A Starfighter, serial # 60764, "Chase 4", assigned
to the Edwards AFFTC, circa April 1964.
Steve
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