1/48 Hasegawa F-104G

by Douglas K. L. Chan

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Having indulged in large scale (1/32) aircraft models for quite a long time, I did this one for a colleague of mine. He was going to retire and I wanted to give him a gift to celebrate the event, you know, working is a kind of torture in Hong Kong. He likes small scale such as 1/72 or the biggest in his view 1/48. So here it is.

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This Hasegawa 1/48 model is surely one of the best of Hasegawa's. Everything fits really well that I had not applied any putty at all. The fuselage, the wings, just every parts, I glued them together by superglue with a very small nylon nozzle. This way I could control the amount properly. The outcome was that I could have the parts fix in a very short time, and yet I wouldn't have excess glue everywhere. Just a little sanding and the model was ready for spraying.

The most impressive part is the intake nozzles, which fit "terribly" with the fuselage. Again, no putty nor sanding at all. I just wonder how Hasegawa could make things this good. Too bad that there is no such good fit for 1/32 kits. May be kits fit better if I don't replace the cockpit, intake duct, etc. etc.. Oh, it is my fault may be.

One problem with this kit is that there are many moulding ejection pin marks on the lower half of the wings, flaps and slats. Due to the densely moulded rivet marks, I dared not to fill the ejection pin marks and sand them. So I just left them there. Fortunately they are on the bottom side only. And this is why I only have one photo of the bottom so as to avoid being criticise by you experts.

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I added part of the Eduard set. I added only part of the set because I did not have much time to finish this for my colleague's retirement party. The camouflage is very easy to do, just masking tape is okay as they are of straight lines. Decal is fine too. Attention is needed for the tail decal if you want to do the white color by yourself, and then applied the decal of blue checkers, the Germany flag and the lion mark.

All in all, this model could be finished quick and comes out nice. If you are not going to do a surgery on it, this will be a very enjoyable model kit.

Douglas

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Photos and text © by Douglas K. L. Chan