Hi to everybody, this is
my 3rd post on ARC. It is about an F-104S-ASA.
The kit is an Italeri 1/72. I decided to represent it in flight so I displayed
it on wood base. The kit is pretty simple with just almost 50 pieces of a quite
good light grey plastic. The overall shape is right; only the tip tank dimensions
are just a bit smaller compared to other kit suc Revell/Hasegawa, but the effect
is not bad.
I pretty much built it
OOB except for the decal set that is a Skymodel dedicated to the Italian F-104s
of all period. I chose to represent a special one based at Trapani Air Base of
the 18th Squadron under the 37th Wing.
My goal on this one was to apply every good advice and technique I found here
about painting. After completing the small cockpit I closed the two half
of fuselage, glued the wings and tiptanks, than I closed the gear doors.
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I started then with painting. At
first I applied a hand of Tamiya grey primer; after that a hand of dark sea grey
XF-54 Tamiya and then I used the satin black XF-85 to preshade the panel
lines. After this process I decided to rescribe panel lines with a steel
tool I recently bought on purpose. I let the paint dry for a day and then
I started with the first hand of XF-53 using the airbrush and a fine needle
trying to paint almost panel by panel not covering entirely the preshading.
I then completed the second hand with the same technique.
After this I completed the painting
with the XF-50 for the top part of the radome and used XF-2 for the bottom
part. Two coats of gloss varnish and I started decaling. The set of
Skymodel decals is very fine and they don't silver too much. I then sealed
everything with another coat of gloss X-2 letting it dry for 24 hours. A little
bit of weathering with oils (black, dark grey and brown), not too much cause the
real plane in some pics is not so dirty. I sealed the weathering with a
satin varnish. To complete it I painted in black the wood base and displayed the F-104 in flight.
Thanks a lot.
Enjoy the photos
Fabio Bongiorno
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