The old AMT/Esci
F-104 kit has been eclipsed by the much more sophisticated Hasegawa
release, but despite its age the older model is a nice kit, and
significantly cheaper. It has restrained recessed panel lines and fits
well, although care must be taken with the aft fuselage/fuselage join. One
of the kit's decal options is for a dayglo orange drone, which I couldn't
resist.
The model was
built strictly out-of-box except for the addition of a pilot figure,
drafted from some long-forgotten Matchbox kit (although the QF-104 was a
pilotless drone it could be flown with one). The build was always intended
as more of a desktop display than a super-detailed, 100% authentic replica
so I skimped a bit on the cockpit details; not much is visible anyway once
the pilot is installed.
One of the
challenges was replicating the closed airbrakes and retracted
undercarriage. The kit is intended to be built with everything hanging
out, and when I glued the undercarriage doors and airbrakes in the closed
position there were ugly gaps and steps which all had to be filled and
sanded completely smooth. Doing so eradicated most of the surrounding
panel line detail as well as the outlines of the doors themselves. I
re-scribed the panel lines as required, but scribing over the filled lines
of the door outlines would have been asking for trouble. I eventually made
decals of the airbrake and u/c door outlines in fine black line, and
applied these after painting.
Painting and
decalling was straightforward enough – a coat of Tamiya fine white
surface primer, gloss white on the wings and then several light coats of
Gunze dayglo orange lacquer. The kit decals were usable but too thick so I
made my own replacements; I also used my rivet decals to add some interest
to the rear fuselage.
To create the
blurred runway base I first created the graphics in Adobe Illustrator then
took them into Photoshop to add texture and the blurred/speeding effect.
After printing it out on my ink-jet I mounted it onto thick board and then
glued that onto a custom-made wooden base. A hole was drilled in the base
and the F-104's belly and a short length of wire was inserted as the
support. I'm quite happy with how it turned out, although the base tends
to attract more attention than the fluorescent orange airplane...
Mike
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