1/72 AMT QF-104 Drone

by Mike Grant of Mike Grant Decals

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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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Photos and text © by Mike Grant