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Lockheed
F-104S ASA Starfighter
21º Gruppo, 53º Stormo
Aeronautica Militare Italia
"Tiger Meet '96"
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Model:
F-104S Starfighter 'Italian Air
Force' (1003)
This
is the Hasegawa 1/72 model of the F-104S, which builds very well straight out of
the box, but I wanted to dress it up a bit, just to add some detail to this
impressive paint scheme. Decals for this scheme are provided on the
Cutting Edge "Starfighter Special #1"
decal sheet (CED72042). There has always been a lot of
conjecture over a larger diameter rear fuselage, as these aircraft had an
uprated General Electric J79-GE-19 engine fitted, but I find it hard to believe
this would be noticeable in 1/72, so didn’t bother to do anything about it.
To
dress up the cockpit, a Verlinden resin ejection seat was used to replace the
kit seat, and a scratch built HUD, air conditioning conduit and throttle, and
photo-etched mirrors were added. I also added some extra detail to the landing
gear bays. Angle of attack vanes were cut off and replaced with more in scale
items made from plastic sheet. Pylon mounting points were scribed under the
wings. Construction was very straightforward and I didn't have to use filler
anywhere.
Once construction
was complete, the canopy and windshield were masked and the model painted. Xtracolour
X252 Weissaluminium and Gunze Sangyo H5 Primary Blue were the two
main colours used, which despite Cutting Edge's comment that there is no match
for the blue, comes convincingly close. The blue feathered edges were all
airbrushed free hand. Navigation lights were drilled out, and filled with
5-minute epoxy tinted with Gunze Sangyo clear acrylics.
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I discovered,
after the model was painted,
that the F-104S has the front of the
ventral fin sloping rearward at an angle of almost 45 degrees, whereas the
front of the fin on the kit is perpendicular to the fuselage. The extra
part of the kit fin was easily removed, and once modified, repainted to
cover the change.
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Some
stencilling from the Hasegawa kit was required. Cutting Edge provides the
rectangular nose rescue markings as red on black, but these should in fact be
orange on black.
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The upper wingtip fuel filler cap decals, and the fuel filler
cap marking on the port side (just in front of
and above the intake), were used from the Hasegawa decal sheet. I also
created the candy stripe pitot marking on my ALPS printer (complete with
legible "HANDS OFF" stencilling).
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Click on image to
right to see larger image |
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The
tiger decals, though very accurate in size and shape, appear to be too orange -
they should be more of a tan colouration. One further improvement would be to
blend the areas of red and pink on the tiger's nose and tongue as in the picture
of the full size aircraft above.
Craig
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