Depicted as a specially painted aircraft for "Tiger Meet 1996" from 21° Gruppo Italian Air Force "Tiger Meet 1996"
Ever had one of those builds that fights all the way to the end. Well was one of those. If you want to read a tale of woe read one, if not skip tot he pictures.
I’d heard that Hasegawa’s F-104S was one of there best moulds, accurate and up there with the A-4. But that’s not what I found, mind you that could be down to my ham-fisted-ness. My biggest complaint with Hasegawa kits is that the panel lines while lovely and fine are not deep enough for my liking, especially as I’m pretty heavy handed with the paint. I just couldn’t face re-scribing the whole kit so I decided to live with this.
I intended use this kit to experiment with Alclad and do a bare metal finish. As such I was going to do this kit straight from the box and ignore the accuracy issues. I did relent and picked up an Aires Ejection seat.
The Build
Everything started OK, the cockpit is pretty basic, particularly the side walls which don’t have any detail at all, with the big clear canopy you can see these quite well from certain angles so next time (if there is one) I’ll probably scratch-build or use a resin pit. As I couldn’t be bothered painting the panel I used the kit decal for the instrument panel. It came out better than expected.
About now things started to go a bit pear shaped. I realised that the aircraft wasn’t bare metal but silver.
As I still wanted to try Alclad I figured that White Aluminum looked a nice silver colour. I figured I coat of semi gloss clear at the end should make things look good. Actual pictures of this aircraft on the net are virtually impossible to find, I only found one, the UL is at the bottom of this article.
The next mistake I made was drilling out all the little lights on the fuselage. As these are all painted silver, clear red, blue or orange I shouldn’t really have bothered. Next time I won’t.
I made a particular balls up on the rear part of the intakes, losing all the detail, I tried re-scribing but wasn’t careful enough with the filing and took to much material off the forward edges meaning there was a nasty step between the forward part of the intakes and the rear. This was filed with a bit of CA and re-scribed, although a lot of detail was lost and had to be re added.
Assembly carried on but getting the main under carriage bays to fit in the fuselage without bulging it proved to be rather difficult. Not sure if it was the kit or me, I could understand how things were supposed to clip together but just couldn’t get it quite right. In the end I resorted to CA glue to hold the lower fuselage together.
The radome fitted ok but there was a small step that needed filing, cleverly I made sure this was on the bottom.
I assembled the tip tanks then a few days later realised that I hadn’t drilled out the holes for the clear lights on the tip tanks…….. Out came the drill and these were added without to much difficulty , but as the clear parts were supposed to be fitted from inside I had to figure out how to put them in. A bit of cutting and filing along with some white glue and they looked ok. At his stage I tried to fix out the lines in the fuel fillers on the tip tanks. I managed to ruin this detail so filled them with CA and just re-scribed circles although this took about 6 or 7 tries before I was happy. I attached the 3 strakes on the rear of the underside, this was a mistake as I’ll explain later.
Painting
Once everything looked OK I primed the entire kit with Mr Surface 1000 form a can. A few minor blemishes were corrected and everything looked good. Onto the Alclad.
After watching Floyd Werners Alclad DVD (a must see IMHO) I was ready to go, the Alcald white Aluminum performed as per the DVD’s. It went down very well and I was able correct the small flaws virtually immediately. I ended up painting most of the model with the Alclad. This turned out to be a blessing and a problem as will be seem later.
Choosing the blue was a major decision, the colour suggested by Hasegawa just didn’t look right, eventually I settled on XtraColour RAF Roundel blue (X30). Some questions on the internet uncovered another person who had made the same choice. I masked it up with Blue tac as the aircraft has a small but distinct feather between the silver and blue.
Now things started to get really ugly. I didn’t have white sprits so used normal enamel thinners to thin the Xtracolour. Well it doesn’t dry very quickly with enamel thinners. 2 days later it was still tacky. The nose looked good with the feather looking really good. But the area between the 3 fins on the underside wasn’t good enough for me, I tried fixing it with turps on cotton bud but couldn’t get it right. After to much fiddling it was at the stage that I need to strip the whole thing. Out come the turps and off came the xtracolour without problems and the underlying Alclad was left un-affected, man this stuff is tough.
The second coat of blue on the tail was thinned with lacquer thinners (thanks Google), this dried faster but I still wasn’t happy with the area around the underside fins. Now I snapped of 2 of the 3 fins leaving only the centreline one. Another strip with turps and a repaint and things were looking OK, except for that little bit there, I’ll just …. Yep you guessed Stuffed it again.
This time off came the centreline fin and for the 4th time off came the blue paint. At this stage the Alclad is still looking ok in most spots. At this stage I was out of Xtracolour, as I have no local source it was onto Snowy Mountain Models in Melbourne, $9 and 2 days later I had another tin.
Whilst waiting I used the rest of my bottle of Alclad to fix up various scuffs and flaws I’d put in the kit by my excessive handing. My mate picked up a new bottle for me.
The fifth coat of blue looked good. I now used the new bottle of Alclad to do some final touch ups. This is when I discovered the “bad batch of Alclad”. The stuff never dry’s and is always damp to touch.
After trying various things like thinning with laquer thinners and the hair dryer I was ready to bin the whole thing. I borrowed a bottle of Alclad from a mate and applied it over the top of the bad stuff. It seemed to dry but the surface was still soft and susceptible to finger prints and was easy to damage. Many hours of touch ups and little fixes followed but finally I was happy……Ok, really, I’d had a gut full by this stage, including a session to 2 am one Saturday morning. The blue was lightly polished with some micro mesh and a cloth, it lost some of sheen but also felt nice and smooth. I figured the semi gloss top coat would cover this. It was now ready for decaling.
Decaling
The Hasegawa decals were applied directly over the Alclad and Xtracolour blue. I used Mr Mark Softener and Setter and the performed extremely well, conforming to all the curves ad panel lines with no silvering at all. I’d heard bad things about some Hasegawa decals but these were excellent. Some of the best I’ve used in fact.
Over the decals had set I used promodellers dark dirt. This went straight over the decals, once dried it was removed with a cloth dampened with my tongue. If you’ve read any of my recent articles you’ll now how much I love this stuff. Can’t be beat IMHO.
Once I was happy a coat of Model Master Semi Gloss clear was applied and the end was in sight. Off came the canopy masking and to my horror I found my masking job hadn’t been very good in a few places. Thankfully the future protected the clear parts so 30 minutes work with the back of a No 11 blade and the paint was off. The marks were touched up with Future on a brush and everything was good again.
Finishing (well almost)
At this stage though I noticed that the rear transparency was sitting proud of the fuselage by a good 1mm. I’d noted this during painting but had put it down to the masking tape… So off it came and some sanding ensued until it lined up.
All the fiddly bits were added now including the undercarriage which took a bit of work to figure out. For a lot of these bits I use Hypo cement, it s a jewelers' glue that is tacking but takes a while to set meaning you can fiddle around with it a bit to get things looking straight.
The last thing to fit was the exhaust, it was a tight fit and whilst inserting it I split the lower fuselage. The spilt was re glued and the crack filled with CA and touched up.
I was going to have the canopy open but by now I’d had enough, the canopy rails needed some work and the inside of the canopy needed painting, I just could not be bothered. I also wanted to add the 2 remove before flight (RBF) tags seen of the box art. They look like they are hanging from the rear of the wings but I couldn’t figure out where they attached so I decided to give it a miss. I also wanted to add a RBF streamer over the ejection seat as seen in the box art but again I could be bothered.
This build is one of those 5 foot builds, i.e. it looks good from5 feet away. I’m glad it’s done.
What did I learn?
Well Alcald is good stuff and really tough but the bad stuff can really ruin your work. Don’t buy Alclad in bottles that don’t have a blue band. The bad batches don’t have blue bands, some bottles are good and some are bad. But at $13 a bottle and the extra work it will create it’s not worth the risk. Still I’m looking forward to using it on my Lightning as its actually very easy to work with.
Xtracolour is not for me, sure it dry’s glossy but it so hit and miss with the drying time. In the end I was about using 75% lacquer thinners to 25% paint, this dried in about 12 hours. However I won’t be using it for big jobs if I can avoid it.
Mr Surfacer in 1000-1200 in a can is excellent. Great primer and it shrinks down very well
Oh and if you’ve made it this far thanks for reading my therapy.
Wait There's' More
I finished this and posted the pictures on the ARC forums. where its was helpfully pointed out the the centreline fin was on backward. It came off easily and was repainted. However during the removal I damaged the paint on the underside. Some Mr Surfacer 1200, and more Alcald fixed that up. I also broke of one the other fins. It needed repairing, stripping and repainting before I was happy. Once re-attached new pictures were taken.
Now it's finished.
The Photos
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