Egilman

I was reading about this on another forum... it was a way someone dealt with a similar issue.. (his was excessive bubbling after a gloss coat) successive light wet coats to raise and smooth out the surface.... it's the only thing I've found after a lot of searching the net.... other than ripping it off again and redoing it...... it actually didn't come out too bad...

I would agree, the decal floated in the lacquer.... there was a suggested way to kinda fix it on an online belog, but I've never had to do such... Hide it by gradually building up the clearcoat until most of it disappears..... Never tried it but at this point the only resolution is to hide it, or remove it and do it over..... I know cost becomes a factor... And since it is already under the clear lacquer....

Well that "IS" kinda what you want right? :-)

That is a great representation of old faded OD green..... it shows as yellow cause if you ever saw color shots of the earth over say rambling hills trees and valleys the actual earth looks yellowish brown with green splotches... Especially in semi-arid places...

I don't think it was trapped air brother, that's what micro sol and a pin is for, and you would see it as soon as the decal is dry cause it wouldn't lay down, more like trapped water IMHO......

I agree the top coat is key, it was fine until that was laid... TBH, I have NEVER ever seen anything like that, all the other stuff wrinkles, popcorn ceiling effect, bubbles, orange peel I have all seen and fixed, this one has me stumped... that looks like hippopotamus/elephant skin...... Well let me know how the second application of Decal set/sol works.... I have a suspicion that it will not work through the overcoat...... This is one bird that doesn't want to be finished or likes the attention, it seems like it's taking on a personality..... We have all had them, your not alone...

Brother, did this happen to just this one side?

This is coming out nice brother, great job on the tracks.... anticipating the rest of the color scheme, so far looks great.... Israeli armor can be very difficult to get right, it's not like US armor which is one color to match and is easily made... you need multiple colors and layering techniques to get it right.. One of the reasons I don't do them... (I have an affinity to drabish greens with white target markers on them)

You see that image on the video , that is a sherman tank mounting a 90mm gun. and every time I see something like that is reminds me of the brainless ideals of Leslie McNair, who said that the Armored force could not have a sherman with a 90 cause it simply wouldn't fit.... (despite how many times the Armored Board and Tanks Corps said it would and they could do it) cost tens of thousands of lives that bonehead ideal... (after McNair was ordered by Marshall to sent the M-26 to Europe, he went over there to see if his orders to scatter them around in singles units were being followed, he was killed in action) and thankfully Eisenhower, as CoS after the war, disbanded Army Ground forces cause it did more to screw things up than it ever did to straighten things out... At some things, we were our own worst enemy....

Panzer Leader, Tobruk, Desert Fox, Battle of the Bulge... just a few my brothers and I played. I loved BotB, I couldn't lose on either side and that pissed off my brothers... But then I couldn't win in Desert Fox to save me either... Panzer Leader campaign games became epics 48 - 72 hour marathons... (when mother pulled the plug is when they usually ended) none of us could win that one... The old days of being young and not having a care in the world....

Or in storage dumps rusting away.... Every country in Europe had at least a thousand of them... Germany, two thousand.... WE did not bring them all home.... {chuckle} Lots of them got sold off at pennies on the dollar to whomever wanted one... many were sold for scrap value and made it to the black market arms dealers... Post WWII was an arms sellers dream....

Yep, if it looks good in monochrome it will look good in anything....

The F-104A/B was the only ones with downward firing ejection seats, one of the first thing the Airforce mandated when writing the specifications for the "C/D" models was a standard ejection seat.... they became a fighter bomber before they were sold overseas. and the F-104G/H were designed to a West German Luftwaffe specification and they were the initial purchasers eventually buying/converting/manufacturing over 900 of them the other european airforces (except for France's) went with it as well through Germany's push and insistence on Nato interoperability.... (the whole fiasco with it is one of the cited results of France pulling out of Nato btw France was coming out with the Mirage at the time, a completely more capable aircraft, but the politics of Nato prevented them from choosing it. Lockheeds sale of the F-104 to Germany and hence Nato is known in military aircraft sales circles as "The Deal of the Century") When they ran out of migcap missions they certainly did use them as fighter-bombers, in fact that is what finally got them sent home, not their tac capability, more their insufficient weapon loadout... Thank You Ken... EG

No the F-104 could not do it without afterburner absolutely correct there brother. Johnson's definition comes from my memory of an article of his that I read a long time ago about airplane design in general and how he applied it to the F-104 those were the basic factors that he considered essential to get sustainable supersonic flight..... The Air Force definition you cite reads more like a design requirement specification than a standard of performance. (most military standards read like that) and the term "Super-Cruise" didn't come into wide spread usage until the marketing campaign to get the F-22 accepted as the next US fighter plane.... A marketing slogan doesn't make accurate engineering or military standards of performance unfortunately.. But it sounds nice for the evening news broadcast. All aircraft when pushed too far have negative aerodynamic consequences, the F-104 eliminated the ones they were dealing with from conventional aircraft design.... It was revolutionary..... The Hustler is also a favorite of mine, from the time of being a kid in fact. Got to see one do a flyover at a fourth of july celebration and has captivated me ever since, it's a damned shame that I can't find one in 1/32nd scale... {chuckle} That will have to wait till I need a new ceiling in the model room.... I'm a novice also, no real experience with these from any aspect except reading as much as I can... so any one with REAL experience with these aircraft Please! by all means, come and educate us... Yes sir, On with the Build, well said sir... Thank You Lou, EG

Hi Roger, Following the history of Fighter planes you find that ALL of them eventually get turned into fighter-bombers.... Yes the Starfighter was designed as an interceptor and the first models were used by the Air Force in that capacity simply cause it could get to the target faster than anything else out there. and when your going to use a nuclear tipped air to air missile to destroy whole bomber formations getting there fast was the main concern. That being said it soon became readily apparent that at top speed the F-104 got nowhere real fast... like 500 mile range... when they were dealing with WWII/Korean war era propellor engined bombers that was still only barely sufficient. But with the advent of jet bombers and improvements in radar tracking entirely inadequate for nuclear air defense.... so you ask the manufacturer to improve the basic airframe to do two things increase range and weapons capability. and once better more capable aircraft were designed for that role you send these aircraft back to be upgraded and with the increase in weapons capability use them as tactical fighters... They still had a very low weapons capability even then... but in the hands of a capable pilot could do the job very well as the 1962 William Tell film I posted above demonstrates. the F-104 was sent to vietnam to fly Migcap mission which were their primary function cause the Migs were killing the F-100's wholesale. Within two months, the F-104's sent eliminated the migs as a threat to the bombers. so they really didn't have an active mission after the migs stopped coming... They did have a strike capability (as limited as it was) so they used it.... And using it they were very effective to the limits they could be used... But that was pilot training more than the airplane... then Lockheed made the deal of the century with the Luftwaffe and got them to accept a much improved Starfighter originally known as the Super Starfighter (F-104G) and allowed them to be license built all over the world, (the Germans owned and flew more Starfighters that the US Air Force ever had in it's inventory) At one point almost all of Nato's strike fighter capacity was Starfighter based... But it still had it habits and needed a very experienced pilot to fly it staying within it's flight envelope. There was no room for error flying a Starfighter.

Oh yes while on the ground they had foam covers to put over them while doing maintenance, you could get a nasty gash brushing up against one when not being careful....

Hi Ken, the J-79 was a revolution in axial flow tech, the reason was that most jets had centrifugical flow compressors, axial flow engines had a bad habit of compressor stalling at rapid demands for power (more flow) this would happen at high angles of attack also. And, to add to the problem, they needed a heavy flow of compressed air to light them up... (they were not air startable) Very risky in a combat aircraft. The J-79 solved most of those problems. It's main advantage was it's variable pitch stators in the compressor section, the first such engine so equipped. (a perfect example of what the Wright Brothers learned about airfoils carried into modern engineering) by being able to change the pitch of the stator blades in the compressor they relieved the back pressure that the airfoil shaped blades caused when forcing more air through it... This eliminated compressor stall in all but the most edge of the flight envelope environments. It also allowed the engine to be re-started in flight by allowing the airstream to push the compressor into spinning faster... a side effect of this was that the engine could accelerate at will without losing compression of the fuel air mix.... Instant acceleration was the calling card of these engines... and any pilot that ever flew one would usually recite that one fact first when describing what he liked about the aircraft..... with the turbine boost function added to the fuel system, (thank you for pointing that out) any aircraft using them became gone in 5 seconds aircraft.... (leaving gone in 60 seconds smelling fumes) Yeah I cut my teeth modeling with that silver formulation of styrene, brittle is the word. you have to be careful with the fiddly parts.... EG

Well next comes the Kit.... Minicraft Hasegawa #104 (yes that is actually the kit number) Originally released in 1977 it is a reboxing of the straight Hasegawa kit from 1975 for the US market.... Back in the day this was kit was manufactured Hasegawa was considered the ultimate in model aircraft injection molding and would easily sell for $20.00 in an era where most Revell or Monogram kits sold for a buck or two and Tamiya was selling for 8-10 dollars. This was the state of the art..... We will see how well it holds up today..... Instructions... Very clean, written in good english with not only exploded drawings calling out the location of each part but it's proposed colors as well, underneath each step are also written instructions with directions for how the parts are supposed to be attached... I wish they put this kind of effort into instructions today... Last two pages show a complete scale drawing of the aircraft showing the decal placement and a complete parts list with sprue locations identified.... 4 sprues in silver plastic, 1 in clear with a three piece canopy and one metal part, (a stiff wire insert to reinforce the main landing gear) Parts..... Sprue "A" Sprue "B" Sprues "C", "D" & "E" And yes it has a pilot figure! How many aircraft models today do you see that? No photo etch in this kit.... but plenty of fiddly parts..... In fact there really isn't much available for this kit in aftermarket, resin or photoetch.... Decals... The decals seem to be in great shape considering their age, but I have ordered a set of aftermarket decals from Victory Models specifically to cover the insignias needed for 57-0914 it will also have the little placards that are usually found all over these birds....... The Markings above are for 56-0819 an F-104C flown by Col. George C. Levin Jr. as commander of the 405th Fighter Wing the stripe colors represent each of the wings four squadrons. Col. Levin only got to fly with these colors for a very short while, he was ordered to remove them after being viewed at an open house by the upper brass... This was the time that General Lemay was Air Force COS, and he took a very dim view of extensive aircraft personalization..... Anyway, that is the kit I'm going to be working with basically OOB. I will be using Ushi's metal buffing powder's to produce the BMF on the aircraft. Supposed to be good stuff, easy to use and apply. We will find out... Next up, where we all start on Airplane Models, The cockpit...... I hope you enjoy the Journey.... EG

Always allow the Lacquer to degas first, no matter what your going to put over it. (unless it is another Lacquer) Basic rule of thumb....

I KNEW it would get here eventually.... Pull up that nice comfy chair right there in the middle, No, the other one....... NO, the other, other one (after you finish distributing the popcorn of course) Thanks Mark, and welcome...

Actually OC, the F-104 was a research plane in and of itself when it first went to Nasa It was used in extreme altitude studies done by both the AF in conjunction with NASA and set many absolute altitude records for an airplane taking off under it's own power from the ground. (over 100k feet many times) and time to climb records. NASA had about a dozen of them if I remember correctly and yes it was their chase plane of choice when it came to the X-15, SR-71 and the XB-70.... In fact it was a malfunctioning F-104 chase plane that caused the crash of the second XB-70 and cancellation of the whole project.... the F-104 has a long storied history with NASA.

You forgot the last two Yves, the F-110 and the F-111, both designed as fighter planes.... The F-110 eventually becoming the F-4 Phantom II, (by government edict) and the F-111 eventually becoming the FB-111, (when it was finally decided that it really wasn't a fighter plane at all) A very storied development history for both of those last two...... I thought it was a good choice, when someone mentions the century series the first plane that comes to my mind is the F-104, the next is the F-100... one thing you can say, it definitely looks the part. EG

Define cruise.... Cruise down the highway, you cruise at 60 Cruise down a country gravel backroad? 35 (at the max) What's the cruising speed of a car? Kelly Johnson defined it as the airplanes most efficient aerodynamic operating speed in stable air which in this case was mach 1.025, most lift, least drag... the F-16, mach 1.072, the F-22, mach 1.22 and I suspect that there are several planes missing that belong on such a list like the B-58, F-4, B-1B, F-111, definitely the SR-71, but I can't find the information on them.... Another definition of Super-Cruise eliminated all others except the F-22... which is cruising speed at "Normal" throttle sans AB which for the F-22 is Mach 1.015 without afterburners and actually no other plane ever built can do... Which definition used depends on the opinion of the user..... I prefer Kelly's over anyone else's The F-104 was the first plane designed to fly at sustained mach speeds, prior to that, supersonic flight could only be done for short bursts and not sustained. They succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations... It was the first aircraft capable of super-cruise.... (and the first production aircraft capable of Mach 2, not only did they get sustained Mach 1, their design target speed, they got sustained Mach 2 to boot) And of course brother, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.... you boys that were the actual stick and rudder men will know more about that than I, a simple plastic hacker..... {chuckle} EG

I like to build to a specific subject if I can.. the Star Trek connection is what spurred my interest in the aircraft and then when I started researching her history, kinda sealed the deal.... Too many connections to my interests to not build her.... Welcome aboard....

Thanks for coming Ken, Yep they were well liked by the brass a real flying aircraft, a fighter plane in every way. The F-4 was a natural outgrowth of what the F-104 pioneered.... got the speed and power now add the maneuverability... I have an F-4 in 1/32nd, a pre-built that needs a bit of assembly, nice looking model and huge.... It's a bit of a beast...