Lockheed-Aeritalia F-104S by Danstream - FINISHED - Hasegawa - 1:48

[Danstream]

Dear all,

I would like to share with you my next build of the latest version of the iconic Starfighter. I will make its version 'S', which Loockheed designed in answer to a specification from Italy for a more powerful, faster and better armed replacement of the standard NATO version 'G'. The aircraft was built by Aeritalia (former FIAT aeronautica) in the late '60 and was equipped with the version L of the Sidewinder missiles, replacing the old version B, and with Sparrow missiles ( from which the letter 'S' in the designation). Although the Starfighter had a bad reputation for its extensive record of accidents, especially in Germany and Italy (about one third of them was lost in accidents killing hundreds of its pilots in course of the years), it remained exceptionally long in service with European air forces, with the last ones being dismissed by the Italian Air Force in 2004.

The kit is the old Hasegawa which I bought in 2002 and which is by now outdated by the newer 'state-of-the-art' Kinetic one. The plastic is not bad, on the contrary it is finely engraved with negative paneling and I believe it reproduces well the distinctive lines of this fighter. However, lazy Hasegawa didn't include the full range of modifications that were required for an 'S' version, hence, before diving into the kit build, I had to correct at least the two that required a bit of effort.

 

At take-off, the more powerful J79-GE-19 of the 'S' required a larger input of mass flow rate of air, consequently, the air intakes were complemented by rectangular openings which were not present in previous versions. In the picture below, I am showing the kit parts with trapezoidal inspection ports of the 'G' version highlighted with black liner that I had to replace with the rectangular panels sketched by pencil on the upper left of the picture.

Based on the drawing, I cut a template out of a transparent plastic sheet for guiding the engraving of the new panels

After having filled the old panel lines with CA glue, I used the template for scribing the new lines

Finally, after the addition of some rivet lines and piano hinges, the parts are ready in a reasonable shape.

The second modification shown above consisted in blanking off the cannon opening being the cannon bay used to accommodate the guidance electronics for the Sparrow missiles. Now I can start the proper build and other few minor modifications will be shown during the course of the building.

Also this time, I hope to have you watching over my shoulders,

best regards,

Dan

 

 

 

[Dave_E]

I love the F-104, I’m in! 🍿🥤

[yvesvidal]

59 minutes ago, Danstream said:

I love the HASEGAWA artworks of that period. What a great view....

 

Yves

[Danstream]

7 minutes ago, yvesvidal said:

I love the HASEGAWA artworks of that period. What a great view....

Yesss, me too. The box art is from the great artist of aeronautical subjects Koike Shigeo, although this one is not among his bests. I like a lot his depiction of luminous cloudy skies.

Kind regards,

Dan

[ccoyle]

Ah, the ol' Witwenmacher! 😉

[Old Collingwood]

I'm in,   yep  the  old  widowmaker  like  Chris  said.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

Looking forward to another masterpiece Dan

Alan

[Egilman]

The "Zipper", another skunkworks beauty...

 

I'm in....

[CDW]

Looking forward to your build. Isn't it amazing how after so many decades this fighter still looks "modern" in a certain way? Went into service in 1958. Wow, that was a LONG time ago.

[Canute]

I'm in, too. My F-4 squadron in Germany had a visit with the Italian AF squadron of the same number, the 22nd. Great deployment, excellent home cooked pasta and an Italian white wine. Tragedy struck the next day when their squadron commander decided to do a departure flyby under the low hanging clouds and took all 4 jets into an Eifel hillside. We were all destroyed by this disaster. A very bad day. R.I.P.

[Landlubber Mike]

I'm in for this one too.  Can't wait to see what you do with it - cool subject!

[Haliburton]

I have the kinetic kit ‘waiting in the wings’ - I’ve always loved the starfighter so will definitely follow along!  Scott

[Danstream]

Hi, I am working on the details that need to go inside the fuselage. I bought the Aires resin replacement for the jet pipe of the J79-GE-19 engine. The kit provides the specific nozzle for this engine, but the resin parts were available at the LHS and they look better.

I sprayed the parts with black surfacer primer and dry-brushed them with metallic steel paint. From pictures of the real plane, the nozzle appear quite black, hence, after an application of a Tamiya brown liner, I painted the petals matt black. Then, I picked up few details again with steel paint. Being everything almost black, it is difficult to take a picture of it, but this is the result.

The cockpit is very basic and the instrumentation is provided by decals. However, these are very old and not usable any more, hence I picked up the details of the consolles by drybrushing while the IP is a replacement from Eduard, which being designed for the Kinetic kit, required some adaptations.

I bought also a resin for the wheel bay which, although not strictly necessary, is a nice improvement. To install it, I cut and removed a part of the fuselage frames provided by the kit and glued the resin bay to the remaining frames obtaining a solid support for this large piece.

This is how the bay will appear once inside the closed fuselage.

There are still several other issues to fix before being able to close the fuselage. In addition, another problem to be solved is the replacement of the kit decals with a better and newer set. I found on the web a nice sheet produced by Skymodels, but I will tell you more next time.

Kind regards,

Dan

Edited October 13, 2023 by Danstream

[Danstream]

Hi, after long time, I am able to come back to my model. The addressing of the seam of the fuselage junction took longer than expected. After numerous filling and sanding sessions I eliminated all the ghost seams (I hope) and glued the belly fins which needed a quick reshaping and filling of the gaps at their bases. All the sanding marred the very nice details of the surface that had to be restored. This is the section of the tail which had its details re-built.

Then, I painted and prepared the air inlet system which sport an anti-icing black coating on their entrance lips and cone.

After mating them, I glued the inlets onto the airframe.

It can be seen that the distinctive shape of the Starfighter starts to emerge and this nice kit capture it very well. The lower surface is completed by now, only some finishing of the air inlet assembly is needed.

The underside of the fuselage is full of details, engraved or in relief, and attention must be paid not to obliterate them. The complexity of the details reminds to me the surfaces of the space ships seen in the Star Wars movies.

 

That's all for now, best regards,

Dan

 

[Danstream]

A little step forward, I adapted the instrument panel, which was an Eduard a.m. for the Kinetic kit, and put on and finished the coaming.

Perhaps, the canvas needs a coat of matt varnish. The cockpit is quite basic, hence I will opt for a closed hood.

Next I will tackle the wing,

best regards,

Dan

 

 

[Danstream]

Hi, I have been away from the hobby quite some time, now I am back and still working on the fuselage. I painted parts with Dark Sea Grey which looks more suited for the interiors than the previous greys.

I needed to rebuilt the inverted 'V' support behind the seat because the top of the original part was ending in the middle of the transparent instead of supporting the arch of the transparent edge. A very little detail which nevertheless disturbed me. Then, the HUD screen went on and the transparents were masked inside and outside.

In the following image, although out of focus, I tried to show how the 'V' support looks after my modifications.

Finally, the fore and aft transparent parts are glued on.

Central hood will need to be masked and furnished now.

Not much, but necessary time consuming steps.

Best regards,

Dan

 

 

 

[AJohnson]

Good to see you back Dan, tidy masking. 

[Danstream]

Please find an update before the festivities break. I went on with masking the canopy hood inside and outside and added tubes and rear mirrors to it.

A gray was sprayed inside (excuse the picture out of focus):

Then, I started working of the wings. The parts are finely engraved with surface details and divots to represent rivets. I had to fill up few extractor marks too.

Although the details are very fine, there is a problem with that. In fact the real wings have all the rivets puttied and hence virtually invisible. I didn't want to fill all of them with putty, therefore I am just applying a heavy coat of Tamiya primer just to lightly mute them down and live with that. I always get surprised by how often I find myself trying to fill up kits with existing rivets and riveting kits that don't have them.

Once mounted on the fuselage, the surprising proportions of this plane become evident. I can't help noticing the incredibly small wing surface of this plane. Clearly, lift is proportional to squared velocity and a large surface is not needed when you have a large velocity, but the problem is that to get there you have to start from low velocities ...🙂

The futuristic iconic shape of the Starfighter is now almost complete.

 

I take the opportunity to wish you all a great and peaceful Christmas together with your beloved ones whatever is your creed or belief.

Yours,

Dan

Edited December 24, 2023 by Danstream

[king derelict]

A safe and happy Christmas Dan. I’m looking forward to the continuation in 2024. They have a F104 with the Zero Length Launch rocket attached at the Berlin Gatow museum. I think it would help to have no imagination to fly one

alan

[Canute]

The F-104 had a very high wing loading. Went fast as all get out, but don't try to turn very hard. Seems like it took many miles for a 180 degree turn. Bouncing one while flying in Germany, back in the 70s, was a bit of sport for we Phantom Phlyers. Something we turned better than. And it was actually NATO sanctioned, as they were pushing good visual lookout. Can't do that anymore.

 

Merry Christmas. y'all.

[king derelict]

Have great Christmas Ken. 

Alan

[mtaylor]

As I recall, the F-104 wasn't really designed to dogfight but to be a stand-off bomber killer.  Those tiny wings were almost razor sharp.  The AF Museum in Dayton had one with rubber foam tubing on leading and trailing edges of the wings and the empennage as too many tourists didn't believe that they were sharp and the AF was taking no chances.

 

They were loud as I recall as the whole house would shake when they taking off from WPAFB back then.  This was well before "noise abatment" was a thing for airports and air bases.

[CDW]

Great looking model, Dan! 

Merry Christmas.

[Egilman]

1 hour ago, mtaylor said:

Those tiny wings were almost razor sharp.

They weren't "razor" sharp, it was like a 1/32nd or 1/16th inch leading edge radius... (think dull axe edge) But if you weren't paying attention to what you were doing, bumping into one with even a little bit of pressure could easily give you a nasty slice... 

 

They had hard plastic half inch caps for the flightline and two inch foam caps for when non-flight personnel were around... Accidents did happen....

[Canute]

The F-104 had a J-79 engine in it. Similar to the F-4, B-58 and A-5. There were probably others. Loud, but outstanding throttle response.

[Danstream]

On 12/24/2023 at 10:12 PM, king derelict said:

A safe and happy Christmas Dan. I’m looking forward to the continuation in 2024. They have a F104 with the Zero Length Launch rocket attached at the Berlin Gatow museum. I think it would help to have no imagination to fly one

Thank you Alan, I hope to have more spare time in 2024 and to continue at a faster pace. However, although this model is still quite nice, it is demanding more time than what I had expected. 

 

On 12/24/2023 at 10:38 PM, Canute said:

The F-104 had a very high wing loading. Went fast as all get out, but don't try to turn very hard. Seems like it took many miles for a 180 degree turn.

Yes Ken, the wing loading was obviously high and for the version S was even higher, clearly, the turn radius was consequently large despite the L.E. slats and the blowed flaps. Definitively, it was not designed for dogfighting.

 

On 12/25/2023 at 12:24 AM, mtaylor said:

As I recall, the F-104 wasn't really designed to dogfight but to be a stand-off bomber killer.  Those tiny wings were almost razor sharp.

As said above, it was not a dogfighter. The razor sharp L.E. was a direct application of theory which required that to have shock waves attached to the L.E. with no subsonic pockets.

 

On 12/25/2023 at 2:00 PM, Canute said:

The F-104 had a J-79 engine in it. Similar to the F-4, B-58 and A-5.

The version S had the more powerful J79-GE-19. The design of the J-79 is an amazing piece of engineering.

 

Thanks for all the likes and comments.

Dan

[Danstream]

I prepared the airframe and various other parts for being sprayed. I blanked off the air intakes and provisionally attached the canopy hood.

The Italian F-104s had the underside painted with a flat aluminium paint, therefore, in preparation for that, I sprayed a very light coat of satin black to uniform the colors of the various parts and give more depth to the aluminium paint. I kept the paint very thin to avoid to obliterates too much the nice surface details. 

Unfortunately, a close inspection revealed few blemishes on the surfaces that required to be addressed, being the aluminium paint absolutely unforgiving. I applied on these areas some Mr. Surfacer 500 which now need to be smoothened out.

Being slowed down by these touches up, I am thinking of changing painting strategy and tackle the camo before the lower surfaces. Let's see, I will let you know.

Best regards,

Dan

 

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Danstream

[Danstream]

Hi, I completed the black coat and after having corrected the little defects, I got a black Starfighter:

After an overall wet sanding with 2000 grit, I started with spraying the camo colors. The first color, in the Italian denomination Grigio Mare Scuro 27 – FS36152 (dark sea grey) corresponds well with Gunze H-69. The original grey paint underwent to quite a noticeable discoloration on the real aircraft (differently from the green), hence I started with adding a little white to the paint and sprayed it in random patterns to get a non-uniform coverage.

To represent the patchy appearance showed by pictures of the aircraft, I added mottles of paint with more white added in it.

Now, I need to prepare paper masks before spraying the green.

Best regards,

Dan 

[Danstream]

Hi, 

I went on with the camouflage and prepared the masking for the dark green. Instead of preparing paper masks, I eventually decided to go with rolls of blu-tack.

For the green, I used the Gunze H-309 which is supposed to be a good match for the Italian Verde Scuro 26 (FS34086), although it turned out a tad too light in my view.

The blu-tack rolls were supposed to deliver a slightly feathered edges, but, instead, this effect is almost unnoticeable. At any rate, the paints went on very smoothly and I think the result is quite acceptable and resemble very much a NATO finish of the '70s. Only few touch ups here and there will be necessary. Next step will be the aluminium paint on the bottom to conclude the main paint job of the airframe.

 

Best regards,

Dan

 

[AJohnson]

That's a very tidy paint job there Dan!  More than "acceptable" I'd say.