1/72 Revell F-104G

Gallery Article by Fabio Bongiorno on May 11 2011

 

F-104G Italian Air Force 3rd Wing Villafranca

Hi to everybody. This is my second submission to ARC and this time I chose an Italian Air Force aircraft, the F-104G.  It is a very well known subject especially for the ITAF enthusiasts.  The kit is a Revell 1/72 and I just decided to build it straight out of the box adding only a TAURO decal set dedicated to Desert Storm aircraft.  The Tauro decal sheet provides enough material to "cover" 2 birds, an F-104G based in Turkey in 1991 and a "yellow sand" Tornado based in Al Dhafra.  The kit is pretty simple with a little bit more than 50 pieces total.  I started with the cockpit adding only scratchbuilt seatbelts and then assembling the rest of the aircraft.  After attaching and masking the canopy, I gave the whole plane a layer of matt Tamiya grey.  After that I gave it another two hands of the same colour that is the same  of the mimetic scheme used by 104 at that time.  Once the paint was dry I masked the plane to spray the green flat Tamiya acrylic paint and completing the top half mimetic scheme.   

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I let it everything dry and after two days I began masking the top half plane I painted the bottom with X-11 Tamiya acrylic paint.  Two layers of gloss Tamiya varnish and I started to apply decals of "Buscaglia" squadron.  They are very nice and thin except for some silvering appearing after a while (probably not enough skills on my building techniques...anyway I'll work better next time...).  For weathering I used an oil wash using black and covering it with Tamiya smoke airbrushing it following the mimetic scheme.

It was a quite fast building concentrating more on improving the paint and weathering technique.  

Hope you enjoy the pics!!

Greeting from Italy and hope to post again soon my next model.

Fabio Bongiorno

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Photos and text © by Fabio Bongiorno