F-104 C Starfighter
479 Tactical Fighter Wing
For me as a great fan of bare
metal cold war jets, it was a must to build sometime a large scale model of
Lockheed's Starfighter F-104 C 56-891, FG-891 of the 479 TFW. USAF, based at
George Air Force Base, California.
56-891 was the Tactical Air
Command's first "Charlie" model and was delivered to Nellis Air
Force Base ,Nevada on 19 October 1958 and became the personal aircraft of Col.
George Laven Jr., CO of the 479 TFW at this time.
Laven's bird was painted in one of
the most colorful finishes ever seen on a Starfighter for a gunnery meet in
1958 and Tactical Air Command was not impressed with this flamboyant paint and
Col. Laven was rather pointedly informed to remove it. That's the reason why
this color scheme was only shown for a short while.
Hasegawa's kit of a
"Charlie" in 1:32 scale is an early F-104 G with additional
parts of the smaller tail, that's all. They didn't care that the C-model had
symmetric tail fins of the external tanks and different wheels. Finally the
early C's didn't have an arresting hook. All these parts have to be
scratched to build a correct early "Charlie".
A certain batch of Hasegawa's
F-104 C- kits had that nice decal sheet with the special markings to build
Col. Laven's bird while later kits had only decals with the
markings for a "C" in in regular wing colors, which are
flamboyant as well.
As usual I've again plated my
model with kitchen aluminium foil. All panels and rivets were removed and
rescribed later on the foil. Parts that needed color had to be
painted prior to plating, because it's impossible to tape the foil, which
comes off when removing the tape later.
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images below to see larger images
The tail section of the model is plated with parts of aluminium foil which I've cooked in hot water together with egg shells to create a burned metal character of this section. The longer the foil remains in the hot water, the deeper the corrosion
becomes.
To paint my model I've used Tamiya colors; upper surfaces of the wings are gloss
white, while the undersides are anti-corrosion gray (FS 16473).
This model is really an eyecatcher when
displayed on model exhibitions and I'm proud to tell you that my "C" is already an award winner in an online model-competition held at
Flugzeugforum.de.
Why not take a look there.
Thanks for reading my article and watching my pictures.
Peter Doll
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images below to see larger images
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