1/32 Italeri CF-104 439 Tiger Squadron

[ALF18]

Time for one of my favourite aircraft: the CF-104. This build will honour my late father, who flew CF-104s in the early 70s at CFB Baden-Soellingen, West Germany. I was a High School student on the base at the time, and I got to watch these jets every day. We visited the squadrons often, and to this day the distinctive howl of a taxiing 'one-oh-four' or one rolling into the overhead break animates my dreams.

 

I love this Italeri kit. For the cockpit, I bought a Red Fox Studios decal set. It's for an F-104S, but it's quite similar to the Canadian CF-104. The main differences are in the attitude indicators, but side panels and e-bay (no, not the shopping site, but an electronics bay) are almost identical. I know Dad will forgive me for this. 🙂

 

Here are the obligatory photos of the components.

 

Hope you enjoy this build.

ALF

[ALF18]

One thing I really love about this kit is it includes options for multiple F-104 variants. For example, the main landing gear doors. Canadian 104s did not have bulges on the doors, while F-104Gs (Luftwaffe, etc) had bulged doors and thicker wheels. 

Canadian doors parts 7 and 8 (left side of first pic); G models parts 22 and 23. 

[ALF18]

First step was to scrub the raised detail off the cockpit and e-bay parts, as per the Red Fox instructions.

[ALF18]

One part that had me scratching my head a bit was the text that said ''The part marked in green must be placed on top of the shape parts at the end!''

Hmm.

Look at the kit part in the image, then notice that between and around the side panels on the decal sheet, thre are a bunch of decals that replace the raised details from the kit. So, in other words, scrub the detail off. Then, apply each of decals 22, 23, 24, etc... and finally add a part 33 decal to each of those segments that had raised kit detail.

 

Maybe it's my old age, but sometimes reading the instructions a few times, then looking carefully at each illustration and decal sheet, mistakes can be avoided. 🙂

 

Here you can see the raised detail chopped off one side of the mid-section of the kit e-bay part.

ALF

[ALF18]

Next step is to paint the cockpit parts Tamiya XF-83 grey.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

ALF

[Thadeus]

Nice start. Amazing detail on that decal sheet. Although I have no idea what You were supposed to do with the green shaped arrows... And how everything is supposed to fit. I'd probably leave the moulded on detail if they didn't say to sand them down...

 

Still - nice progress. Canadian Starfighters always seemed to have one of the nicest schemes to me.

[my favs are F`s]

Oh yes, another shiny NMF F-104... 🙂

About the ''green'' instructions - I think they mean you should not scrape off the plastic details, and instead add the decals on top of these plastic details... to make them pop up just a bit more. 😉 Anyway, we are talking about so small parts that any difference would be almost impossible to see, especially if you add the wiring/cables over the boxes.

[ALF18]

This is what the area in the e-bay looks like. Under the raised thingies (technical term) is some colourful detail. I'm 100% sure that Red Fox intended for the modeller to scrub the raised thingies, apply each of the decals, then add part numbers 33. 

In any case, that's what I'm going to do... 😉

 

And sorry, Fav's are Fs... this will be an overall camouflaged green aircraft. The natural metal ones didn't have tiger emblems on the tails, and I want to make this one a definite Tiger Squadron bird. Like the one in the second photo. That's my father at the far right.

ALF

[ALF18]

An earlier post led me to recheck all the instructions with the decals. My scrubbing of the detail from the top of the e-bay part is confirmed by the first picture in this post, showing in blue the areas where Red Fox says to remove surface detail and smooth out the part to receive their decals.

The shot of the final result shows how it looks. Of course, there are some tiny misalignments in some of the decals, but in real life they don't show that much. It's too late to fix, anyway. One thing I found with these 3D decals is that no water is required. I simply slid a sharp knife blade under each one, and they popped off the backing paper easily. Not a single one was damaged in doing so.

The cockpit and seat are coming along. Yesterday I was out of town. I took a 900 km return trip to Trenton, Ontario, to Canada's National Aviation Museum. They have a CF-104 seat there, which will help me with the colours. While I was there, I delivered six copies of a book I've written to their gift shop. The book is called Supersonic Stories. It details my experiences flying the CF-5 and CF-18, with emphasis on what I felt and thought as I flew and how world events impacted my life at the time. It's also available on Kindle and Amazon if anyone wants to look it up.

ALF

[phantom]

Uhhh. I was at the Trenton museum yesterday around 13:00.......wonder if I saw you?

[ALF18]

22 hours ago, phantom said:

Uhhh. I was at the Trenton museum yesterday around 13:00.......wonder if I saw you?

As I said on FB, sorry we missed you. Left the museum at 12:40 to head for lunch, then drove the 450 km back home. Maybe another time!

ALF

[ALF18]

Okay, finally back on the site - was very busy publishing my new book, Supersonic Stories, on Amazon. That has taken a lot of my energy in the last week or so.

So, the cockpit. These 3D decals are life savers. No way I could do anything even close by painting. 

I painted the cockpit Tamiya XF 83, which is a perfect match for the real FS cockpit colour. It also matched well with the 3D decals as you can see from the pics of the e-bay above.

One thing I will deviate from is the colour of the throttle. The kit instructions say to paint it black, but the throttle in the CF-104 is a lighter grey than the cockpit walls. I will just leave the throttle unpainted. Will install a bit later, so I don't snap it off.

[ALF18]

I've been slowly assembling the seat (Lockheed C2 is the right one for this aircraft). The kit actually does a decent job on it - I have previously used resin seats, but while the detail is exquisite on resin versions, they are a real pain to chop and fit into the cockpit. The straps are PE. I am painting them XF-19, a slightly lighter grey than the cockpit XF-83. After the grey dries on the PE, I will use a silver pen to do the buckles.

 

Next, I attacked the landing gear. The main gear has some fiddly parts (2 assemblies, one per strut) that must be oriented correctly. Here is how one of them fits. I let the cross-piece at the end dry, then carefully glued the long one in place like this. I glued the strut assembly in place, added the front and back bits, then let it dry on my custom holder from Tamiya.

[ALF18]

The kit includes an engine. I have no intention of displaying it on a stand beside the aircraft - I want it ready to fly, not under major maintenance. Besides, I have zero interest in how engines look. I have painted the interior of the engine, so that anyone looking up the tailpipe might glimpse bits of this. The J-79 F-104 engine, predecessor to the F/A-18's F-404, smoked heavily. Same engine in the F-4 (except for the RAF). Super easy to spot a CF-104 or F-4 - look for the dirty smoke trail, unless they're in afterburner when they burn cleanly.

That means the interior of the engine is quite black, with some metallic highlights. I did some dry fitting, and the engine slides in nicely after the fuselage is buttoned up. Contrary to the kit instructions, I will not glue in the PE at the front and aft fuselage join.

 

One thing I am debating is the nozzle. I don't want to fork out a bunch of cash for a resin nozzle. The kit has two nozzles. The upper one in the photo is for another version, like the F-104S from Italy. The lower one is intended for the CF-104 among others. When I compare with the photo of my father above, I see that the petals on the exhaust are indeed more like the lower nozzle, but the problem is that the kit's nozzle is slightly closed. This only happens when the engine is operating at high power ranges, whereas when shut down the real engine is wide open like the upper part in the pic below. I just might ignore the small discrepancy in petals, and install the upper part anyway. It will be painted mostly black, with some dry-brushed metallic silver for highlights, so the detail won't show much.

[ALF18]

Next I worked on buttoning up the fuselage. First step - the small lights. After gluing them in place, I painted the insides gloss silver to provide a reflective surface from the exterior. The cockpit with the light grey throttle is in place. 

I took a while to get the e-bay and the cockpit into the right spots, doing more dry fitting than usual.

I then glued in the main gear bay assembly, making sure it was in tight.

I did a bit of chopping here and there to ensure a tight fit, and the fuselage came together reasonably well. Lots of tape and glue, and it's together.

[ALF18]

Next is the nose gear well. I made a small tactical error. The nose gear strut has spokes that stick out each side, that fit into tiny holes in the side walls of the nose gear well. I had glued the walls in place before looking at the gear strut... oops.

By bending the walls apart, I managed to insert the gear strut without breaking anything. Phew. At least it will be tight.

After gluing the transparency in place, along with the gear well, I tried dry fitting. Looks like it's important to seat the front end first, prying the fuselage sides apart slightly, then clicking it in place at the rear.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

ALF

[Scooby]

Nice work Alf, your father was a spitting image of you.

 

My son loves the book and loved the note at the front! Craig came home unexpectedly this week as he wasn’t scheduled to fly for three days. He goes back tomorrow.

[ALF18]

10 hours ago, Scooby said:

Nice work Alf, your father was a spitting image of you.

 

My son loves the book and loved the note at the front! Craig came home unexpectedly this week as he wasn’t scheduled to fly for three days. He goes back tomorrow.

Thanks Scooby! It was an honour to dedicate the book for your son. I know he'll do well with his aviation career.

ALF

[ALF18]

I attached the rear fuselage. Joint is not bad, actually. Note that the speedbrakes are closed, although the kit shows them open. Dad told me that the speedbrakes are always closed when shut down, unless the maintainers force them open. Wings are attached as well. The model displayed tail-sitting tendencies, and I haven't even installed the horizontal stabilator, so I added some Play-Doh ahead of the instrument panel. In retrospect, I should have put some in the nose cone, which would have been even more effective. I have more bits to add forward of the centre of gravity, like the seat, ebay door, Vulcan cannon and its doors, but I'm not taking any chances. Normally 104 models aren't tail-sitters, but this one has a big heavy engine in the back.

ALF

[phantom]

Built 16 of these Has and Italeri in 1/32, so far none have been a tall sitter.But yours is coming along nice. Think I might build 4 more........

 

Edited August 7, 2024 by phantom

[ALF18]

On 8/7/2024 at 10:18 AM, phantom said:

Built 16 of these Has and Italeri in 1/32, so far none have been a tall sitter.But yours is coming along nice. Think I might build 4 more........

 

Only 16, Shawn? You've been slacking off! 🙂 I've never seen a 104 tail-sit, but somehow I allowed myself to be spooked this time. Just a little extra prudence this time, but I'm confident that it'll be fine.

ALF

[ALF18]

Now it was time to choose the paint. I know that CF-104s did not have a paint colour that fit nicely into an American FS slot. It was a special blend that came from somewhere in Europe (Prestwick, Scotland perhaps?). There are all kinds of recipes to blend that purportedly make a perfect match, but I am fundamentally a lazy modeller and I wanted to use a Tamiya paint right out of the jar.

I finally settled on XF-51, Khaki Drab. It looks kind of brownish green when dry. My Dad and I used to argue about the paint colour. I said they were green aircraft, and he called it brown. He was even arrogant enough to say ''Hey - I climb into one every working day to fly it, so I think I know what colour it is!'' Being a normal teenager, I refused to believe that claim, and called it green anyway.

Out of respect for my later father, I decided to use this colour because it looks somewhat brownish. In my own senior years, I finally allow him to be right.

After painting, it looks like the right mix of brown and green to me.

I painted the fibreglass bits (aft of the canopy on the upper fuselage, and under the nose and on the fin under the tail) an XF colour called Buff.

[ALF18]

The lower portions of the rear and centre canopy bits have what looks like a fibreglass band. I used masking tape thinly sliced to replicate them.

I also chopped off the IR search/track bump from the front of the windscreen. CF-104s never had them.

Now, the main landing gear doors. The kit comes with two options - bulged, and not-bulged. CF-104s had not-bulged doors as in the picture. The kit bizarrely shows these doors as possibly opened or closed. I've never seen a 104 with them open on the ground, unless it's in maintenance. They also don't fully close - they sit on the gear struts in a mostly-closed position.

[ALF18]

After some paint touch-ups, I applied my floor wax gloss coat. I painted on the black anti-glare panel (the kit provides a decal, but since I am making a black-nosed and not grey radome version, the paint is easy to do and look okay). I also made the fronts of the tip tanks grey/silver, showing the paint scrubbed off at speed that was very common on these aircraft. While I'm not showing much weathering, I will have the tip tanks and the little vents above and behind the wing with subtle colouring.

Decals next. Thanks for stopping by.

ALF

[phantom]

That is outstanding! Such detail. I just finished another Tiger myself, but a Hasegawa.