Fanes

Fantastic another Stafighter! If you're looking for references. I can recommend you the Daco book "Uncovering the Lockheed F-104G Starfighter".

Not much I guess and they're not completely wrong. In reality the layout varied from country to country and from time to time. So a 100% accurate cockpit will always need some scratching, no matter what. The missing sidewalls are bothering me more, but that's another story

I started working on the cockpit tubs by removing knobs and drilling holes to prep for the Anyz stuff. The more I look at pictures in the DACO book, the more I realise that the Italeri side console's layout doesn't match the F-104G. Correcting this goes beyond my scratch building skills. So I decided to not get involved and just detail what is there. The consoles in the aft cockpit are a lot better. One more thing can be seen on the right console: I scratched the cockpit light from stretched sprue, punched styrene disks and some twisted coper wire - you can compare it to what's in the kit on the left side. That's it for now.

That worked like a charm - thank you very much for the hint!

HUD and instrument panel coaming As mentioned before way Italeri depicted the coaming and everything in front of the IP is a little disappointing. Some cutting and scratch building later: Some sanding/smoothing is still necessary but I think you get where I'm heading. The german Starfighters had an additional compass which isn't included in the kit. One of my Revell 109s generously donated one. And my first attempt for the coaming: I used the foil from a wine bottle which seems a tad too stiff. Can you guys recommend something else?

That's a beauty! It's a dilemma: doing a typcial (nice and clean) scheme would be atypical for my builds so far. Doing an atypical scheme (patched up and grimey) on the other hand would be typical for me. There's plenty of time to struggle with this until I reach the painting stage

No progress today but some more AM stuff arrived. The replacement control column from Italeri is being shipped - so I'm good to go crazy on the interior (maybe tomorrow )!

Because of the fine weather I only managed to do some small stuff . The Italeri stick recieved its Quickboost grip (reinforced with a piece of wire) and here it is compared to its sibling Unfortunately Italeri has only included the "fighter style" control column for the front cockpit (seen on the right above) which is wrong for the double seater. Since I can't cast a resin copy of the rear stick, I'll have to look for spare parts. I made my enquiry with the distributor yesterday and they can supply me with the needes parts for ~13€ - that's about a sixth of what I paid for the whole kit! I'll make may decision on that later on. Jumping to the next issue - the front instrument panel coaming. The kit part is - at least to my eye - merely a joke compared to the real thing I'll try to scratch the canvas cover with some foil and I'll dig through my spare parts for the compass (port side on the coaming). Stay tuned. Joachim

Thanks Lothar! I hope to get to meet you when that Coronoa thingy is over. After all we're just living about 10km apart. Shocking - isn't it?

Chris - are you going to soften the edges of your oil streak? The inboard looks a little sharp - at least to my eye Keep up the good work! Joachim

The pit I couldn't resist any longer and used a rainy afternoon to start my build! First bits: the Eduard MB-GQ7A ejection seats. After some happy sawing and sanding I tacked some pieces temporarily in place to do a comparison with the kit seat I guess th picture says it all: Next up was the dry fit of the seat rails to the tub and the rear wall which turned out okayish(1 mm too high). Note: I drilled through all the lightening holes in the rails. Speaking of the rear wall - Italeri simplified that part a little bit. Here it is with the real thing in the background (from the marvellous Daco book) I'm not sure if I should start detailing here. It would be a lot of work to get somehow close to the original. More struggle ahead - the ejection seat's handles: The kit part is clearly undersized but the flat PE thingy isn't stellar as well. I guess scratch building it is? And the last comparison for today The Italeri stick compared to the one from Quickboost. Now it gets complicated: the TF-104G didn't use the stick from the F-104G but the one from the F-104A/D. So the Quickboost stick is no match. My idea so far: transplanting the better detailed grip to the kit part. That's all for today Joachim

That question occupied me for quite some time, too. But 916-starfighter to the rescue - they list the MTU engine for the double seater as well.

The original 28+20 No work on th kit so far - I'm still waiting for some small stuff. But I'm already thinking about the finish my Starfighter might recieve. 28+20 or construction number 583F-5950 (built by Messerschmitt) served for quite some time. First flight was in 1967 as part of JaboG 36, transfer to the navy was in 1974 to MFG2 where it was flown until 1986. The photo form my first post is form that era. There are many more out there and they all show a Starfighter in pristine condition. That changed somehow when it was transfered to JaboG 34. There's a beautiful picture from that period on flickr (embedding doesn't work). Afterwards there was a short interlude at LVR 1 before it was sold to the turkish air force in 1987. The history seems to end in 1994 when it presumably got scraped. (source 916-starfighter.de) So after a lot of text - what do you guys think: a clean and typical Marineflieger, or the later version with worn paint with touch ups?

Fantastic weathering - I'm looking forward to your finished Spit!

Superb painting! How do you plan to paint the exhausts? Can you still remove them from behind, or will it be fiddly masking?