Italeri F-104G Belgian air force, target tow

[Grunticus]

 

The Starfighter makes me reminisce abut times long gone by, like the 32nd TFS Phantom did. I remember well hearing these howling while they taxied at Volkel, and how they streaked throught the sky many times a day over the village I grew up in, and the mass fly-over at Deelen AFB, when a group of 40 of them streaked the field at very low altitude. It was the farewell flight of the F-104 in the Dutch air force.

 

Oh No!..Anyway,

 

I already built a Dutch TF-104G a few years ago, but frankly the Dutch cammo looks boring. Since I am a sucker for SEA cammo, and since I found one with really colorful distractions to the standard scheme I decided to build this one as a Belgian Lockheed C2 seated target towing F-104G.

 

My previous Starfighter:

 

And now this machine. I will have to scratch-build the Secapem type 250 containers. 

 

I have found two great inspirational builds here and here ( the latter of my subject machine). @Madmax Sean did such a fantastic job on the wheel wells that I want to try and come close to that result. Just amazing!

 

I've ordered the Daco book, the three Daco decal sheets, Reskit Eduard Brassin wheels and the Aires cockpit (boy-o-boy will it fit or has it shrunk to 1/144 in storage?)

 

 

Well, it's a start 😎 Let's see how it compares to the Aires seat.

 

Addendum: Italeri provide these two A4 sized fantastic decal sheets with this kit. The quality looks amazing! The only miss I see are the too dark Greek roundels. They even provide country-specific languages. Apparently a cockpit was referred to as "Stuurhut" (Steering-hut) in Belgium 😁

 

 

The scheme (with changes for my specific subject):

 

Cheers, Leon

Edited March 27 by Grunticus
Wrong product listed

[Kagemusha]

Don't want to rock the boat, but I think the Starfighter looks best in Dutch markings, nice TF, far from boring.

[MikeC]

Always good to see a Starfighter.  A couple of points you may wish to be aware of, if you weren't already.  I used the Daco decals, including some of the stencils.  They're great, but I think they were sized for the Hasegawa kits, so there were one or two slight mismatches, for example with the surface detail.  No biggy, but easily adaptable.

 

Secondly, the Belgian "SEA" camo was not exactly the same as that on US aircraft, the FS numbers differed slightly.  Iirc the Daco sheet has the appropriate information, if not let me know, I think I still have it somewhere.

 

Without wishing to hijack your thread, here's my take on a Belgian T-bird depicted at the last Tiger Meet the 104 attended just before retirement from Belgian service.

 

Good luck, looking forward to seeing this progress.

Edited March 22 by MikeC

[Biggles87]

As @MikeC says, always  good to see a Starfighter.

I was involved with the IAT displays from the late ‘70s to the mid ‘90s as one of the runaway controllers and one of our regular particpants was a Dutch ‘104 pilot. We always knew when he was arriving because he would work the throttle on the downwind leg to give us a series of howls. He was eventually banned from the display at Greenham because he did a very low run down the runway when the central crossing was open and the double decker spotters bus was in the middle, he did continue coming but with an aircraft for the static display.

 

John

PS: I later heard that the people on the bus thought it was great!

Edited March 22 by Biggles87

[Grunticus]

1 hour ago, MikeC said:

Always good to see a Starfighter.  A couple of points you may wish to be aware of, if you weren't already.  I used the Daco decals, including some of the stencils.  They're great, but I think they were sized for the Hasegawa kits, so there were one or two slight mismatches, for example with the surface detail.  No biggy, but easily adaptable.

 

Secondly, the Belgian "SEA" camo was not exactly the same as that on US aircraft, the FS numbers differed slightly.  Iirc the Daco sheet has the appropriate information, if not let me know, I think I still have it somewhere.

 

Without wishing to hijack your thread, here's my take on a Belgian T-bird depicted at the last Tiger Meet the 104 attended just before retirement from Belgian service.

 

Good luck, looking forward to seeing this progress.

 

Thanks for bringing it to my attention Mike. Your Starfighter looks gorgeous! If you could dig up that color info it would be highly appreciated. I was already investigating the lighter green color, as in my memory it was a tad greener than the USAF shade.  The Daco decals will be used to supplement the kit ones, for those that are not on the kit sheet. The kit decals are superb.

 

In this image the lighter green appears very much USAF-like:

 

A lot 'greener' in these, showing my subject:

 

But wait, there's more! The one in front is either two-tone, or a very different light green compared to the middle one. I'm going to stick with a greener shade compared to USAF SEA, so the middle one. I think it's a later scheme given the deleted intake roundels and smaller fuselage codes.

 

 

Cheers, Leon

 

 

 

[Grunticus]

2 minutes ago, Biggles87 said:

As @MikeC says, always  good to see a Starfighter.

I was involved with the IAT displays from the late ‘70s to the mid ‘90s as one of the runaway controllers and one of our regular particpants was a Dutch ‘104 pilot. We always knew when he was arriving because he would work the throttle on the downwind leg to give us a series of howls. He was eventually banned from the display at Greenham because he did a very low run down the runway when the central crossing was open and the double decker spotters bus was in the middle, he did continue coming but an aircraft for the static display.

 

John

PS: I later heard that the people on the bus thought it was great!

 

Hans van der Werf? I met him when I was a teenager. Great man, and his demos were stunning! Thanks for this anecdote.

[Stevepd]

37 minutes ago, Biggles87 said:

as one of our regular particpants was a Dutch ‘104 pilot. We always knew when he was arriving because he would work the throttle on the downwind leg to give us a series of howls. He was eventually banned from the display at Greenham because he did a very low run down the runway when the central crossing was open and the double decker spotters bus was in the middle, he did continue coming but with an aircraft for the static display.

 

John

PS: I later heard that the people on the bus thought it was great!

If this pilot stands out amongst the others, would it be on YouTube to see his displays?.

[Grunticus]

40 minutes ago, Stevepd said:

If this pilot stands out amongst the others, would it be on YouTube to see his displays?.

 

If it wás Hans, here's a short one in Coventry 1976, and one in 1978. Unfortunately I can´t find a full video.

 

 

[Madmax]

Great choice of subject Leon! Good luck with the wheel wells - I found it very satisfying detailing them... 

[Grunticus]

I see that AK has a set of paints tailored for Belgian cammo. But they adopted FS34102, the SEA scheme green. Will look on.

[Biggles87]

I don’t remember the name @Grunticus but the two displays that stood out for me in 1976 were his and Geoff Brindle ( who later became IAT display manager ) in a Lightning F3.

 

John

[scvrobeson]

Looks like a cool project. The Belgian SEA schemes are always a unique look. 

 

 

Matt 

[Grunticus]

The main gear needs a lot of cleaning up.

 

While trying to replicate Sean's approach to clear out the details in the gear bay I made a mistake and damaged the middle beam part 6A. I contacted Italeri for a replacement. I had already scraped away the spaghetti on one half. I have been thinking on an approach the more matches my current skill set, which is way lower than Sean's or most other's here. Maybe not so much for straight-up building, but I mean for modifications. What If I could create a blank bulkhead?

 

I made a mask of the main gear ceiling bulkhead by airbrushing the contours on a piece of paper, adding the extra 2.2mm in the middle manually.

 

 

This was then scanned in to Silhouette Studio, traced, and cut out on a piece of backing cardboard you find in Eduard PE sets, lightly scored in the middle, and bent to shape like the original part. A test fit shows I can do this, so I will make this part from stock matching the thickness of the Italeri part after I tweak the shape a bit more. That way I have a blank canvas to add all the details to, I will pick what I can do from both builds mentioned in the opening post. Before I start I will await the arrival of Daco's book.

 

 

Cheers, Leon

Edited March 23 by Grunticus
added part number

[Madmax]

I'm afraid my wheel-well fetish appears to be is contagious!  I like the 'clean slate' approach, Leon. Now the trick is to decide just how much you want to add. The Daco book is going to probably turn you into a hydraulic engineer by the time you decide you've shoved enough piping into the model. Good luck... 

[Grunticus]

6 hours ago, Madmax said:

I'm afraid my wheel-well fetish appears to be is contagious!  I like the 'clean slate' approach, Leon. Now the trick is to decide just how much you want to add. The Daco book is going to probably turn you into a hydraulic engineer by the time you decide you've shoved enough piping into the model. Good luck... 

 

Well it does look very good what you did! And I agree, it is easy to do too much. I have cleaned up the original part completely. The first home-made one was not quite it, I will have another go and see what I will use after that.