Italeri TF-104G Marineflieger - final struggle

[KEi]

Wonderful work you got there. 

I admire your bravery of applying masking tape on top of decals. I always worried the decals will be stick to the masking tape

 

[Thomas Lund]

Excellent work - looks fantastic

 

GROWL !!! I only just sold my Italeri 104 YESTERDAY because I lost interest... now it's back...

[scvrobeson]

It really looks excellent.  You're a braver man than I applying tape over decals.

 

 

Matt 

[Fanes]

8 hours ago, Derek B said:

well spotted Fanes (excellent work, as always). I wonder if those fin white stripe markings are horizontal tailplane position indicator related?

 

 

 

http://www.916-starfighter.de/Large/2298.htm

 

Derek

I guess you're spot on Derek -  at least for the upper arrow!

8 hours ago, KEi said:

Wonderful work you got there. 

I admire your bravery of applying masking tape on top of decals. I always worried the decals will be stick to the masking tape

 

2 hours ago, scvrobeson said:

It really looks excellent.  You're a braver man than I applying tape over decals.

 

 

Matt

 

No decals were harmed during that action because there were none to harm (so much to bravery ). The MFG2 embem and the german flag are painted, while the stencil were applied afterwards.

7 hours ago, Thomas Lund said:

Excellent work - looks fantastic

 

GROWL !!! I only just sold my Italeri 104 YESTERDAY because I lost interest... now it's back...

Thanks Thomas - something similar happened to me. I sold my 1/48 Hasegawa 104 just to get Italeri's LSP one. During the build I was tempted multiple times to trash the whole thing and go back to small scale and Kinetics awesome offering

 

Cheers

Joachim

[jeroen_R90S]

It may have its challenges, but sure looks good!

[chuck540z3]

I don't know how I missed this, other than I'm deep into my own build of a similar kit and I don't pay attention to other builds as much as I should.  Very nice modeling!  I look forward to the finish line.

 

Question:  I see that you haven't attached the front landing gear.  What is you method for doing so at the end of this build?

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[Fanes]

9 hours ago, chuck540z3 said:

Question:  I see that you haven't attached the front landing gear.  What is you method for doing so at the end of this build?

Good question Chuck! I completly forgot about that detail and had to double check what I did there.

My method is quite simple: trimming one of the location lugs on the leg down, so that it can be inserted via a twisting motion.

I hope it's stable enough to carry the Zipper's weight.

 

Joachim

[spyrosjzmichos]

Looking gorgeous Fanes!

Excellent progress!

[Fanes]

Let the weathering begin

First stage: a subtle pin wash mixed from oils.

For the grey lower fuselage a dark grey with a greenish hue was applied.

 

And the excess wiped away:

 

For the upper fuselage dark blue and black was added to the mixture

 

And the final result - as planned it turned out very subtle which suits the trench like panel lines of the Italeri kit much better than a really dark washing.

 

Now it's time for another clearcoat to seal everything up.

[thammond65]

On 1/9/2021 at 10:15 AM, Fanes said:

Good question Chuck! I completly forgot about that detail and had to double check what I did there.

My method is quite simple: trimming one of the location lugs on the leg down, so that it can be inserted via a twisting motion.

I hope it's stable enough to carry the Zipper's weight.

 

Joachim

Hi Joachim, great build. You shouldn't need to worry about the nose gear taking the weight unless you have used far too much weight in the nose. The main gear takes almost all the weight with the nose wheel just touching the ground. 

[Fanes]

How do you like your zipper? - medium rare or well done?
I like mine salty!

 

Ready for salt fading with a light grey which was already applied and is drying right now.
More photos will follow tomorrow.

[Fanes]

As promised more photos with the salt removed.

I went with MRP M495 light grey thinned with around 70% lacquer thinner to get a translucent finish.

That worked out okayish.

 

I'm using a cheap salt mill for this purpose and its advantage is that it creates a lot of different grain sizes leading to random patterns. Its disadvantage is that it creates a lot of different grain sizes. You can see that on the port wing with the large dark patches where big grains covered the surface.

There's still so much to learn!

 

Adding the tip tank brings a whole lot higher contrast which tones down the problem on the wings - at least in my perception.

The macro picture is unforgiving as usual and shows quite a lot oh salt residue in the panel lines. Even though I wiped the whole model with different brushes and even flooded it with water.

But overall I'm quite happy to get closr to the finish line

 

Next up is a flat coat to prepare for a grey oil filter and than it's "just" adding the small bits and bobs.

[alaninaustria]

Beautiful work! I love it!

Cheers

Alan

[Rainer Hoffmann]

That's a great Zipper, Joachim. I like the two seater very much (well, I was stationed at Jever and the WaSLW 10 flew mostly TF's).

 

I was about to say that you forgot to paint the top of the radom RAL 6007 "Flaschengrün" (bottle green), but I checked and indeed, the Marine Starfighters had an all grey radome. I hadn't noticed this before ...

 

Cheers

Rainer

[red Dog]

looking great Fanes