Madmax Posted July 20, 2020 Author Share Posted July 20, 2020 Thanks Mark, Spyros and Alex! Ben, after the F-14's you will find this kit a breeze to correct. Might as well grab the Zipper off the shelf... Talking of correcting, the kit transparencies are worth treating carefully in order to avoid the following process. The replacement glass is cut from unused PETG that I use for vacuforming. Scribing round things is not my forte. The more I tried, the more the fuel filler caps on the wing tanks became an almighty mess of superglue and shaky circles. Nearing the only truly round thing (the dirt-bin), I decided on a last ditch by drilling out the caps, and replacing them with styrene rod and tube. Looks better than my scribing. For those of you who are familiar with Starfighters, you will notice an obvious mistake here. The longer horizontal fins are on the INSIDE of the tank. Amateur mistake - cost me a morning to repair! The ammunition link ejector guide and centreline pylon need some serious de-blobbing to make them look crisp and serviceable. I suspect it will be worth the effort. The model has been primed with Tamiya's fine surface primer, and the first coat of paint is on. Normally I would spray the lighter surface colour first, but careful study of the Daco photographs leads me to believe that (at least on the Luftwaffe aircraft), the Basalt Grey is painted on top of the Yellow Olive. More on this later... Cheers, Sean Dutch Man, Marcel111, Starfighter and 14 others 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dodgem37 Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 Well done. Love that green! Hydraulic lines painted or decaled? Nice blue anodize. Thank you. Sincerely, Mark Out2gtcha, Harrison90, Derek B and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmax Posted July 29, 2020 Author Share Posted July 29, 2020 On 7/20/2020 at 7:28 PM, dodgem37 said: Hydraulic lines painted or decaled? Nice blue anodize. Thanks Mark, Hydraulic lines are labelled with cut decal strips - blue and yellow side by side made it a bit easier. The anodising is clear blue over the silver. Greg W, AlbertD and Derek B 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmax Posted July 29, 2020 Author Share Posted July 29, 2020 (edited) Painting this very German Starfighter is fun. The splinter camouflage is rather reminiscent of Luftwaffe builds from another era, and is much nicer to mask than any organic camo pattern! On the sheet of paper are my mixes for the green and grey - real hit and miss stuff I'm afraid. As it turned out, my green was too yellow. Don't take the "Gelb" in the "Gelboliv" too seriously, it is actually quite a dark green. Sponged on masking fluid is used to add some visual interest, and I then sprayed darker shades over the existing green. The same was done for the grey, and lighter shades oversprayed to get the contrast right. You will notice that I have sprayed some green over the grey in areas to simulate the green showing through worn paint. As mentioned previously, it looks to me like the grey is sprayed over the green. I used Tamiya TS-96 Fluorescent Orange for the dayglo on the tip tanks. It is quite important to get the right undercoat for it to work, and here you can see a yellow undercoat that fades to white on top where the dayglo fades quickest. Apart from getting the undercoat right, it is also quite important to get the dimensions of the panel right! I got hold of some cool Uschi stencils (that Mig Jimenez markets) at my LHS, and have put them to work creating some variation to the silver/grey undersides. Most enjoyable stuff! Sean Edited July 29, 2020 by Madmax spellcheck only saves so much... jgrease, Derek B, HerculesPA_2 and 20 others 23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fanes Posted July 29, 2020 Share Posted July 29, 2020 Marvellous work Sean! What colour did you use for the silver/grey underside? Madmax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheetah11 Posted July 30, 2020 Share Posted July 30, 2020 Looking fantastic Sean. Can’t wait to see it in the flesh Madmax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyrosjzmichos Posted July 30, 2020 Share Posted July 30, 2020 Excellent work! Your work on the transparencies takes a lot of bravery! Madmax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcel111 Posted July 30, 2020 Share Posted July 30, 2020 Wow stunning work on this Starfighter! Madmax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmax Posted August 1, 2020 Author Share Posted August 1, 2020 On 7/29/2020 at 10:23 PM, Fanes said: What colour did you use for the silver/grey underside? Thanks Joachim, I have painted the undersides with Alclad II "White Aluminium". It is a very tough paint (unlike some of the other Alclad paints), good for decals, and with a matt coat looks like silver/grey to me. Thanks Nick, Spyros and Marcel! I am busy with the decals at the moment, and was wondering if anyone happens to know the history of Starfighter 25+69? I have tried various online resources, and all I can find out is that it did exist, not mentioned in any accident reports, no photographs that I can find, and it's serial number was 9015. I am hoping that it served with JaboG 31 "Boelcke" at Nörvenich. Fanes and Marcel111 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJP Posted August 2, 2020 Share Posted August 2, 2020 I have always liked the look of German F104G Starfighter's and I am blown away by the neatness of your work Sean - saved this link into my favourites for future reference! CJP Madmax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmax Posted August 6, 2020 Author Share Posted August 6, 2020 (edited) Thanks CJP, hope it helps in some way! I like the decals in this kit. Despite having seen some pretty damning reviews of them from differing sources, Cartograf have produced a way better set of decals here than for the Mirage III's. There is a smallish section for "Version C" - the German Marine version, and it has the most prominent markings - even for my Luftwaffe version. Obviously the numbers are a bit limiting, but with some creative mixing quite a few options are available. It must start with a 2. the 20's are Lockheed produced but means that one must produce a 0 from a 6 or 9. 25's were manufactured in the "North Group" of aircraft industry, and the 26's at MBB from what I understand. Since I got Zane from Mav Decals to make me a Boelke tail badge, it had to have flown in JaboG 31. First I tried 25+66, no good - JG 71, 25+99 also JG 71 - damn! Then an obvious choice 25+69, but I couldn't find its unit. Dave Williams solved the mystery for me - also a fighter, from JG 74 . The 26's were seemingly all Marine types, so it would have to be a 20, and since I had to sacrifice a 6 or a 9 to make the zero, a 5 had to go after the balkenkreuz... Hard to believe a grown man can turn a hobby into this! The actual answer is to buy the beautiful Astra decals F-104 set, and then you can create ANY German F-104 your heart desires. I did purchase a set last year, and our post office "lost" it along with all sorts of other aftermarket stuff intended for this kit. I do hope that whoever ended up with it is a Starfighter enthusiast. This left me with the self imposed options of 20+56 (JaboG 33), 20+59, 20+65 (?) or 20+95 (JG 74). Luckily 20+59 was a JaboG 31 aircraft, and that is why my Teutonic Zipper now looks like this... The numbers are not perfect copies of those used on the Luftwaffe F-104's, but close enough not to fiddle any further. Here you can see how well the German specific decals do their job. With the main decals in place, it now becomes quite a task to use the vast array of "Common Decals" to portray the stencilling in a similar way to Luftwaffe examples. I mixed and matched various decals until I had what looks like a reasonable facsimile, although I wouldn't send it in for a major service since the oil, hydraulic fluid and drag chute could all end up in the wrong compartments! As an example, the two larger fuel cap decals are modified from the original decals, having added a white strip on the main one, and a punched out red disk on the one above it. The third one is from the kit, and even though it isn't the same size as the other two, will have to do. This was the only decal that I ended up destroying, since it didn't make any sense once in place on the panel. I salvaged the main logical stencil "STAB POWER CONTROL MECH ACCESS", and will add individual bits until it looks more like the actual panel. It took me three days to complete the decals. In terms of entertainment, that makes this kit worth every penny! Edited August 6, 2020 by Madmax missing words Fvdm, Greg W, scvrobeson and 17 others 20 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheetah11 Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 Great juggling of the numbers Sean Madmax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimRice Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 Great looking 104. A friend of mine is a former US Navy A-7 Corsair II pilot. During his Navy service he was an exchange pilot with a German Navy F-104 squadron. He has some interesting stories of flying the F-104. Today he is a retired FedEx Captain who owns and flies a sailplane (sorry, don’t recall make model, it is single seat competitive type) and a Clipped Wing Cub. Madmax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dodgem37 Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 I like the hell out of this. Great show! Sincerely, Mark Madmax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmax Posted August 15, 2020 Author Share Posted August 15, 2020 (edited) Thanks Nick, you are more of a numbers person than me. Jim, I envy your friend. Not only did he get to fly F-104's but he actually managed to retire from an airline - lucky guy! Mark, I am enjoying the hell out of building this. After the decal marathon, I got some more well thinned X-22 onto the model. It looks like a candy apple! I buffed the gloss out over the decals so that their edges hopefully don't look quite so obvious under the final matt coat. While that was all curing, I tinkered with the ground equipment. In a Scrapheap Challenge moment, a tip-tank trolley emerged from the engine and tail bearers. The ladder came like that in the kit btw. Then the ejection seat got some attention. The ejection handles are always a challenge, as are the belts. I raided my remaining Mirage III-C belts to complement the "Brassin" belts. I sanded off most of the pre-painted paint, and will re-paint the belts once it is all done. Two thin layers of Microscale "Micro Flat" went over the model as a final overall coat. I don't really like a dead-flat look on my models, so I buff out the matt where the aircraft would normally get frequent handling and show more of a gloss sheen. You can compare the buffed tank on the trolley to the matt one on the bench (note that I masked the dayglo off so that it stayed gloss, and only gave a light matt touch to the weathered top bit). In the DACO book, there is a photograph of a freshly painted wing - which is pretty much as the model looks at the moment. On the next page however, is a well worn wing, and that is what I will be trying next! Where is that pot scourer? Edited August 15, 2020 by Madmax repetition - again spyrosjzmichos, Landrotten Highlander, Fanes and 11 others 14 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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