F-100D Super Sabre

by David W. Aungst

This model is the start of a group project I want to someday complete. The group project is a complete set of all the aircraft the Thunderbirds flew. I know, everybody wants to do this Thunderbirds project. Why should I be any different?

The ESCI kit is a decent kit from an exterior stand point. It has almost no interior, though. I decided to ignore the interior issues and keep the canopy closed. Across the rest of the "Thunderbirds" models, I felt this decission would be a helpful one as most of the models needing to be built are older ones with poor interior details. The only extra I did to the kit was to replace the nose pitot with brass wire.

I used all Testors Model Master metalizers and enamel paints to finish the model. For painting the model, things got complicated. I chose to mask and paint the majority of the red, white, and blue markings as the decals looked like they would not conform and cover the contours of the model. I felt that the trouble of masking and painting would be less than trying to match the decal colors to touch up where they may (or may not) have left gaps in their coverage.

To that end, I painted the entire model in gloss white, then masked and painted the red and blue areas. When all this had dried, I masked and applied the metalizers. I used five shades of metalizer, applied in a patch-work quilt style, to simulate the look of unpainted metal.

The decals (other than the red/white/blue areas) do come from the ESCI kit decal sheet. I used Solv-a-set as a setting solution and they gave me no real headaches. The markings are from the final years of the F-100D in Thunderbirds service where the buzz numbers on the rear fuselage were replaced with the spelled out aircraft number. In the case of this model, it is Thunderbird Lead -- ONE.

I did no weathering to the model, leaving it with a Future floor wax gloss finish.

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