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F-104S Starfighter

by Marcelo Ribeiro da Silva

This is Hasegawa's 1/32 scale F-104G/S Worldstarfighter.

I built the Italian Air force "S" version, in the old three tone camouflage pattern. The plane was painted metallic grey on the lower fuselage and dark green and medium grey in the upper surfaces.

The kit is very good, with some resin parts to be added in place of the plastic ones. These parts are the main landing gear doors and the wheels.

The main landing legs are built using two plastic parts with a hard wire inside. This makes it more stable.

The only problem I found was the rear fuselage, which should be not glued to show the engine. I decided to glue the part and let the interior of the engine tube empty. I only added the engine exhaust at the end of the model.

The decals were a problem too. The set I found in my box was cracked and dried. The decals disintegrated into hundreds of pieces when I put them in the water.

I used the HyperScale Buy, Swap and Sell page and got a new one by a model friend from Belgium. He gave me the decal sheet for free. Thanks to him.

I used gloss varnish to apply the decals and sealed them with flat varnish. Pastel chalks were added to make the satins and oil marks.

The final addition was the metallic marks in all fuselage. This was done using a Uni-ball Signo Fine silver pen. The result was amazing. I used this technique extensively near the cockpit.

Finally, the plane received some Remove Before Flight flags made by a bubble jet Canon printer and Corel Draw 8.0 software.