1:32 Italeri F104C Starfighter

[Steve64]

Hi guys

I'm in the early stages of building Italeri's F104C, and thought I'd share some work in progress shots. I've been taking my time and adding after market or scratch building items as they seem needed. My objective is to build my best aircraft model ever. I chose this kit because I love the subject matter and scale. It's not problem free - there is some soft moulding and fairly crude or missing detail in places - but the general fit is fine so far, and correcting or adding detail is part of the fun for me.

Here's where I have got to - cockpit and avionics bay painted and installed. Right now they are glued to one side of the fuselage only, because I need to open it up and add the engines and rear landing gear bay. More about that later. In the meantime I hope you enjoy having a look at the work so far. The seat belts are scratch built from laminated aluminium foil with photo-etch buckles added, and the side instrument panels are scratch built from plastic card and other little bits and pieces. Making those nearly drove me crazy, by the way. Ever regretted a decision?







Happy modelling,

Steve

[chief5437]

following.

this is a kit id love to build one day, hearing some of the reviews has put me off spending my hard earned so far though.

this could be the thread that pushes me to buy it!

great work so far, the seatbelts look fantastic! good luck with the rest of it

[Steve64]

Welcome aboard! I couldn't honestly say this is a great kit - there's lots of potential to improve it - but it is cheaper than an equivalent Tamiya 1/32 scale kit (not thatchy do a Starfighter) and goes together well enough. I suspect that even out of the box with a nice paint job it would look impressive.

Thanks for the comments on the seat belts. If you want to have a look at my technique go here:



I hope it helps.

[DoubleDigit12]

Looks great mate, fantastic scratch building!

[Steve64]

Hey James,

Thanks a million. I'm enjoying the kit and enjoying making a bunch of improvements. I hope it will all be over by Christmas

Have a great day,

Steve.

[Steve64]

I'm just testing out the new image hosting function to show some progress with the F-104's engine.

So far so good. It works!

[Steve64]

If you follow the kit instructions you will build the rear landing gear assembly before installing it in the fuselage. I want to change the order so that I can deal with any fit issues between the bay walls and the fuselage before I start scratch building new details. That will avoid sanding and filling with small and breakable parts in place.

Adopting the same technique used to get the cockpit aligned, I dry fitted the basic parts then glued them together without gluing them to the fuselage. The fit is actually pretty good but there’s still need for some filling and sanding.



A big centre spar fits over the landing gear legs and holds them in place. I modified it so that the spar and legs can be fitted after the walls are in place. It’s easy enough - just remove the two locating tabs. There’s still a deep channel to guide fitting and the part drops straight in with the tabs taken off. Hopefully that means there won’t be any alignment problems later.

The landing gear legs themselves have had the poorly moulded pistons and arms removed so I can scratch build new ones. Compare the kit part supplied with how it looks now.

As it comes:


And with the yucky bits removed, and the centre spar next to it. Orange means material removed.


All this is getting the landing gear and bay ready for some serious attention.

That’s all for now. See you soon.