1/72 Hasegawa AMI TF-104G 

Gallery Article by Fabio Bongiorno

 

 

AMI TF-104G 20° sqdrn Grosseto

Hi to everyone.  This articlet is about my third F-104.  It is a two seats version of the 20th sqdrn Operational Conversion Unit based in Grosseto.  The quality of the kit is good as usual from this Japanese company.  For my first time ever I tried a full aftermarket kit made by Verlinden.  The Belgian company offers you 4 resin seats; right side resin avionics bay/rat (ram air turbine) compartment/oxygen compartment; resin radar reproduction and a resin engine vane for the bottom part of the tail plane.  All these items added to a complete sheet of photo-etched parts for the cockpit consoles and instrument panels, rat propellers, avionic doors, gear doors, wheel brakes, exhaust pipes, canopy frames and internal parts of nose/radar compartment.  

I was a bit afraid to start this challenging building.  It took several months to complete it, based on a not so great experience with resin parts plus photo-etched parts in this scale.  Everything started with the cockpit and seats (I chose the Mk 7Q for the Italian version, Verlinden provides also the C2 seats), the fuselage and wings plus tip tanks.

For painting I wanted to try the pre-shading technique, so I started with a first coat of XF-1(matt black) Tamiya, then covered with XF-63(German grey) highlighted with some spots of white.  After a couple of days I used the XF-53 for all the plane trying to paint panel by panel to not cover all the darker paint I airbrushed earlier.  I repeated this twice.

 

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I then sealed everything with two coats of gloss varnish.  Also at this stage I tried a new technique (at least for me).  Instead of using the X-22 clear (or other stuff for plastic model) I bought a big can of gloss and one of matt varnish for artists paint.  It works really well and it isn't dangerous for plastic, paint and also decals.  

I took one day off to let the clear coats on the model dry, then I started decaling using Skymodel decals sheet that offer you different options for the F-104.  With decaling completed, I sealed with gloss first and then finally with the matt to give it a semi-gloss look.

I built a diorama for it in the corner of a hangar with a fire-extinguisher and a tool-box. 
Hope you enjoy the pics.
Greetings from Italy.

Fabio Bongiorno

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Photos and text © by Fabio Bongiorno