1/48 Monogram F-105G by Les Horvath

The venerable and rather old Monogram F-105G kit in 1/48th scale is well known by most if not all of us. Typical of its 1980's offerings Monogram provides a good and rather easy to build representation of the THUD. I found the "G" model at a hobby show and wanted it as I knew it would provide a powerful and eye catching plane for my collection.

The F-105G Wild Weasel was Republic's replacement to the original North American F-100 version of the first Wild Weasels. The big Thunderchief served ably in this roll for many years and saved countless lives of airmen in the Vietnam war. Later to be replaced by the F-4G Phantom the F-105G was a great platform for the Wild Weasel concept.

The kit itself is rather straight forward to build. Typical of Monogram its simplicity was balanced out with good detailing for the 1980's model technology. Raised panel lines abound but IMO are not too out of scale. I have tried rescribing kits in the past but such can be frustrating unless you are keen and patient enough to do it often. I stuck to the raised lines as per the kit. In fact its basically an out of the box build. I prefer this as it allows for my own cheapie tweaks and it keeps costs down. Factoring the detail including the cockpit is pretty good, well I was fine with it. Many others may get all anal over such detailing endeavours etc. and that is fine but for me messing around with basic OOB builds is cool too. I just like building nice representations of real planes. I experiment and tweak with home made ideas and concepts borrowed from other modellers but I try to keep my building fun and stress free.

The kit builds pretty well and I'm sure many of you would concur. Fit and finish is good with little filling and sanding needed.

Things one needs to be concerned with are the struts on the landing gear. The long plastic representations can be broken easily if you are not careful. I tend to keep all these twitchy and small details till very last in building.

Painting was S.E. Asian motif with a Badger 150 airbrush. I generally prepare my painting with building in proper order the various cammo colours. Once each are laid on the kit I add a drop or two of black and post shade by hand with my Badger 150 to give detail effects and a more impressive 3D image. I do this with each colour after they are painted. However on this plane I new it was to be a war bird and I was pretty sure that in war wear and weathering would have its toll on the 105G. So I before any cammo went down I sprayed the plane with KRYLON SILVER paint. This is a very fine pigment paint available in bottles. It lays down and look like bright aluminium. Once dried for at least 24 hours I sealed it with two thin coats of FUTURE polish. When that was dry I painted the cammo as noted above. With thin rubber gloves on and the paint about 95% dry I began taking pieces of masking tape and began rubbing them on places that would show chipping. I quickly peeled the tape off and it gave very realistic paint chipping effects. It's IMO better than trying to paint on silver after the main paint has been laid down.

Letting the whole shebang sit for about two days I then put on 2 coats of FUTURE, applied the kit decals ( Monogram can be stingy on these decals ) The use of Micro Sol and Micro Set laid the decals down well. 24 hrs later I put on another coat of FUTURE. Then when dried I flowed a thin dirty brown-black paint into all flap lines and areas were grime might flow. With aluminium coloured landing gear and gear bays if you flow a dirty black-grey paint then let it dry, it will give a very aged look to the aluminium. I then once all dry wiped off the excess.

Testors Dullcoat was sprayed on to flatten out the paint and then I took out a sharpened charcoal pencil ( check art supply stores ) using the edge near the tip I traced the raised panel lines as best I could. Careful not to smudge with your fingers ( wear thin rubber or plastic food handling gloves ) I then took a soft 1 inch wide brush and brushed with a certain stiffness in pressure the panel lines. This removes a lot of the charcoal dust and smears it a touch. It leaves enough of the charcoal dust on the lines to give good effect. This technique also scales down to the eye the raised panel lines.

The photos you see show off much of what I have written here. I hope m few ideas add to the knowledge others may want to try out on similar type kits. Warbirds should look messy and tired IMO and this Wild Weasel looks so. The big F-105G sits with my other hot jets very nicely. The S.E. Asian cammo is cool and different. The paint chipping stands out and this brute looks ready to rumble.