The very nice F-104C kit built as the altitude world record setter from Dec. 14, 1959. The pilot was Capt Joe Jordan. He was the first flying an aircraft under its own power from T/O to an altitude above 100’000ft, and at the same tame has beaten to old altitude record, setting the new mark to 103,389ft.

The aircraft remained in regular service after this flight, until it ended like many other “widow makers”. It crashed on a normal training flight; more information about that accident I don’t have.

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As mentioned, I used the Hasegawa 1/48 F-104C Starfighter, certainly one of the best kits out of that house ever!

Nevertheless, I could not resist adding the Aires exhaust, Aires wheel bays and Aires cockpit. The cockpit is together with the exhaust a very nice addition, the wheel bays are a bit luxury, as you can’t see much of them once installed.

Also I added the Eduard ZOOM set, I mean the mirrors and probes (the rest of the set is still untouched…). I added some scratch build parts like the brake lines and some wires in the gear bays. The pitot in the nose is from Fine Molds, and I’m very happy to have it. You very easily hit the nose somewhere, killing the pitot when you travel to expositions. That needle is able to take a lot, as I have experienced during the painting progress (the aircraft fell down the table… see cotton gloves below).

The pilot is from JP Production. I had to reposition him, as his arms are designed to rest on the canopy rails, canopy open of course! The legs were also difficult to fit into the Aires cockpit.

Finally the decals are from Cutting Edge, CED48141, stencils are Hasegawa OOB.

The construction was straight forward, the Aires parts fit very well. To paint the silver fuselage I used Alclad II gloss black primer, covered with several layers of Future (my magic I use it for everything tool!) until the whole aircraft was shiny. Yes, I know, the gloss primer IS gloss, but nothing against Future!
The next layer was built with Alclad II highly polished aluminum. Since then I was working with cotton gloves, not to leave any fingerprints. And I’ll put them on when ever I touch the aircraft again. Other shades were made with different Alclad II colors.
The non metallic colors are from the Valliejo Acrylic brand.

The only headache was the CE decals, as the decals white color is very resistant to Microsol and –set. Well, finally I managed that, too. 

My wife likes that airplane much, and because she has a better camera than I do, she took the pictures for me. Thank you, Fabienne!

I hope you like that sexy piece of history!

Leander

PS: This model can be seen “live” during the upcoming 2005 Telford model show (UK) on the IPMS Switzerland table.

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