203 Hikotai J.A.S.D.F.
A current state-of-the-art F-104 kit has long been a serious contender on most quarter-scale modeler's wish lists. So it was no surprise that when Hasegawa announced it was preparing to fill this gap that people immediately started to eagerly anticipate it's arrival. I have long been a huge fan of this breathtakingly beautiful airplane and was literally drooling at the thought of how many gorgeous variants and schemes I'd be able to build.
The first issue from Hasegawa is understandably the "J" model, Hasegawa being a Japanese company and the JASDF having operated a large number of the type over the years. Opening the box you'll see twelve trees holding 126 light grey plastic parts, one of 19 clear parts and a small tree holding four poly-caps. The molding is extremely crisp and the only flaw I could find was the ejector pin marks on the bottoms of the flaps and ailerons. The clear parts are very good and after dipping them in Future floor wax, they were almost perfect. The poly-caps are used to attach the landing gear struts.
The boxtop contains a wicked piece of artwork by Koike Shigeo and decals are included to do almost any aircraft the Japanese flew. The decal sheet almost fills the bottom of the box and includes enough squadron markings and extra numbers to do just about any single seat JASDF machine. Numerous stencils and data markings are included as well.
Construction started as usual with the cockpit which is almost a model in itself. There are seventeen parts in all for this step, of which eleven make up the ejection seat. The two oxygen hoses are included as well and connect from the seat to the cockpit tub. The side consoles and instrument panel have pretty good detail molded on them and looked fine with a little careful painting and dry-brushing. One thing I did find out the hard way was that you should leave the seat out until you've cemented the rear cockpit decking in place or else you'll have to break the seat free to fit the deck on. The seats come with the belts and buckles molded on, which I found to be a nice touch. I followed the kit instructions and added the instrument panel and cover after I had glued the fuselage together and had a devil of a time getting the panel into place. A friend was building one at the same time and told me I should have left the control column off till the panel was in. Next time.
Next up was the main gear bay, the exhaust assembly and a bulkhead fitted just behind the cockpit into the right fuselage and then the tub was cemented in place as well. Don't forget to open up the hole for the sidewinder launch rails before you glue the fuselage halves together. The fuselage halves were joined with Tenax and the seam was pretty much non-existent, some light sanding and polishing with steel wool and it just disappeared. The nose gear bay with panels fore and aft is a separate piece to facilitate later releases as is the panel the front part of the sidewinder launcher attaches to. With some careful trimming and filing, these parts went in ok. The nose gear panel was a little off, but only minor clean-up of the joint was necessary.
The jet intakes and spliter plates were next, and again some careful clean-up before gluing will save a lot of fiddling and help preserve the excellent engraved detail. The nose cone come in lower and upper halves and after they were glued together and the seam eliminated I added a lead sinker to ensure proper posture once the gear was on. I've since learned that you don't need to do this. The nose fits all right to the fuselage but a little sanding was required to blend it in to the fuselage.
The wings went together without a hitch, coming in top and bottom halves and having separate flaps and slats. This is a real nice touch and I think it really adds to the look of the finished model. I left the wings off until all the painting and decaling was completed. This wasn't a problem because of the awesome fit of the wing-to-fuselage joint. The surface detail on the wing surfaces seems a little heavy or deep, but after a coat of paint it looked just fine. I planned to leave the wingtip tanks off on this model so I had a spend a bit of time cleaning up the mold line at the wingtip. Also, as I mentioned earlier, there are ejector marks on the bottom of the flaps and any serious cleanup will require you to replace all the rivets, I wasn't ready to do that so cleaned them up as best I could with destroying all the detail.
The speedbrakes were cemented in the closed position as they automatically close when the aircraft was on the ground. The ventral fin was added after a wee bit of trimming to get a flush fit. Now it was time to get to the odds and ends. The sidewinder launcher comes in eight parts and looks quite accurate. A third hand would have been handy, but slow curing tube cement let me fiddle with it till the alignment was set.
The gear doors were cut off and cleaned up and have a fair amount of detail on the inner surfaces as well. I cleaned up and painted the arrestor hook and the pitot tube and set them aside to be added after all the painting and decaling were done. The exhaust cone was painted with metalizer and set aside. I had a hard time getting it in place after all the other work was done. I ended up forcibly shoving it into place and breathed a sigh of relief when none of the fuselage seams split after it made it into place. The under- carriage components were next and they're extremely well detailed. The wheels and tires are separate parts and this is a feature I love because I absolutely hate painting tires. It's simply a chore I can't get into.
I had borrowed a copy of Warbirds Illustrated's F-104 book and fell in love with the ACM markings applied to 203 Squadron's aircraft. I wasn't crazy about doing the bare metal, but figured I had to bite the bullet some time. I painted and glossed and then masked the red and white strips and then painted the tan panel behind the cockpit and at the same time did the grey for the radome. These were masked and then the black anti-glare panel was painted and masked and I was ready for the Testor's Metalizer aluminum and steel. The decals were all taken from the kit sheet and went on like a dream, no problems at all. I'm very thankful for that as there were an awful lot of them to go on. I spent the better part of a day decaling two Starfighters.
This kit was a real pleasure to build and almost worth
the wait. There will be many more to follow this one especially with all
the aftermarket goodies coming our way.