Written by 11:12 am On the Bench

WIP : Hasegawa 1/48 F-104J Starfighter Pt. 2 – Construction

Once properly painted, washed and weathered, the out of the box cockpit looks good.

Fit in general is good. The instructions don’t call for it but I added some fishing weights in the nose just in case.

The tip of the tail broke off during construction.

This was fixed with plastic plates.

As usual, some prepping is required for the intakes. The tip of the inlet cones were painted black then masked off as per the instructions. The rest was painted steel.

The intakes fit well and as expected, not much of the inside can be seen since they are so narrow.

So the details are great and the ailerons, flaps and rudder are kitted separately. However, there are injection pin marks all over them. Oof… ball dropped Hasegawa!

They are very close to the rivets too. Sigh…

Work begins using acrylic putty which can be wiped off with water.

Yep. There are many ejector pin marks including some on the main landing gear.

After a few rounds I’m ready to move on.

The wings were assembled and I decided to have the flaps slightly lowered. I’ve seen them both up and down on the tarmac but figured lowered looks more interesting.

The wingtip tanks are also over-engineered with each made up of 9 parts. The L4 and L5 fins didn’t fit properly but worse were the round disks part U5. These needed to fit before the 2 halves came together so I cemented them to 1 of the halves first. What’s not mentioned in the instructions is that these disks have an orientation for them to fit flushed.

I botched some of them so I simply sanded everything down smooth. The markings I’ll be using comes with decals for these disks so no problem with the lack of details.

I decided to close the speed brakes. These fit well though the gap on 1 side is bigger than expected. These were quickly filled with acrylic putty.

The stabilator is in 1 piece and there’s a hole on the bottom that I can’t find a use for. This was filled and sanded down. There’s also a big ejector pin mark here which was filled.

And of course, I dropped the kit and of course it landed nose down.

I fixed the best I could with sanding sticks. Looks OK but we’ll see.

I punched out a small round disk of G-Option Aurora Film for the HUD projector and chipped, washed and highlighted the cockpit.

The 3 part canopy was given a dip of Future, then masked off. Curiously, there’s no open canopy option so I cemented them in place.

Since they can pretty much snapfit into place, I’m leaving the main wings off until final assembly. In any case, once the minor gaps are addressed, it’s time for painting!

Build Log
Part 1 – Construction | Part 2 – Construction | Part 3 – Painting
Part 4 – Painting | Part 5 – Finishing | Part 6 – Finishing

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