Continuing my JASDF collection, the F-104J is up next. There is now a more modern offering of the F-104J by Fine Molds but I believe this kit from Hasegawa is still up there in the details.
Work begins in the cockpit which have raised details for the instruments and oddly, a clear piece for the center console. Note the lack of seatbelts for the ejection seat.
I used the decals for the consoles and added Tamiya tape for the seatbelts. Once carefully painted, the cockpit looks pretty good.
At this point, I wasn’t sure what needs to be done with the side consoles.
The fact was the cockpit couldn’t be sandwiched in between the two halves of the nose.
I decided to trim the sides off the consoles.
And the use of clamps to help everything fit together.
The rear of the aircraft uses the bulkheads to help with alignment and fitting.
Unlike most kits where the fuselage is broken into halves, I couldn’t build up each half first before putting it together on this one as the point where it splits is where the gearbay starts: there’s not much surface contact where the forward area meets the rear section.
Thankfully though, with the gearbay sandwiched between the front and rear halves, the whole thing fits together well. Note that the main gear has to be installed already at this point.
The intakes don’t fit perfectly and I used some 0.13mm plastic plate as shims.
In real life, the main gear doors don’t close properly when the landing gear is down. Hasegawa doesn’t engineer them in a way they can fit positively into place though. And I believe they might be too thick scale-wise.
A test fit of the canopy shows a good fit.
But before closing up the cockpit, I added a small piece of aurora film over the HUD glass.
Build Log
Pt.1 – Construction | Pt.2 – Painting & Finishing
