1/72 Italeri & Hasegawa CF-104

Gallery Article by Alex Cimenti on July 21 2011

 

CF104 - Canadian Forces

Good Canada Day to everyone, just a few days ago I finished a couple of CF104 Starfighters in full smart Canadian markings, for the occasion I made two 1/72 kits, one from a box dedicated to the CF104 of Hasegawa (in natural metal with red tail), the other is an old ESCI (now Italeri) F104G kit but with some parts coming from Hasegawa, or scratch built and painted in the last camo scheme applied to Canadian Starfighters in Europe.

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The assembly of the two models is quite simple and does not require much extra work, obviously the Hasegawa kit has a superior quality compared to the old ESCI one, but both gave me just little problems except for the lack of interior detail for the Italian one.

One of the main concerns for the Italeri model was the poor cockpit details, that have been improved with scratchbuilt and spare Hasegawa parts, and the wing tip tanks, that are in the wrong format (underscaled diameter and other issues) as well the main gear and the canopy size, that had to be modified and detailed.  I also modified some old Monogram F104C underwing tanks with scratchbuilt fins, the result is pretty good, and gave me a lot of satisfaction once fitted to the Italeri example.

The camo version of the CAF Starfigher (1st Group - Air Baden Sollingen - Germany) have been made with full load of 5 x Mk82 snakeye retarded bombs, the double underwing ejector has been made by scratch using Belcher Bits external store drawings as reference.

The decals come from the Hasegawa box, that gives the modellers option for all three main paint scheme used by Canadian starfighters during their service, natural metal, khaki green and three tone low viz camo.

Next one will be a khaki green CF104 using the last CAF decals of the box and again a lot of scratchbuilt work.

Happy modelling and Happy Canada day to everyone

Alex Cimenti

Photos and text © by Alex Cimenti