1/32 Hasegawa CF-104

by Dan McWilliams

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I have started building a series of CF-104 models.  This will be the only 1:32 version; several 1:48 versions will follow. This series of Starfighters is my way of paying tribute to my late father – he flew CF-104s with 439 Tiger Squadron in Baden Soellingen in the 1970’s, and absolutely loved the aircraft.  I have many fond memories of hearing these sleek beasts thunder airborne, interrupting high school classes to the point where the teacher would sit down and wait for the mass launch to end.  Pic 01 shows my father’s ‘hero shot’ by the model, with his favourite painting in the background.

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The rear fuselage and nose were made to detach, showing engine and radar details.  I have no interest in that – I am definitely not a super detailer, so I glued them permanently.  In pic 03, you’ll notice that I avoided fit problems with the tail section by gluing each tail half firstly to the foreward fuselage, let it set thoroughly, then glued the rear portion of the tail section together.  The nose, as per pic 04, needed some whittling down to avoid minor bumps.  These were the only fit problems, which was very surprising, given the huge size of this kit.

The Hasegawa kit in this scale is very good, but the 1:48 version just blows it away for detail, fit, and accuracy.  This was built entirely OOB, except for aftermarket decals from Leading Edge.  Because the decals represented the late grey/green camo scheme, I had to use some spare Canadian roundels with white backgrounds to properly match with this early version of European camouflage adopted around 1972 or so (pic 05).  Note the Tiger head on the tail; I got this from a Belcher Bits 1:48 decal sheet that had numerous Tiger Meet schemes.  Pic 07 has my father at the far right, in front of the jet that inspired this model.

Paint was simple – Humbrol 33 (matt green), with Humbrol 127 (light grey) for the radome underside.  The grey radome was the earliest overall green scheme; these were soon replaced with an overall black radome, but I always liked the cool grey/black contrast on the nose.  I painted the pitot boom white and silver, then used a red permanent marker to make the red striping – I think it turned out well.  The decal sheet came with a red stripe, but I was too worried about it tearing.  Weathering was minimal; I did some highlighting with a pencil of the flap/wing boundaries, and put some green primer colour around the bleed air vents in the rear fuselage (visible in pic 07 above the pilot with the light-coloured flying suit).  The real aircraft were kept super clean during this era, and panel lines were barely visible from any distance.

Watch this space for more CF-104s from me.  Planned in 1:48 are a natural metal and a tiger-striped version, plus maybe another overall green.  Might even do the natural metal plane as a two-seater; I was lucky enough to fly twice in the back seat of silver duals in Cold Lake .

Dan

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Photos and text © by Dan McWilliams