1/18 21st Century Toys F-104G 

by Tony Landis

--------------------

 

The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was the result of an attempt to reverse the trend towards ever-increasing weight and complexity in fighter aircraft. When it first appeared in the mid-1950s, it had a futuristic look about it, and its small wing area and needle-nose earned it the nickname of "missile with a man in it". The F-104 was the first operational interceptor capable of sustained speeds above Mach 2 and was the first aircraft ever to hold the World Speed and Altitude records simultaneously. First flown on March 4, 1954, the F-104 series went on to serve with no less than a dozen countries during its 40 year career. The NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB took delivery of the first of three F-104N’s on August 19, 1963 and were continually used for research and support until the final flight of the F-104N on October 23,1987.

    I had seen the 21st Century Toy’s aircraft around for a while and was always impressed with the sheer size and detail of these ‘toys’ but I’m not much of a WWII guy so I never checked one out in great detail. For Christmas I received one of the newest aircraft in their line, the F-104G. Since it comes prepainted in German Air Force markings, my first thought was “wouldn’t this look cool in the early NASA markings”. First came the research and creating all of the markings using Adobe Illustrator. My good friend David Newman over at Muroc Models was kind enough to print the decals on his Alps. Then came the fun part, masking and painting. Two weeks, a roll of masking tape and several bottles of paint later, it was all done. The toughest part about this whole project was reminding myself that it was ‘toy’ and not a scale model as I kept wanting to fix the little things that any good scale modeler would want fixed. 

Click on images below to see larger images

Now you might ask, “Where does a person keep a 39 inch F-104 model?” Thankfully I have a nice large shelf in my office at work and it certainly does draw a fair amount of attention from everyone that spots it sitting there.

Tony

Photos and text © by Tony Landis