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Dmitry Stropalov
89 articles

F-104J "Eiko" (Eduard 1/48)

November 22, 2020 · in Aviation · · 27 · 2.8K

This build has started with this bottle of wine more than a year ago. It was a present, and then I've realized that I'm keeping in my hands a wine produced by Gordon Cooper – a pilot, test-pilot, astronaut. And since then, I've started to look for a good F-104 kit. And then this box in sakura colors just caught my eye, so I thought – this is it!

It's an 's "Eiko" limited edition kit, based on the Hasegawa sprues. Eduard has added PE parts, a resin seat (way better then the kit part), masks, and a lot of interesting Japanese AF marking options, plus an illustrated book with that prototypes – a really nice addition. I've added a resin exhaust and Pitot tube by Master along with the ladder by Plus Model. Base is by Coastal Kits.

The model was painted mostly with Hataka and Gunze paints, weathered with artistic oils.

Reader reactions:
12  Awesome

10 additional images. Click to enlarge.


27 responses

  1. That’s really cool Dmitry! I did not know that Gordo made wine!

  2. Very nice result with the kit.

    Had the privilege of meeting Gordo during the making of "The Right Stuff" 38 years ago. Definitely "the Huckleberry Finn of the astronaut corps."

    He told me how, on Gemini 4, when they were going for 14 days in orbit to prove they could stay in space long enough to get to the moon and back, they had the first fuel cell to fly. In their 4th orbit, the engineers said the cell was operating "out of parameters" and wanted to bring them down. They argued that nobody knew what the actual operating parameters of a fuel cell really were, so why not continue and find out, which won the day. By the 4th day, the stabilizers had frozen up, and they were drifting. So they would stabilize every once in awhile by the "ejection of waste material" (bodily excretions, to be specific), and they made it for the full 14 days. I don't know about you, but I like that story a whole lot better than "the perfect flight is working perfectly for the perfect astronauts to perfectly achieve all perfect goals" that was how NASA ended up making the space program boring for people.

    Doesn't surprise me at all he made wine - Ventura, where he lived, is Southern California wine country.

  3. Great job on a rarely done subject

  4. Wow, what a great looking model. Well done!
    California Steve

  5. Cheers, great looking model. Is every glass a voyage into the unknown?

  6. Holy sh## hat is absolutley beautiful ! Best looking F-104J i have seen built up !

  7. That's an amazing result, Dmitry!
    Japanese AF camos are simply amazing, this included.
    Loved Tom's @tcinla story above, specially the "bodily excretions" part. It definitely was due to such amazing guys will, passion (and skill, of course), that leaps in aerospace were made.

  8. Beautiful looking Starfighter. Great comment from Tom. As some grizzled scientist once said " every action has an equal and opposite reaction".

  9. Really great, Dmitry.
    This scheme is outstanding, you applied it very well.

  10. Hi Dmitry,
    if you send me your adress i will send you new ladder for your 104 thats you have is no match for our ladder 😀
    Leoš Penčák
    LP Models
    http://www.lpmodels.eu

  11. A missile with a man in it. well done Dmitry !
    Love the scheme of colours.

  12. That 's a great scheme for the 104, and the model looks fantastic - very nicely done!

  13. Great job!
    You really deserve the glass of wine 😉

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