¹⁄35

F-105D Thunderchief

The Kit:

The Revell/Monogram F-105D is not a fall together kit like some of the latest Hasegawa or Tamiya releases, but is it still a very good kit. With a little care during construction, very little filling of the seams is required to make a good looking model. I actually did no filling of seams to build this model, just a touch with an X-acto file and a little sanding to dress up the places were seams occur.

The kit has raised scribing that is a little overstated, but it is not too bad. The cockpit is nicely appointed with raised detailing and an adequate representation of the ejection seat. 

The engine exhaust is particularly nice with separate exhaust pedals, and the lower pedal is provide in the standard drooped position as it would be seen on any flight line. The landing gear and wheel wells are well molded with lots of raised detailing.

The kit provides a full war load of bombs with six 750lb Mk 117 bombs on a centerline Multiple Ejector Rack (MER) and two 500lb Mk 82 low-drag bombs for the outboard pylons. Fuse extenders are present on some of the bombs. The external stores are completed by a pair of external fuel tanks. For this project, though, the customer wanted a model that was representative of what the DC ANG machines looked like, not just an aesthetically pleasing THUD in DC ANG markings. As I found almost no pictures of armed DC ANG F-105s, I elected (and was approved by the customer) to build the model without bombs.

Construction of the model progressed quite fast. It took only one month to complete the project. That is really quick for me, where my average project takes about two to three months to complete. I fought the temptation to do any extra detailing to the model. After all, it was a paid job, and the guy was not looking to go bankrupt to afford it. The model would easily qualify under the IPMS rules for an out-of-the-box construction. The only changes I made to the kit were to change the decals, to fill in the holes in the lower wing where the outboard weapons pylons get mounted, and to "de-weasel" the airframe.

Let me clarify that last point. The original F-105 produced by Monogram was a two seated F-105G Wild Weasel Thunderchief. The F-105G kit is very accurate and includes all the proper antennas for the Wild Weasel THUD. The F-105D kit is based on that original F-105G kit. As such, there are a few antennas present on the model that need to be removed as they were never present on the F-105D. The antennas in question are:

four small triangular antennas spaced around the nose the large bulged antennas on the wing tips where the navigation lights are found the projecting stubs coming out of the front of the wing tips I removed all of these with about ten minutes worth of filing and sanding. The toughest ones were the wing tip bulges as I needed to preserve the navigation lights while still removing the antenna fairings.