¹⁄48

Danny Coremans of Daca productions has released CAD drawings of his project to create the perfect 1/48 F-104 using Hasegawa's kit. This his mission statement below.

During the designing of the German and Belgium Starfighter decals, and seeing build-up models of the 1/48 Hasegawa Starfighters on various forums and model shows with high lightened rivets all over the wings, stabilo and other places, I started with the idea to do a "small" improvement set, as a) the real Starfighters don't have any rivets visible on these places - they were even putty-ed away before painting in real to obtain a smooth surface! - and b) my new decals deserve a more accurate kit...


This small set grew steady from just a few parts correcting the biggest "annoyments", to now up ending with 272 unique parts and up to 500 pieces in total.
It includes the wings and stabilo - without rivets and in the correct size: the Hasegawa wings are 2 mm too short in cord and the stabilo 2 mm in span - , the missing wing tanks, the three Sidewinder types, various missiles and practise bomb dispensers, recce pods, 2 different nuclear bombs, all known ECM & RWR parts for various air forces, everything you need to build a correct F-104S, a complete computer bay including variants on the individual computer boxes, canopy tubings for around the canopy, detailed back seat parts for the German and Italian MB ejection seats, 5 different types of helmets, tow bar and ladder, and so on... so this set will be very usable to improve any Hasegawa 1/48 Starfighter model.
Visiting many Starfighters across Europe and the States during the last four years, sometimes for just one specific part (like a quick citytrip to Rome for measuring the specific F-104S intakes, to Madrid for the Vicon camera pod, to Berlin for the German exhaust, once more to Italy for their version of the Orpheus pod and the Italian GPS part, to several places within Holland & Germany for the computers and various armaments, and not forgetting the frequent visits to "local" Belgian Starfighters & the several 1/1 parts laying around in my office) and with the big help of several other people in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Italy and Japan, this set will be the Starfighter set for everyone who's going to build a 1/48 Hasegawa Starfighter kit.
All parts are now designed and on their way to the tooling company. As "no-one" builds models during the summer, I'm not rushing the release for or shortly after the summer, and as such the release date will be early November 2010 at IPMS Telford in the UK !
At the same time I hope to have also the next title in my "Uncovering the..." book range available: The F-104 Starfighter !
Did I forget to mention: this set will be in PLASTIC INJECTION !!!, as the rest of the model kit ! so no resin ! & (relative) cheap (targeted around 35.00 euro) !
And on popular demand, the first sprue - with the wings and stabilo - will be available separately too (but only directly from DACO).

For more information on the product above, please visit Daco Products.

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