Aurora 1/72 scale F-104A Starfighter Kit No. 82-79

An overlooked oldie

Believe it or not this kit, issued by Aurora from original Comet tooling in 1964, was for many years the only accurate F-104 in 1/72 scale! Little appreciated and little remembered this diamond in the rough was the only "Zipper" worth considering until the appearance of the excellent little ESCI kit in the '80s.

That kit itself has since been eclipsed by better Revell-Monogram and Hasegawa offerings but it's still hard to believe that it took 30 years to get a viable replacement for the ancient Aurora/Comet offering.

Aurora's offering is accurate in both outline and scale but suffers from the crudeness typical of models from the 50s and 60s. There is no landing gear, nor any cockpit detail save the pilot's head and seat headrest molded into a solid shelf representing the cockpit. The wings and horizontal tail feature overly thick leading and trailing edges and all scribing, including the decal locations, is raised although not overly heavy; unfortunately the raised scribing includes the outlines of all control surfaces. The canopy is somewhat thick and distorted, not that it matters much in view of the lack of cockpit detail, but has some strange concentric circles scribed into the top of the rear section

On the plus side the fit of the 16 gray parts and clear canopy is excellent - so much so that the model can be virtually clipped together without glue. My example is relatively free of flash except for the front edges of the intakes.

In days gone by I've built accurate and detailed 104s from this kit, combining a little scratchbuilding with detail parts stolen from otherwise lesser 104 kits to add cockpit and landing gear detail. Thankfully those projects aren't necessary anymore but Aurora's Starfighter could still be made up into a very nice stand model and is a real blast from the past. Recommended to nostalgia freaks like me!

Till next month, "Build what YOU like, the way YOU want to".
Be sure to visit Al's Place while you're surfing the 'Net!