do I do now?”, I got a notice that
my family had until the end of
December to move to a new house.
That meant we had to get a loan
arranged, find and buy a home, get
the loan closed, and meanwhile do
all the packing. As I had already
booked a vacation for a month out
of the country, I had to arrange for
another of my club members, EricJenkins, to deal with the paint gone
bad. At the time, neither of us knew
the “why” of the problems, but
he did find that the paint had also
affected some parts of the plastic.
Before commencing with the
recovery, I had to wait two months
for the paint to “gas out” and the
affected plastic to harden. Over
the next six months, Eric patientlyremoved the camouflage and did
the repaint/masking/repaint, with
several weeks between each step to
let the paint cure. He also blended
in a patch to fill the gap between
the flaps and the fuselage. After
eight months I got the kit back at
the same stage I had left it – now
also moved and unpacked in our
new house. And I could carry on
where I left off eight months before.BACK TO THE TASK AND THE
END IS IN SIGHT
I restarted by applying most of
the decals. I elected to use the
Vingtor scheme for RF-84F-15-
RE 51-11271, code AZ-T, because
it had the Luftwaffe AG-52 Zap
from when it likely made a visit to
the German Air Force base, Leck,
home of Aufklärungsgeschwader
52 (AG 52). This was a nice tie into
my original kit-bash, which was
finished in the Luftwaffe AG 50
scheme and needed a companion.
With the decals applied,
the tasks for final assembly
commenced. I removed the masking
and the parts that were temporarily
attached in place. As the canopy
and open camera bay covers were
already painted and detailed, I
installed the covers, canopy, speed
brakes, landing gear, wheels and
doors, and the horizontal tails.
I now added the fuel dump
and tail skid to the aft fuselage.
With reference to photos on
the Tan Model Facebook page
(browse to: Albums > Reference
Photos), I scratch-built the speed
brake hydraulics, the nose gear
well hydraulics, and the main
gear wells, using wire and Albion
Alloys aluminium tubing. I also
installed the inner and outer
fuel tanks that I had painted
earlier, which had somehow
survived the bad paint incident.
Final bits and pieces that were
made to complete the build includedthe red and green wing formation
lights (made from rhinestone
craft decorations) and the tail
formation lights: the clear one
from a Hobby Boss F-84F kit, the
red one turned in my Dremel using
clear red sprue from a car kit.
The build was completed by
placing the several camera glazing
doors in the opened position, and by
attaching the pitot tube, made from
three sizes of Albion’s telescoping
aluminium tubing to the mounting
pocket on the port wing.CONCLUSION
This Tan Model RF-84F is a go-to
kit that will be a very hard act to
follow, should anyone attempt to
do so. Notwithstanding the paint
problems, I very much enjoyed doing
this opened-up and detailed build.
There are ample opportunities to
add enhancements to the basic kit.
Since I started this build, AMS
Resin has released a correction set,
which includes ailerons, ejector, main
wheels, and full cockpits with a choice
of early, late, and European seats.
Those, and the SAC landing gear,
are good starting points for those
who wish to go to town on this kit.
With help from my friends, Eric,
Andy, John, and Harold, I got it done.
My grateful thanks to Baris Tansoy
for providing the two first-issue kits
and this revised-issue kit for these
builds, and the Editor for his patience
over the months while I dealt with
the “bad paint and life happens”
that set this build and my article
back ... dare I say it ... a full year.WWW.SAMPUBLICATIONS.COM • MARCH 2018 • 35
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