This is the 1/72 Hasegawa F-105B Thunderbird that I built about 20 years ago. The paint and decals were looking really atrocious, so I stripped it down to bare plastic and brought it back up. I did this by swabbing on a bunch of DOT-3 brake fluid, letting it set for about an hour & then gently scrubbing it off with a cotton Q-Tip and soft rag. I prefer this method over the over cleaner routine because it is much easier on the nose and lungs.
I sprayed on a coat of gray primer and then Testors rattle can Chrome, then Future. I had purchased a set of decals on ebay that the seller had said were in fair to poor shape and he was definately correct. I managed to salvage the ones for the horizontal & vertical tail, but the rest were too far gone. I used stars, USAF & numbers from my AM stash and then masked & brush painted the wing tips, nose scallops and belly bird. The Hasegawa landing gear is really bad, so I robbed the gear out of an MPC Wild Weasel that I will never build because of it’s gross inaccuracies.
Darwin, congratulations. You most definitely took lemons and made lemonade, or a silk purse from a sow’s ear, or whichever cliche applies, it’s a fine looking bird. Those USAF guys back in the early '60s sure went to a lot of time, money and trouble just to perform one show in the Thud. To this day I can’t figure out how they didn’t know until the season was underway that the Thud was no formation aerobatic performer.
TOM
Great looking Thud, Darwin! I’ll have to give the brake fluid trick a try.
Tom, the T-Birds actually flew six shows in the Thud. My dad saw Capt. Devlin’s crash at Hamilton AFB. The plane suffered a structural failure when he pitched out to land after the short arrival show. There was nothing wrong with the F-105B in general, but that particular plane had been damaged in a refueling accident before the T-Birds got it. In the book “We Rode the Thunder” TB Lead Paul Kattau says that The Thud was actually a very good airshow plane, in a lot of ways better than the F-100. They switched to the F-100D so there wouldn’t be any delays in the season, and then the powers that be decided to just stay with the Hun. Kattau says the squadron history made a statement that the Thud was “unsuitable” and that gave the Thud it’s bad rep.
