1:72 F-104J Starfighter exhaust nozzle for FineMolds kit

A Starfighter with a Japanese star

The F-104J version was a weapon of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and was built under license by Mitsubishi from the early 1960s. It was a pure interceptor: minimal wing area, sharp leading edges and a fuselage that is really a wrapper around a single powerful engine. It was exactly that structural austerity that earned the aircraft the nickname missile with a man in it and made it a type on which no inaccuracy of shape can be hidden.

The tail end decides the silhouette

On a type whose fuselage is so slim, the mouth of the nozzle makes up a substantial part of what the viewer sees from behind. A blanked-off plastic end takes away exactly the depth that the real aircraft has, and a thin photo-etched ring would only move the problem along, because there would be nothing behind it. The casting carries the inner cone and the outer ring at the same time, and the wall between them has a thickness that can still be perceived at this scale. The model thereby gets a convincing rear aspect with no extra cutting into the plastic at all.

Building recommendation

The casting is separated from the casting lug with a fine saw, and the mating surface is leveled on sandpaper laid on a table top. Try the fit dry before gluing and check that the nozzle follows the outline of the fuselage with no step. Spray the inside with a dark metallic shade before you fit it, and add heat staining toward the edge on the outside. The set is prepared for the kit from FineMolds and does not contain the aircraft model. The last layer is usually a matte varnish, which unifies the sheen of the whole tail end of the model.