Thanks again everyone.
Terry, the latches are just thin sheet styrene carefully cut with a scalpel, and thanks for the clarification on the "scoop". Your explanation makes perfect sense. Speaking of which.....
The windscreen was masked off and the bulge ground off with jeweler's files until flush.
After that was done, I repainted the area, this time taking advantage of the masking to lighten the black just a touch to replicate the phenomenon seen in many pics whereby the nose cone and fuselage anti-glare panels are not quite the same tone as each was painted at separate locations. As you can see, I also started on the decals. Another thing that I discovered at this late stage is that the grey on the nose cone is painted too far into the fuselage so this is another area I'll need to fix.
Fortunately, the grey was painted to a panel line, which is what threw me, and pictures also show that this panel had a different shade of NMF on it so I won't be disappointed if the tones don't match.
As I said above, I started on the decals today but not before I tossed around a number of issues in my head. It started with the fact that I really like the old flag scheme but I could not get photo evidence to confirm the profile below.
What I like about the profile is that it combines the old flag scheme with the camera pod and also the 1 Wing crest on the engine intake. The thing is, the only pic I have of 842 with the old flag scheme (below) is one in which it is not carrying the camera pod nor the 1 Wing crest. Also, reading through this interesting site (
North Luffenham Marville Photos ) it appears that 842 was not on strength with 1 Wing in Marville at the time that the flag switch was done in 1965 but it did show up later.
Picture source:
Canadair CF-104 Starfighter 12842
As an aside, a really interesting thing about the above pic is that the two machines in the foreground have the old flags on the fin whereas the next one in line has the new flag so this must have been taken right around the time that the transition was being made.
So the decision was made to stick with the new flag scheme and show the aircraft exactly as it appeared in this pic:
Note the lighter anti-glare panel at the front of the windscreen which I was able to replicate above. Now, the thing interesting thing here is that there was a period of time in the new flag scheme where the maple leaf in the roundel was smaller than in later years and it appeared to me that this was the case with the insignia in the picture. The Belcher Bits decal sheet makes provision for this but does not make it easy. Whereas they provide a fuselage roundel with a blank center into which the separate smaller leaf that they provide could be placed, no such provision was made for the wing roundels, though the separate smaller leaf is provided. I had doubts about this small leaf, though, but decided to proceed. So, based on the assumed smaller leaf use, I cut the larger leaf out of the center of the the wing roundel, since the wing was white anyway, and then placed the blank roundel on the wing as shown here. The cut out center is also shown.
Next, I added the separate smaller leaf for the wing insignia and life was good.
Things were going well until I got to the fuselage roundel and my suspicions were confirmed that the small leaf scheme, though accurately portrayed by this decal, is not what was actually on the plane in the pic. D'oh!
So it was back to depicting the later, large leaf insignia. This was an easy matter on the fuselage since I had just put the decal on when I made the decision to revert to the larger one and it same off easily to be swiftly replaced like so:
The only problem now was that I had destroyed the large leaf decals for the wings since no blank ones were provided. However, I still had the cut-out centers so I went back and trimmed the maple leaf from the white background. Now, the smaller leaf decals on the wings had been finished with setting solution much earlier and had stuck to the wing like sh!t to a blanket before I got to this point and they weren't budging. I did not want to risk damaging the white paint by scraping them off so I decided to place the larger decals right over top of the smaller ones. As luck would have it, all this turned out well and life is once again good.
A plug here for Belcher Bits. The the absence of larger blanks fro the wing roundels was an annoyance, their decals are beautifully printed and behave nicely with setting solution. The 1 Wing crest, for which I took pains to find a scheme that I could use it with, is a masterpiece:
While all this was going on, I was also working on and off on the hinged canopy section. This, along with the other clear parts, had been dipped in Future some time ago so that I could use CA glue on it without running the risk of it fogging. I leave a piece of the sprue on to do the dipping and take this off as late as possible to avoid finger prints.
I first started by masking both the inside and outside surfaces:
Then between decal sessions, I slowly scratch built the framing on the inside and here's how it looks part way through:
Materials used are 0.6mm solder and sheet styrene. I need to do this kind of stuff in short spurts and that's why I was doing the decals in tandem. It also helped that the weather outside was sh!t with rain and no more than 7 degrees C. Tomorrow is a holiday and should see me finish the decals and maybe the canopy frame. Til then mes amis....