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HISTORY

After the abortion of the CF-105 Arrow and the BOMARC guided missile program, the Royal Canadian Air Force was without a modern front line fighter in 1960. A deal was worked out between Canada and the United States to acquire fifty-four two-seat McDonnell F-101 Voodoo fighters in exchange for Canadians taking over maintenance of the DEW line and contributing $10 million to cost of building 150 F-104 Starfighters for NATO forces.

The CF-101B Voodoos joined the squadrons and saw active service in 1961. The aircrafts were delivered to Canada in two batches. The first batch of CF-101 wore natural metal finish and had the Royal Canadian Air Force insignia and markings. The second batch were delivered in silver paint finish with the new Canada Armed Forces markings. Later, all aircraft were painted voodoo grey.

The model I built is a CF-101B Voodoo from the 409 Nighthawk squadron, based in Comox, British Columbia. The squadron moved to Comox in March, 1962. The model is an aircraft as seen during early 1970 in silver dope paint and CAF markings. Aircraft is one of the second and last batch of F-101 to Canada. The model won "Best Canadian" and 1^st place in Vancouver and Calgary shows.

THE MODEL

When I was looking for a Canadian subject to submit for the 1996 Vancouver IPMS show, It was fortuitous that I went to Rick’s place and he enticed me to pick up the Monogram F101B kit in 1/48 scale. It looked like an interesting plane so I purchased his "one and only, hard to find" kit.

Assembly goes together like a typical old Monogram kit; need I say more. But, the finished result is well worth it. The mould feature finely raised panel lines with very little excess flash. The best part of the kit is the fully detailed cockpit and outstanding ejection seats. To bring a Monogram kit to today’s standard, scribing of the panel lines is mandatory.

SCRIBING PANEL LINES

To begin scribing panel lines, I always start with the fuselage first by taping the halves together. I first sand off all the kit’s surface detail and replace them with recessed lines I scribe with a round sewing needle held in a small drill vise. Dymo tape is used as a straight edge to guide the needle. Scribing templates from Hasegawa can be used for small circular and rectangular access panels. It generally takes three to four passes of the needle to get a decent line depth. Sand off the pushed up plastic around the new line using fine wet sandpaper such as a 280 grade then work up to a 600 grade. I dry the part off and pass the needle through the lines again to remove the grunge that build up in the newly scribe line after a wet sanding. I keep repeating the above process until I achieve a perfectly clean scribed line. I like to scribe lines before assembling the model because it enabled me to easily wash off the grunge. I repeat the process for all the exterior surfaces.

Drilling out rivets on access panels is a must to finish off any scribing job. I used a fine drill bit (No. 79), which you can get at any model shop, to simulated rivet holes around all the removable service panels. No jig or template is used for drilling, just free hand. Remember to buy at least 6 bits to complete a job as these fine bits snap off like crazy. 

COCKPIT

The cockpit is the star of any model airplane. With a little embellishment, the cockpit of this Monogram kit can be truly outstanding right out of the box. The dials on the instrument panels are molded with insufficient depth, thus make painting them a little difficult. Noticed the rudder pedals from the kit are located too far ahead. If I ever do another one again, I would definitely locate the pedals far back behind the dash. 

I start by giving the cockpit walls, tube, dash and seats a coat of Gunze 305 (FS36118) for the base color. Then I lightly airbrush on a darken tone of the base color locally around all raised details. When dried, I drybrushed the unaltered base color to make the corners and details stand out. As with drybrushing technique, a little is better than a lot for realistic effect. 

The side consoles were taped up and airbrush with a lighten tone of black and dry brushed with white, grey, silver, red, and yellow to bring out the knobs and buttons detail. To complete the detailing of the cockpit, I added black wires for the seat headrests and inside the cockpit. Be sure to add the wires on the headrests and behind the backseater’s radarscope, as they are very prominent in all the reference photos. I give all the raised details a fine wash of enamel flat black to complete the accentuation of the details. A coat of flat clear is sprayed over the completed cockpit to tone down the sheen. 

Black Box have recently come out with an excellent resin cockpit update set for this kit. I suggest that you can save some money by doing some extra work with the kit cockpit and still come out ahead.

ASSEMBLY NOTES

I assembled and painted the wheel wells and air intakes before gluing them in place. The air intakes were painted gloss white and the wheel wells in green. The air intakes are quite wide on this plane and therefore any bad seams will be visible. After gluing the wing halves together, I putty and sanded the inside intake seams. The wheel wells were quite detailed, and just painting the pipes and wires was enough for me.

The fit of the fuselage halves went together quite well, with the exception of the "toy like" weapons bay directly underneath the cockpit. Monogram created this weapons bay as a rotating platform so you can flip it around just like the real thing. This was fine for a toy, but hardly acceptable for a detailed scale model because the gap around this rotating platform was very large. I super glued this in place and fill the large gaps with lots of putty. When dried, I sanded the entire area smooth and flush with surrounding surfaces. This required many application to get it right. Normally, putty is a no-no for any silver or metallic finish, but there was no other choice. After the putty was sanded and blended in, I rescribed the weapons bay outlines into the putty. Very little putty was needed to finish off rest of the fuselage joints. Even though the main gears on this model is set near the center of gravity; some nose weight was still required to ensure the model is not posed in the "taking off" look.

The wing to fuselage joint was hardly perfect. I trim fitted the wing to the fuselage as best as I could but, epoxy and putty was still required for these joints.

CANADIAN FEATURES

The features molded into the kit was for a USAF F101B, therefore, to turn it into a CF101, I had to do the following:

Sanded off all the formation proximity light strips.

Removed the radar warning antennas just behind the canopy.

Do not install the spoiler (part 15) and the door vane (part 25). According to the reference photos I did managed to find in the Vancouver library, these parts were not on CF-101s.

Skipped step 23 of the kit instruction so that the air scoop (part 37) just next to the port nose gear door was not installed. CF101s did not have the protruding airscoop; it had the recessed airscoop.

The vent grills on the fuselage near the engines were rectangular shaped on CF-101s; the kits grills were oval in shape. This modification was not completed on my model as I did not have this information at the time of construction.

PAINTING

I wanted to do a second batch Voodoo and that meant the color scheme had to be in silver paint finish. I mixed a wash of flat grey paint and sprayed it on every seam lines to check for joint flaws. When I was satisfied that the joints are perfectly seamless, I washed off the grey primer and wet sand the entire model using increasing grade of sandpaper until smooth. It has been suggested that you should polish the model with polishing compound when doing metal finish but I am just too lazy. The polishing compound will get into all the engraved lines.

The canopy and wind shield were prepared by polishing with polishing compound to remove as much flaw as possible and then dipped in Future floor wax to achieve that clear glass look. When the floor wax was dried, I masked off the canopy using Gunze’s Mr. Masking Sol. A sharp No. 11 blade and a very steady hand is needed to cut the canopy mask. After cutting the mask, I sprayed these parts with gloss black and temporary glue them to the model.

I used Model Master Chrome Silver for the silver paint finish. The walkway on top of the wings was painted on using Aircraft Grey paint.

The decals were a mix of Monogram kit decals, Arrow Graphics, and SuperScale decals. After the decals were set in place using Gunze’s Mr. Mark Softer, a coat of acrylic clear gloss was sprayed on. As with any painted on finish on real aircraft, certain areas were touched up during maintenance. So, I simulated that by selectively sprayed on a touch of Chrome Silver on some places on the model and reseal with the Gunze clear. This created a subtle "touched up" effect.

A thin wash of dark grey enamel was washed into the recesses of all control surfaces and grilles. Panel lines on model with silver or metallic finish do not require the dark wash as they will naturally stand out on this kind of finish. Washing them would just make the model look unnatural. No weather was done to the model as reference photos showed the aircrafts in the silver finish was kept very clean.

COMPLETION

The model is finished off by adding model railroad lenses for landing gear lights, the spotlight next to the cockpit and below the HUD. The kit’s clear HUD was ugly therefore, I made a new HUD using clear styrene. A new spot light cover was also cut and formed from clear styrene as the kit’s clear cover was too thick and left unsightly large gaps. The canopy came with a finely detailed canopy support strut. Trial fit and extreme care must be exercised when gluing this sucker in place. Due to numerous breakage of this piece while transporting the model to shows, I recommend that the canopy be not glued in place. True Detail photo edge rear view mirrors were added to the canopy. An instrument and its wire were added to the windscreen to complete the major "noticeable" details.

It took me about 3 months time, on and off, to complete this model. The time spent on updating this kit was well worth it, as this Monogram kit looked accurate in scale and came with a terrific cockpit. In my opinion, the cockpit in this kit was the best that Monogram had ever done. If you can still find this kit, get it.