Starfighter!
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John C. Lamarck , aircraft builder extraordinaire has once again found his way into our Nerdy hearts. He has built an excellent rendition of Lockheed’s F-104 . For those uninitiated into the world of aircraft geekery let me give you the quick tour. The F-104 was designed by Kelly Johnson’s design team in the 1950’s (Johnson is most known for working on the P-38 Lightning, U-2, and SR-71 Blackbird). Known as the “Missile with a Man in it” the 104 was design as a supersonic interceptor design to intercept and destroy soviet fighters and bombers. Starfighters were in service in the USAF, allied air forces and NASA from 1958 until late 2004 (USAF retirement was significantly early). The 104 set several aviation records mostly in climb to altitude speed. Seen here is an excellent rendition of the CF-104 built under license by Canadair for the Royal Canadian Air Force. John captures the curves and the sleekness of the Starfighter amazing well. I love the use of the classic tire to capture the exhaust cone, the air inlets are rendered very well at this scale and the custom decals are fantastic. The one limitation of this scale is the biconvex airfoil cannot be captured. The leading edges came to such a knife edge that unware ground personnel often received very bad cuts on their heads when bumping into the wing.
