Monogram 1/48 F-106A Delta Dart

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 If you want a 1/48^th F-106A then this is as they say the only game in town. This kit was originally released by Monogram in 1983 as #5809. As such it is typical 1980’s engineering and contains the now dreaded RAISED PANNEL LINES (oh no how will I cope). This is the “Century Series” boxing from 1990.

Overall the parts look good in the box. The actual main fuselage is spit down the centre line as normal but has a bottom section, this means you will get a top seam and then seams down each side at the front and back. I think Monogram engineered it in this way for 2 reasons; 

1. To enable the large delta wing to be made in one piece.
2. To enable the large Weapons bay to be moulded in one piece.

 In fact the mouldings of the large weapons bay and the undercarriage bays are excellent and still are better than many “modern kits”. If you are prepared to have the weapons bays open then you will have to do a lot of work, as painting the bays, along with all their components and the Missiles will add a lot of time to the build.

I should mention at the start that being a raised panel line kit I always plan my construction to take into account of this and always look for ways of minimising filling/sanding, which will cause a loss of this detail, some of which is not easily replaced.

 Here I started with the cockpit (well don’t we all!). Now I know there is a nice Blackbox pit out there for this model, but to be honest it does not need it. Monogram to their credit have produced a very detailed cockpit with a good seat. Now when this is all closed up you can actually see very little of it anyway.

 With the pit all done I turned my intention to the main wheel bays and missile bays, these are moulded into the top & bottom halves of the big delta wing. One thing I did not like about the kit engineering is at this stage of gluing the two halves together you have to put in the gear well walls and these contain the actuators for the gear doors. I managed to break all of these off, with one being lost to the carpet monster. It was at this stage before assembly that I decided to paint the interior of the missile bay & wheel wells as it would mean a lot of handling which was easier prior to assembly.

 Next stage was close everything up, cockpit went in along with the exhaust nozzle (which I just painted aluminium) and the main fuselage sides were closed together. Next the large main wing is joined to this. Now it is a bit tricky to get the joint on the wing and the rear fuselage joint all together at the same time. It is worth being patient and using slow setting glue as it saves a lot of work later.

 The next stage was to fit the intakes, now there is a gap with these. You can ether get the wing root close, or the fuselage close, but not both. I chose to get the side close so there would be no sanding and corresponding loss of raised detail. The wing root was then filled with tamyia putty. This was removed using acetone and a cotton bud (American translation = Qtip). A couple of these applications gave a stress free fill, without any loss of detail. I wish the rear fuselage was so easy!

For the rear fuselage join, it is a straight butt fit and you can not get around standard filling and sanding. It is tight in there to start with and the dropped flaps do get in the way. I did the best job I could but this is one area of the kit I was not happy with. If I do another I will look into different ways of doing this joint.

Once done with these areas the main airframe was due for paint.

 Well it’s a centaury series Interceptor so it will be ADC grey. Now as I intended to use xtracolor ADC Grey I undercoated with Humbrol primer (I know to do this from a painful experience with flaking paint on an F-101B!).

 Once this had fully cured in my purpose built paint drying facility, oh go on then the airing cupboard J I brush painted on 2 coats of ADC grey allowing enough time between coats for the first one to cure. I allowed a week for this process as xtracolor’s ADC grey is not the fastest curing paint.

 Here my second coat went on a bit thicker than I had liked, this was not a complete disaster. As I brush paint I generally polish out my topcoat with an 8000 grit polishing pad prior to gloss coating as I find it helps, and gets rid of any problems! Here you get an additional benefit with “ye olde raised panel line kits” this is that the polishing actually makes the panel lines stand out, as I take the paint off them down to the underlying plastic (or undercoat depending on the kit).

 The front antiglare panel was masked of by hand using numerous photos and drawings to get it right. In a previous job I used to draw plans for submarines so I am used to drawing complex curves in 2D and believe you me this helps here. The anti glare panel was painted using semi-matt black and the radome gloss black. I know these radomes were fiberglass and did weather out so I was unsure of the really gloss black. I asked an old 48^th FIS crewcheif about this and he told me they used to polish them with black boot polish to get them shinny. Now you do learn some surprising things when doing your research!

 After top coating with Klear/future it was time for the decals. This monogram boxing only gives you markings for the 84^th FIS. These are not bad but unfortunately they were not in register. I had already decided to use markings for the 48^th Fighter Intercept Squadron. These were from an old Detail & Scale sheet 0448. These can be seen in Scott’s decal archive at : http://modelingmadness.com/scotts/decals/ds0448.htm

Annoyingly, the Detail & Scale sheet does not give you any Insignia or markings such as the USAF for the wings and the U.S. AIR FORCE titles for the sides. I had intended to use a Superscale sheet for all these additional markings. However after triple checking my references, the Big U.S. AIR FORCE titles looked too thin on the Superscale sheet.  I ended up using the Monogram ones, with yellow Rescue placards from the Superscale Sheet. For The USAF titles on the wings I used the Superscale ones as the Monogram ones looked too thick this time.

 For the insignia I used ones from a set of Eaglestrike insignia I had. I actually have 2 sets of these in 1/48^th as I think they are these best US insignia out there. Colour definition is spot on and they have virtually no carrier film.

 The actual aircraft markings I used were from the Detail & Scale sheet were for aircraft 560458. For information this was the 6^th F-106 produced by Convair at San Diego in Nov 1957. Initially it was used for MB-1 separation/ballistics tests at Holloman. In 1961 its was upgraded from Test to Tactical and sent to the 48^th FIS at Langley AFB. In 1984 it went to AMARC for storage with 5567.3 hours. In 1993 it was converted to a QF-106 drone, and then shot down by an AIM-9M in Sept 1995.

 The detail & scale sheet gives you options for early 106’s with the framed canopy or late ones with the bubble canopy. I chose the later one as the markings are more colourful and in addition this was one of a few 106’s to have nose art. The 560458 carried this for William Tell at Tyndall in 1976. The Nose art is “Thunderchicken” but to date I have not been able to figure out the significance of this.

 Also on the decal sheet for this aircraft at William Tell are some red inverted U shaped markings. I was only able to find one photo of these applied to the aircraft. Apparently due to the humidity (and potential of “borrowing” of electronics boxes,  which according to old crew chiefs happened at William Tell meets) the avionics bays were sealed with coloured tape. As these were only really a one time marking I decided not to apply them.

 The detail and scale decals despite their age went down with no problems.

 When finished they had a couple of coats of future/klear.

 With all the painting/decaling completed it was time to finish off. This meant the landing gear. The front gear was assembled and slipped into place. Now the instructions would have you do this early on but it can be left until last.

 The main gear is quite complex and the instructions not 100% great in this area, there is the gear itself and the complex system for the main gear doors which again is one of those jobs where you need 3 hands!

 Also at this stage is the weapons fit. Now the kit missiles are great looking, you get Aim-4 Falcons and the AIR-2 Genie. The Genie is fine, I just painted it white and put a couple of coloured bands on it. Photos of “live” Genie’s are nearly impossible to find, but I was able to ascertain that they were not really marked in any way.

 The AIM-4 Falcons are a different story. They just looked too big in the weapons bay. To counter this I used 4 from the Hasegawa weapons set. Now these come in the Radar beam riding version only. An almost standard fit for a fully armed Dart was 2 Radar and 2 IR missiles which were ripple fired (1 x each), it was interesting to note in my reading into the Falcons that they were not proximity fused weapons like today’s air to air missiles but actually needed a hit to explode. To represent the IR missiles this I just re-profiled the noses of the missiles. Painting and decaling the missiles took a lot of time. 

 To be honest I really enjoyed building this old kit. I love these old fighters and this builds up to a large impressive model, but you have to put the time and effort in.

 OK it’s not a Tamygawa kit, it has fit and has engineering issues, but overcoming these gives me a great sense of achievement. I now just have to find somewhere to put it as it won’t fit into my display case!

 Oh did I say it looks great! 

 A full history of this aircraft is;

 Nov 1957 - 6th F-106 produced by Convair at San Diego CA
(To Test - Initially to Holloman for MB-1 separation/ballistics)
Feb 1961 - Upgraded from TEST-TO-TACTICAL (5th of 35 A/C)
02 Mar 61 - To 48th FIS Langley AFB VA
10 Jul 68 - To 318th FIS McChord AFB WA
23 Dec 68 - To 48th FIS Langley AFB VA
01 Oct 79 - Command change from ADCOM to TAC
30 Jan 82 - To ADWC Tyndall AFB FL
05 Apr 84 - To Davis Monthan AFB AZ for storage FN051 (5567.3 Hrs)
28 Jan 93 - To AEL Inc., East Alton IL for drone conversion
21 Apr 93 - To Tyndall AFB as QF-106 drone S/N AD230
06 Sep 95 - Shot down on 1st NULLO by an AIM-9M

Readers might also like to know this kit has again been re-released, this time under the Revel Brand Name. This now comes with a decal option for 456^th FIS Castle AFB 1962 (Early one with large Number on Fuselage) and 48^th FIS Langley AFB 1972.

 In addition there are quite a number of F-106 decals sheets available from Eagle Strike (some really nice ones here!), Superscale, Aeromaster and Fox One. Also I note that Hannants have the Falcon conversion to do a B listed as being in stock.

 Given all this, go on get one you will have fun! After all that’s what our hobby’s all about.

Julien Dixon

June 2008