I originally intended only to write about how I built a Portugalia Fokker 100, but found during the research and building that there were differences between Fokker 100s produced. Having built a US Air BAe146 and enjoyed using Alclad 2 paints, I decided to go for one of their Fokker 100s, which also, as chance would have it, had different design features from the Portugalia aircraft.
History
Portugalia took delivery of 6 Fokker 100s in the late 80s early 90s and these 6 aircraft are still in service today. US Air started taking deliveries of Fokker 100s in 1988 and eventually had 40 of them in service. None are in service today and the subject the my model, N866US was stored in the Mojave desert in US Airways colours before being sold to Germania, with whom it is in service today as D-AGPI.
This was to be my first ever Fokker 100 kit. I had always liked the green/red & yellow scheme, and it was one of the kits on my list to do. It is a very nice kit, there are some very minor faults, but easy to correct. The wings halves are too thick. Parts 4 & 7 need sanding down in order that they fit flush with their wing mates parts 5 & 6. Also the wing fences are too thick. These were replaced with brass. I thought the 2 ADF loops on the fuselage were too small, so I sanded them off and replaced them with scratch built ones from plastic card.
Whilst researching this project, looking at photos and especially reading the Fine Scale Modeler article, I found that the Portugalia Fokker was different to the kit.
- Portugalia’s Fokkers have a Galley door on the back left side of the fuselage. The kit has a straight row of windows on this side.
- Photos of Portugalia’s Fokkers show the baggage doors opening downwards. However the kit has the door hinges at the top.
- The front entrance door is the fold down type, not opening to the side.
These seem to be the main differences in delivered Fokker 100s.
So onto construction. As on all my airliners, I filled in the windows, which would definitely make it easier for inserting a galley door decal. Where the galley door is situated are some recessed panel lines which needed to be filled in. For the baggage doors, I sanded away the top hinges on all doors, rescribed the door outline where they were, and then made new hinges from plastic card and glued them to the bottom of the doors. I replaced the kit clear parts for the wing tip lights with perspex, drilling two small holes in each part and filling them with clear paint to represent the lights. I also later replaced the blade antennas on the fin with plastic card, the ones on the kit get in the way for tail decals. I replaced the front gear doors with ones made from plastic card and thinned down the main gear doors from the kit. I used Humbrol satin white 130 and mixed the grey.
Decals
I used two decal sheets
- FCM sheet FCM 144-01 Portugalia & TAM F-100s
- Airline Hobby Supplies AHS4124 Window & Details Fokker 100
The FCM decals were fairly thin and at times broke up in the water, especially the door frames & serial numbers. I had already given the decals a coating of Klear before soaking them, perhaps I should have used a proper decal coat. The green & red fuselage stripes are a bit translucent, the grey belly colour showing through on the decal. The serial number for under the wing was not included on the sheet, so was added from spares. All in all, nice decals. I used the wing walk outlines, windows and door fittings from the AHS sheet. I found it was best the cut away the decal on the wing walk lines where it meets the flap track fairings before application, as the fit is not so good and the black lines should fit close to the fairings. Again, a nice sheet to work with.
US Air F-100
With this kit I decided to do a first. Cut open a baggage door and build a baggage hold. The hinges for the doors are as per kit on US Air aircraft, so it was just a question of cutting out the door and building the hold. Using some excellent photos sent to me, I had a fairly good idea of what the hold looked like. I built it up from various grades of plastic card, sanding as necessary to get the right fit when the fuselage halves were joined together. The resulting edges to the baggage hold were a little too large and uneven, so I built them up with plastic card and filler. As for the door, I smoothed the edges and glued a very thin strip of plastic card on 3 edges where there is a small rim jutting out. All joints were filled and sanded smooth. The main wheels are a bit bland, so I drilled 4 holes on each wheel hub to represent wheel nuts. The kit was built pretty much as per the Portugalia Fokker, except I filled in the lights on the flaptrack fairings and added only one ADF loop on top of the fuselage.
For painting, I used Revell SM371 Light Grey for the wings and tail, although it doesn’t match the darker grey for the door outlines on the decal sheet, which I think are too dark. I used Humbrol 27002 Polished alumimium Metalcote for the leading edges of the wings and tail, which goes on very nicely by brush or spraying, but can rub off quite easily. The top of the fuselage was primed with white Auto primer and the belly with gloss black Auto primer. The top was then sprayed with Alclad 2 white aluminium and the bottom with highly polished aluminium. I then rubbed a mixture of different pastel powder and SNJ powder onto different panels on the top of the fuselage, finally sealing the finish with Klear floor wax. A word of warning about Alclad. It gives such a wonderful finish, that every tiny scratch or blemish underneath will be seen. Subsequently I had to do some very frustrating remedial work and even at the end, faint fuselage join lines can be seen in places, lines which layers of standard paint might have covered up. After some remedial work on the belly, I found that the newly applied paint didn’t match the rest. I then rubbed in SNJ silver powder which gave a uniform colour. But after sealing the area with Klear, some kind of reaction took place and the colour is now patchy.
On this kit unlike the Portugalia Fokker, there are no wing walk lines. The anti-collision light is not on the tail like most Fokker 100s, but on the fuselage. The front entrance door is a side opening door and thus had extra features which were replicated by decals on the kit. Also there is no rear galley door.
Decals
I used again two decal sheets
1) Flight Path FP44-65 US Air Fokker 100/F-28-4000
2) Airline Hobby Supplies Fokker 100 detail sheet.
The US Air decal sheet shows a picture of a F-100 with the blue on the tail going up only to the underside of the tailplane, the crown being grey. However, all photos that I have seen show the crown to be blue. The tail decal given is not big enough to cover the whole tail surface area. Luckily I had spare blue decal from my BAe 146 project which I used to patch the crown. The tail decal, although going on very nicely is not a fantastic fit and some patching was necessary. My red stripes broke up in the water, but also fitted well. The US Air tail titles are a little too small and don’t quite match up to photos, but the result is certainly acceptable. The red fuselage stripe is a little translucent, this can be seen on the metal areas. Some patching was necessary on the nose, but all in all the decals went on well and were sealed with Klear.
Thanks to Bill Matthews for the gift of the US Air decal sheet and Uwe Damaschek for the kit Fokker decals. Also thanks to Gaston for sending me excellent photos of the Fokker baggage doors, they were most useful.
Conclusion
A very nice kit from Revell which has been recently re-issued with a beautifully detailed decal sheet. Highly recommended.
References: Cityhoppers Philip Handleman Airlife Publishing
Commercial Aircraft Markings & Profiles Campbell, Hamlyn Press
Airliner World: September 2001 Portugalia article
Airliner World: October 2000 Fokker 100 article
Finescale Modeler: November 1997 (Building an F-100 from the box)
Airline Modeller Vol 1 No 3 Dec 1995. Kit review Revell Fokker 100
Airline Modeller Vol 3 No 2 July 1997. Up close & detailed; Fokker100
Airliners.net
Jetphotos.net
Fokker website
