Thanks to Aires for providing more of their excellent aftermarket parts for IPMS USA to review, and to IPMS leadership for sending it my way.

This aftermarket set item replaces the kit ejection seat in any F-104A to C. It is not complex, but does require some vision assistance and gentle skills in the sheet-metalworking department.

This set contains seven extremely-detailed, hard gray resin parts - the entire seat in one cast piece, with two separate foot plates, one ejection initiator handle, two ejection net extension arms, and a buckle fitting; one soft, flexible resin hose, and a fret of photoetch for the harness and fittings. First step is to spray all the gray resin and metal photoetch resin parts with primer. I used my favored primer, Tamiya Gray in a rattle can.

The seat is the logical beginning point. The foot rests were removed from the pour stub and cemented into place. I shot one more coat of primer, then used Vallejo acrylics to do the work, leaving the Tamiya primer as the gray color for the basic frame, with tan and light gray/white for some belt details. The hose from the headrest to the seat pad was painted dark green, and the ejection handle between the seat leg pads was painted white, then yellow mixed with a bit of orange. I should have used spray on this, as the vallejo yellow is not intense and just didn’t look good in the pictures.

The harness was the difficult part of the build, and took a lot of time (This was a three-hour effort). First, they need to be painted the correct colors. Next, the miniscule buckles, belt ends, and threading through the small belt ferrules was the challenge, because when you paint them the thickness increases and the belts don’t want to go through. I used a bit of muscle, tweezers, special words, and failed attempts, finally getting the parts into place. Once finished, you will have quite a maze of belts and buckles.

Included on the PE fret is a lattice-work set of triangular harnesses. This harness was designed to deploy on each side of the seat using the extension arms on the seat pan which are normally stowed to the rear. When the pilot ejects the seat, gas initiators rotate the arms forward, extending and opening the lattices on each side of the seat. What is the purpose of this restraint harness? To prevent the pilot’s arms and legs from receiving injuries caused by flailing around during the seat ejection process. The harness contains the pilot’s body within the center of the seat. The only time you will see these deployed is during ejection, during seat maintenance when the seat is in the backshop for inspection or repair, or when the seat is on the ground after ejection.

As the cockpit is the focal point for most models, this seat goes a long way towards improving the professional appearance and authenticity of the kit. This is true on either the old Hasegawa F-104C or the new Italeri kits. I almost forgot, somewhere out there are E-bay Revell 1/32 F-104C’s as well. They probably could use these too!

End game: A must-buy for those contemplating the available kit options. Grateful appreciation goes to our friends at Aires for a most-welcome upgrade!