Gemco had a large selection of Entex kits, especially the smaller, cheaper ones such as the "Air Giants" series and the "Supersonic Series." They were all under a buck, which is unimaginable today. The only kit from the "Supersonic Series" I bought was the F-102 "Delta Dagger" because it was featured in an Air Force recruiting pamphlet I had from the early 70s. These were Otaki 1/144 scale kits repackaged by Entex, and included the F-105 Thunderchief, F-111 Aardvark, F-4 Phantom II, F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, and A-5 Vigilante. They are finely detailed, and superbly molded little kits. On my original F-102, I left it mostly unpainted except for the black radome which I painted with, you guessed it, Mom's ceramic paint! The landing gear was very fragile, and didn't survive playtime very long.
For this rebuild, I wanted to leave the main surfaces unpainted, but the plastic didn't seem to be the right shade of Air Defense Command Gray. When I started to brush on some Testors ADC gray however, I discovered the plastic was indeed molded in the correct color! I went ahead and coated the whole thing any way, just to make sure the decades-old decals would firmly adhere. They did, without much breaking, but the California Air Guard decals for the tail were slightly too large. This surprised me as the rest of the decals are accurately scaled. I had to cut away the excess around the edges once they dried. It looks okay finished from a distance.
This is a fun little kit to build, and still an easy one to find sealed on EBay. Entex must have made tens of thousands of these.
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