The 1:32 Revell Phantom has been a favorite of mine since I first built one when I was in college at Purdue back in the 70's. In the fall of my senior year I had been accepted to Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola as a Naval Flight Officer Candidate, to report after I graduated in the Spring of '75. I was super excited and figured the big Phantom would look good hanging over my desk and keep me inspired. I even used some dry-transfer letters to put my name on the rear canopy rails.
Another piece of the background story is that the Blues did a show at the Purdue Airport one year when they were flying their F-4J's. One of my fraternity brothers was at the airport when they arrived, and in the course of his casual conversation with them, mentioned there was a party at our fraternity house later that evening. Quite unexpectedly (and shockingly) there was knock at the door later that evening, and there stood the Blues! They came in and spent about a half hour chatting and doing their recruiting pitch, before heading off to their next commitment. About a month later they sent a large framed montage of photos with all their signatures on it. It hung in the house in a place of honor for many years. The leader of the team was Cdr. Harley Hall, who went on to be the last Navy pilot shot down on the last day of the Viet Nam war. He never was recovered and there is still controversy over exactly how and when he died.
First, to address one issue, yes, I know the Tamiya kit is vastly superior in many ways (I've also got one or two in the stash), but for this project I wanted to use the Revell kit, for nostalgia reasons if nothing else. Plus the Revell F-4J is "clean" without any pylons or tanks (except for the Sparrows) which makes it suited for a Blue Angels build. Also I happen to really enjoy scratch-building details and this kit provides a great canvas for that.
I've had several of these kits in my stash for years and for this build I'm using two kits, one complete, and one partial one that I had acquired.
Lots of work to do in the cockpit. I'm going to use some resin seats, but first had to cut away the kit seat bottoms that are molded to the bottom of the cockpit tub. Also cut away the inaccurate rounded bulkhead behind the RIO's seat. Obviously a lot of scratch-building is in my future:
Although it was state-of-the-art in the late 60's, the resin seats are definitely an improvement over the original kit parts:
The Blues F-4J's didn't have the RHAW antenna on the fin cap, so it has to go:
The early Blue Angel Phantoms used the the early J79-8 engines, rather the J79-10's normally used by the J's, so more resin parts with the shorter 'burner cans.
Looking forward to a long (& fun) build.
Mark