Holy cow Handi! Phreaking Phabulous! Just what we need in here. More Eph- phours. Nice detail and kitbashing! Tell me why Tamiya always stops short of kitting a whole line of a certain subject?? I'm building my own phrankenstein F-4D in 1/48 because I want one with recessed detail and don't feel like scribing a whole kit yet. Great honor to your friends as well. Keep it up!

Sweet tea and cookies!

Great work going on here.

Is it just me, or do the rest of you think of Bernie whenever you see an AC coded RF-4C?

He would have loved this thread.

Rex

Thanks for the kind words All. I fell out of sight for a bit taking care of a parent with health issues. A sibling in town gives me the chance to do a quick update on my kitbash. Progress has been glacial at best, working in the middle of the night mostly..  

So far my camera bay has come together, with ten pounds stuffed in a five pound bag,,,, bulkheads, station 3 with KA 55 camera and gyro mount, viewfinder tube , ducting , wire bundles and forward control rack with various boxes are all stuffed inside. All of the inner works had to be scratch built.

Here is the rear main IP..... scope with a dull foggy "turned off" look. I made the rest of the ip's and panels with decals made from both the dash-one and graphics sent too me by the crew chief.................

Here the front gear bay is taking shape...............

And the missle rails are filled and doors added.... a bit more work to do on this.......

Well that's all I have for now,,,, hopefully soon I will be able to pick up the pace with this and on the rest of the Forum as well.

                               As always , Thanks for lookin!!

Wow!!!

(and good to hear from you, Handi. You are missed around here)

Your skill set is fantastic!  Great job on the F-4 Phantom

Thanks Everyone for the kind words...   I finally finished the two MK 7 seats for the most part. I thought going the way of Brassin seats would be the way to go as the rail and "horses head" are the only ones with the correct dimensions of how they overhang the upper chute container, mistake.......They are too tall and the seat bucket is too wide.

Here is the height difference between the Brassin and Avionix seats as I am using the Avionix resin set for the Cockpit tubs....

Rather than lower the floor and mess up the side panel height, I cut the rail and head off of the Brassin set and shortened them, then routered out the Avionix seats. The result looks good I guess. I suck painting belts, so off they went as well, the end result was achieved with a combo of tape and pe belts, and added wire and solder to the seat.

   As always thanks for lookin!! 

wow. that detailing is amazing!!

Hello!

Great work here! Like, what would be the use of 1/32 scale if not for builds like this one? The ejection seats are looking beautiful! Good luck with your build and have a nice day

Paweł

Yeah looks good. 

Big fan of extreme detailing, and its great to see your work on this Phantom. Looking forward to more WIP shots.

I hope things have straightened out for your some, it's good to see you back. 

Amazing job there, that's one of the reasons I don't do 1/32nd is that I almost feel like I have to superdetail things out like you're doing- beautiful work! 

WOW!!! That is some super work happening there. Definately watching this one.

BK

Thanks everyone!   It has been a while since I updated this build but progress has been made. New panel lines scribed in the vertical stabilizer, both kits fuselage parts fused together, intakes in, office finally figured out (1969 SEA configuration)and fitted into the fuselage, canopy rails and more correct looking glare shield scratched together,, parts dry fitted.... now just a matter of detailing wheel bays, aux air intakes, landing gears, canopies and so on.......

                               As always Thanks for lookin!!

Looking real good there.

Well it took a while but this one is finally done.  some more of the mods made to the kit included, cutting the oversized aft vents on the Tamiya fuselage and replacing with graft piece from the Revell, added detail to the aux air intakes, added hydro lines-ect to the wheel bays, scratched together all the photo flash compartment detail and doors, all the detail inside the camera doors including the cameras and mounts, I also opened the latches on the doors for a more realistic open look. I added a set of Isradecals after painting and then put another layer of paint over the stencils to give a more true look of a camoed bird in SEA 1969. The burner cans and nozzles and inner pylons were made out of resin and given to me by the CC D Dixon. They are fantastic! I added adjustment screws to the pylons as well as stabilizing adjustment screws for the cl tank. The braces for the fins of the cl tank were scratched as well as the mount and fins. All of this was finished off with some RBF ribbons in places specified by the CC Handbook of the RF 4C.....

This bird would not have turned out close to this without the help, encouragment and tech advice from D Dixon and L Clark, the two men this build is about.  For their years of dedicated service ,,, and friendship.   Thanks again Guys.

                           And as always , Thanks for lookin!

Excellent work all around Handi! Every part and detail I see is well detailed and painted up perfectly. the pylons and fuel tanks look right on. I love the SEA camo recce Rhinos! This has been a great and professional build to follow!

Thanks Guys!  This was by far the most difficult build I have done. Mostly because of trying to stay true to the RF (in SEA 1969) there were many many things that needed to be changed, from panel lines to the panels in the pit.

Wowza, what a beaut, Handi. Really fine work, and thanks for taking the time to show some of the detail stuff.

What a neat thing that the crew of the real bird advised, and are your freinds. Really neat.

PS, thank you for taking so long to complete this. Makes me feel a little less guilty about my own building habits.

Phantastic build.  As someone who spent about 3 years digging in the camera bays and upside down in the front office after the seat was out fixing wiring on RF's as an ECM tech in the ealry/mid 70's, I absolutely love that bird of yours.  You did the guys proud.

Not going to go as deep in the one I have, but wish I was able to.

Bring out the blue ribbon!

Thanks Everyone!   This one pushed me over the edge a couple times but the result was worth it.

Just sat here and went through the whole build 2X with my mouth hanging open all the time.  FANTASTIC build.  My wife came over to see what I was looking at and said "That has to be a bigger kit, no way he got all that detail in there". 

So, from both of us      .

Jim  

Mrs. Toshi and I are amazed by the attention to detail as well as the build it's self.  You did a fantastic job on that!

Toshi

Yeah, what else can I say but...

PHANTASTIC!!!