The Official F-4 Phantom II Group Build 2011

KM1-I see the photos of your 1/144th kit and learned something. I was considering getting one of those Academy kits, but I see it is the exact same casting as both my Revell "Micro-fighters" F-4E and an old AMT/Ertl F-4E in 1/144th. It looks like I would have ended up with the same kit again!

I uploaded an updated photo of my WIP. The Rhino is stripped down completely, and the area around the cockpit has been reshot with paint. The upper nose area just got sprayed with a white primer to check my seams and re-scribed panel lines. You can't tell from these fuzzy photos, but with the exception of one panel line I need to do, it looks ready to go. Also done tonight was making another blade antenna for the top of the fuselage and cementing in it place (I've only broken it off 3 times now!). I also need to re-add the probe that sticks out from the middle of the tail with brass rod, also broke off and lost long ago. The pitot tube at the front will be done with brass rod as well. I clamp a piece in the moto-tool and grind down a section so it has that stepped down appearance. I usually break about 3 of them before I get a good one.

Also you can see my P-51D laying alongside the Phantom. I am about ready to start closing up the fuselage halves on it after I put in the stick. I have to do 2 projects at once, so to keep going while paint or glue dries on the other!

You also see my homemade stand I use to support my work. Sections can be moved around to accommodate different planes. I had to modify it even further when I did the A-6 Intruder as it has a very different shape than most jets.

XR81 -- Great to have you back! You think big, four 1:48s! Page 1 is updated!

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Of course count me in for the whole year, 4 kits, one every 3 months. Fujimi 1/48 F4E, Monogram 1/48 F4J x2, and the ESCI 1/48 F4J. Markings to be announced as I settle in on each one.

I had a chance to start my RF-4C this weekend...spent a lot of time organizing.  I am doing pretty much an OOB with the exception of the the excellent Aires camera bay which will be the focal point of the build.  I want to have all access doors open including camera doors.  Not sure which unit I will portray.  I wanted to do a late 1970s/early 80s bird from Zweibrucken, but there are not aftermarket decals for them...and I am not good at making my own decals.

I had a little time to work on the pit....the below pic shows I have some work to do in making it look good, but am glad to finally get rolling.

Hi Mike,

I finally found the decals to use on my F-4E.  It is for the F-4E Phantom "El Toro Bravo", Lt Erickson and Lt Williams, 469th TFS, 388th TFW, Korat, 1970.  It took me most of today just to find the correct squadron and markings for a Vietnam F-4E.  Research can be a long and tedious process but now I feel pretty good about what I am going to build.  The Hasegawa kit is supposed to arrive on Monday.  I can't wait for it to arrive!

Ken

sure Mike, go ahead,,,,,,,it's prolly going to turn out to be my first finished kit of 2011 (it's in a race with that Skyhawk), and the first Phantom I get done this year, too

it will be VMFA-235 with DB tail code in overall Lt Gull Gray, and minimal ordnance, until later on, then it will be my "Ordnance demonstrator" as I get these danged PBER's and SUU-7's done

Rex

Lots of action one day into the build! Great!

KM1 -- great to have you back, I'll update the roll right away with both builds. I look forward to seeing that camo bird finished! And yes, the 144s are intimidating (in a very different way to a 32!)

Rex -- no worries! Shall I add that Italeri -S to your build roster? She may not be the best moldings but I must say she'll look good all finished up.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

I know I said I was going to do the six B's,,,,and I will,,,,,,,,but, I run into a little "domestic snag" when I started dragging the kits down off the shelves to take the pics

The only gripe Anne has about this hobby, is laying a bunch of kits out in the living room to take pics of boxes and parts, or those shots of  books laid out as a "visual biblio" for other guys,,,,so, I have to wait until she goes back to work on Tuesday to do that

In the meantime, I have an Italeri F-4S kit that has base coat of overall Lt Gull Gray on it, it just needs little touchups and the Metal area painted, etc,,,,,,,,,I'll plonk away at that for a few days,,,,,it is not my favorite molding, so, I'll just give it to the Marines

She's so good at supporting the hobby, I sure can't tick her off when she has this many days off in a row, can I?

Rex

edit:I've been playing around with PhotoBucket settings, trying to get rid of that tiny size that my pics always show up as,,,,,,,if I finally self taught the old Jarhead a new trick,,,,,,this should be a pic of a Phantom wing assembly jig for Hasegawa 1/72 kits,,,,,if not,,,,,I'll be the guy screaming into the woods that you'll hear

well, well, well,,,,,,even a Jarhead can learn this web posting stuff,,,,,,lol at myself

Rex

I guess I'll try again if you will have me. I'll finish my 1/48 scale RoG Monogram tool F-4C, and then do Academy's 1/144 scale F-4E.

Here's the 1/48 bird now, right where she was last year's build.....

I still have the one upper color, the bottom color, and all the finishing details, and decals to do.

The Academy 1/144 kit will be a challenge for my 47 year-old tri-focal-wearing eyes, as will the SEA scheme simply because it's like a Micro-Machine compared to the 1/48 kit.

Yeah, I looked at the common pieces and the Monogram canopy pieces look a tad bit wider, so I ordered up the Falcon vac-form canopy set.  That gives me an excuse to buy some more kits, right?  That's what I told the wife anyways

BigSmitty

Bah, I should have looked more closely at my F-4J.  Opened it up today to get a quick inventory (everything was still in sealed bags) and realized that Hasegawa forgot to mold the windscreen on sprue "F".  I have both front and rear canopies as well as the middle section between the pilot and WSO, but no front windscreen.  Not broken off, no sprue attachment point at all for part F1.  I dug an old F-4C/D Monogram "Hi Tech" kit out of the garage, where bad kits of mine go to die, and the clear canopy parts are all there and in good shape. Windscreens shouldn't have changed between the C/D and the J models, right?  Since I'm posing the canopies open, I'm not worried about how they would join up.

Squadron does have a nice 1/48 vac-form US Navy canopy set that includes the A-4, F-4, F-14, and F-18 for $16 but I'd rather use what I have if possible.

Double check the fit on those as molding can vary between different manufactures.

Bah, I should have looked more closely at my F-4J.  Opened it up today to get a quick inventory (everything was still in sealed bags) and realized that Hasegawa forgot to mold the windscreen on sprue "F".  I have both front and rear canopies as well as the middle section between the pilot and WSO, but no front windscreen.  Not broken off, no sprue attachment point at all for part F1.  I dug an old F-4C/D Monogram "Hi Tech" kit out of the garage, where bad kits of mine go to die, and the clear canopy parts are all there and in good shape. Windscreens shouldn't have changed between the C/D and the J models, right?  Since I'm posing the canopies open, I'm not worried about how they would join up.

Squadron does have a nice 1/48 vac-form US Navy canopy set that includes the A-4, F-4, F-14, and F-18 for $16 but I'd rather use what I have if possible.

berny13

 

jimbot58:

 

I*An interesting side note: I found that Vietnam Phantom crews carried both the AGM 45's and 78's, but were to use the Shrikes as they cost $7,000 compared to the 78's which cost $200,000 each. If they used the 78's, there were required to fill out an extensive report during debriefing to explain it!

 

 

The F-4G was never used in Vietnam.  One unit used the F-4C "Wild Weasel", but had limited use.  The F-105G performed almost all of the USAF Wild Weasel missions.  By the time the F-4G became operational the most common loadout was a F-15 style centerline tank, one or two AGM-45's.  If only one AGM-45 was carried then the other inboard pylon would be loaded with a single AGM-65.  The outboard pylons were loaded with CBU's and later with AGM-88's when they became operational. 

The AGM-78 was carried on early F-4G's and loaded on the outboard pylons.  Because of problems with them crews did not like to carry them as most times they failed to guide or fire.  Even the F-105G had problems with them.  When they worked, they were great but when you have over 70% fail rate they didn't last long in service.   

I read the Wikipedia article a bit too quickly-the information was about F-105G's. My error, I concede!

Jim,

That's some good photos from a cell phone camera! Lookin' forward to seeing more.

On a side note, I got an early start on my project (the Revell 1/72 "B" that I'm converting into a "C"). I dropped the outer flaps on the wings and am now cutting out the speedbrakes to make some new, dropped ones. There's a couple of engine doors under the fuselage that I'm planning to cut out and drop as well. Looks like I'll have to box in a front gear well as well as the main gear wells, too. I reshaped the nose a bit, and put a shim on the bottom of it to get the nose pointed at a more correct angle, but it's goin' to take a lot of putty. I sanded off all the panel lines, and I'll probably use a pencil to draw in the new ones for the sake of time.

Glenn

jimbot58

I*An interesting side note: I found that Vietnam Phantom crews carried both the AGM 45's and 78's, but were to use the Shrikes as they cost $7,000 compared to the 78's which cost $200,000 each. If they used the 78's, there were required to fill out an extensive report during debriefing to explain it!

The F-4G was never used in Vietnam.  One unit used the F-4C "Wild Weasel", but had limited use.  The F-105G performed almost all of the USAF Wild Weasel missions.  By the time the F-4G became operational the most common loadout was a F-15 style centerline tank, one or two AGM-45's.  If only one AGM-45 was carried then the other inboard pylon would be loaded with a single AGM-65.  The outboard pylons were loaded with CBU's and later with AGM-88's when they became operational. 

The AGM-78 was carried on early F-4G's and loaded on the outboard pylons.  Because of problems with them crews did not like to carry them as most times they failed to guide or fire.  Even the F-105G had problems with them.  When they worked, they were great but when you have over 70% fail rate they didn't last long in service.   

Jimbot -- congratulations on being the first to post WIP pics!

It looks like you have a good, workmanlike approach going, methodically getting the model back to a 'regroup point' from which you can move forward again, and there's a lesson in this -- resuming the hard pull from the last right turn in the road!

Cheers, Mike/TB379

PS: Picture quality is actually pretty good! You might consider cropping or scaling them for quicker loading, though lots of folks do use them fullsize.

A few photos for now:

Partway into the stripping task, though the paint is 100% removed as of now:

Yes, my work area is always that chaotic!

The actual kit box art (and my thumb!):

And a photo of my Italeri kit to show my intended finish build (and more of my thumb!):

Ok, here I sit on New Years Eve/Day, working on my Rhino. As mentioned above, it is Hasegawa's 1/72nd scale F-4G "Wild Weasel". It is and old build that I started around 15 years ago and was abandoned for various reasons, including an interest in model railroads that took most of my free time, and a hiatus from model building all together. I came back to this kit because I was on a campaign to finish previously partial built kits. I found a kit that was partially decaled, but many of the decals were flaking off as I had never applied a protective overcoat. I attempted to "rescue" this kit by repainting over the existing paint, but realized it was a futile thing to do. So I have been stripping it down, fixing broken/missing parts and filling poorly done seams from my previous less less experienced self.

I found I have enough decals left over from the original build plus some added from an AM set to complete the build. It will be armed with weapons taken from Hasegawa's weapons sets, consisting of an AGM 45 Shrike and an AGM-78 Standard ARM, plus an ALQ-119 pod. It will be mostly a OOB build with the only AM material being the decals.

I will get some photos in here but I will warn you now that I am digital camera "challenged" (I don't have one!) and my photos will look as if they were taken with a cel-phone camera...because they will be taken with my cel phone camera!

*An interesting side note: I found that Vietnam Phantom crews carried both the AGM 45's and 78's, but were to use the Shrikes as they cost $7,000 compared to the 78's which cost $200,000 each. If they used the 78's, there were required to fill out an extensive report during debriefing to explain it!

Daywalker

 

hutchdh:

 

...whatever you are doing at New Years is what you will be doing the rest of the year!!!!

 

 

hutchdh

...whatever you are doing at New Years is what you will be doing the rest of the year!!!!

Hot darn...let the build begin!!!  I just broke open the plastic bags and started cutting sprue....will be working on it rest of weekend.  As the saying goes...whatever you are doing at New Years is what you will be doing the rest of the year!!!!

You might want to modify my entry.  The Kit I got is the Hasegawa kit number P16, which is an RAF 1/48 FG2.  I am not sure about unit yet.  I have been doing some research which is pointing me to some aftermarket decals if I can find any.  Most info I have gotten is that the stick Hasegawa decals aren't colored properly.  Someone recommended a set of Almark F-4K RAF decals, but I am having issues finding them.  The Monogram kit I had was bad.  I don't know what happened to it but it was warped to the point where it is junk.  I have a Testors 1/48 F-4F/G kit which I will be doing if it doesn't sell on eBay, and I have enough time for it after the Hasegawa kit.  Has anyone seen any accurate color guides for the Hasegawa bird?  I have been getting some conflicting info online.

Good luck everybody and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Rich

TB, put me down for a 1/48 Revell "C".