Your Phantom is coming along very well Mike.  Looks very good so far.   

Yeahhhh! I noticed!

M/TB379

It is a damn travesty the modern flight gallery is getting painted black like the rest of the museum. I guess they really don't want people taking pictures.

That isn't just any F-4 he is standing next to. That was the one flown by Col. Robin Olds during Operation Bolo.

Terrific photos, guys! I must visit myself one day. They sure keep it dark in there, it's not easy for photographers -- you did a great job!

Today's progress:

Not a lot of action, I got the intakes masked with tape and tissue, and I fitted the inner and outer portions of the main gear bay doors. fFom this point onward, the bird is on the painting stand until the gear is mounted at the finish. Yes, this is the same stand that appeared in FSM in 2003.

Tomorrow, I see no reason why I can't apply the flat black for the canopy struts, satin black for the radome, and at least the first metallic on the tail. I can hopefully spray the metallics for the other two Fujimi birds underway as well. I'll need to mask the white rudder of the Red Devils -J too, and get some masking into the Sparrow wells of both.

Speaking of Sparrows (and attendant loadouts), today I scored the Hasegawa 1:48 weapons set featuring the TERs and Rockeyes for Showtime 100, and identified the set I need for TERs and Mk. 82s for the Red Devils plane. As a Marine bird I thought it would only be right to show her loaded to shift mud.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Wow!  I so wish there was someway I could have been there! I love the picture of the F-105G which is currently my 'other' project that I'm attempting to scratch build a new cockpit tub as I stupidly ruined the kit tub.

I do have the rest of the week off and one of my plans includes a trip to the Wings Over The Rockies Museum. I can visit some of my favorite planes, which include an F-4 (I believe an 'E'?) and an FB-111A! I think there is also a 'Thud', but I don't remember. This will also take in a trip to Colpar Hobbies, which I rarely do as it is across town for me. I can always think of you guys when I'm there looking at similar displays.

Hello Everyone,

As promised, here are a few more pictures. In this one you can see Rich in front with Berny behind him and to the right of Berny is Dom. They are checking out the F-105D. If you look farther in the background you can see Deb sitting and part of Merissa.

In this next shot you can see Berny laughing (probably at one of Dom's jokes) standing next to an F-4C.

In this next picture you can see Berny (sitting in the chair) with Dom standing beside him checking out the F-105G. Also you can see Merissa talking to her dad Rich.

The following picture has Dom checking out the display case and Berny is reading one of the displays. Notice the B-52D looming over their heads! (One of Dom's favorite aircraft by the way.)

I am including the next picture because Berny mentioned how much he really likes the F-84E (after the Phantom II of course!)

Here is a good shot of Berny with the B-52D in the background.

In the picture Rich is checking out one of his favorite aircraft, the B-58.

This next photo is a shot of Berny getting ready to pop a wheelie!

There is more to come, so stay tuned!

Ken

berny13

Ken, Dom, and Rich, I had a great time at the museum.  I could have spent a whole week there and would have enjoyed each day.  Thanks to all three of you for giving me the opportunity to share time with a great bunch of guys. 

Hi Berny,

I have not had that much fun in a long time!  It was just great.  I am ready to do it again!

Ken

Wish I could have been there but I'm happy to see you guys had a good time. And thanks for the photos, nice to be able to put a face with your online handles.

Edit: Oops! Thought I was posting this in the Berny thread over on the General Forum- still same sentiments guys

It was a pleasure Berny.  I was honored to meet you, Dom, and Ken.  I'm still processing photos.  I have over 200 to clean up, just from my camera.  I haven't even started on Deb's memory cards yet. lol..

berny13

Ken, Dom, and Rich, I had a great time at the museum.  I could have spent a whole week there and would have enjoyed each day.  Thanks to all three of you for giving me the opportunity to share time with a great bunch of guys. 

Thanks for the encouragement everyone!  I slept on it and decided to keep working towards finishing a Phantom with 15 guns.  It may not be the Hase kit I'm working on, but I will finish something... 

It looks like those of you that went to the museum had a great time!  I'm sure it was fun and informative!  The museum staff showed some real class by pulling out all the stops for Berny.  And you guys that were actually able to make the trip with him?  Kudos to you guys too!  Awesome idea for a get together.  It looks like I missed a good time.

Cheers!

-O

Hi everyone;

Yes, it was a great trip. I only hope I can remember half of the things Berny mentioned, it was great to learn from a Master.

I wasn't actually able to see through the viewfinder for this shot, I was leaning way over the guardrail, arms and camera extended as far as I could reach, thank goodness I wasn't trying to catch a baseball, I hear that's becoming a real dangerous occupation! -just glad it turned out okay!

Many, many thanks to Ken and Rich for all of the work they put into making this a successful trip. I wish we had a shot of Berny when we drove up to the Museum and he saw his reserved parking!

Berny, the most thanks to you man!

I am so glad you came up to give us your time!

Thank you as well for the stories, and teaching us all how to get real technical, and "read between the lines!"

berny13

Mike/TB379, the inside canopy frames, windshield frames, and canopy sill are flat black.  That was the standard color on all versions of the Phantom. 

Thanks, Berny -- I'll see if I can lay on the colour tomorrow, and maybe get the first metallic on the tail end as well. I'm hoping to have this one to the finish line in the next week or two, depending on committments, it'll be my first finished Phantom since 2003 (which appeared in FSM that year, and was Hasegawa's original tool -E, in the markings of the 57th FIS, by Superscale.)

Cheers, glad you had a great time at the museum!

Mike/TB379

Ken, Dom, and Rich, I had a great time at the museum.  I could have spent a whole week there and would have enjoyed each day.  Thanks to all three of you for giving me the opportunity to share time with a great bunch of guys. 

Mike/TB379, the inside canopy frames, windshield frames, and canopy sill are flat black.  That was the standard color on all versions of the Phantom. 

Looks like you had an absolutely marvelous time at the museum, guys, I so wish I could have been there to hear Berny's reminiscences about the Phabulous Phantom! Looking forward to more pics!

Today's progress:

Not much to report, been hard at work on RL things, but I got the canopy masked, using EZ-Mask vinyls, which went on suprisingly well. Here they are "raw":

And with a few tape tidy-ups (probably my fault, I'm working with twin magnifying glasses to see the edges of the canopy frames) and seals where the right and left halves come together:

Quite a good product, and you get two sets on a sheet, designed for the Fujimi kit -- I haven't found an Eduard set for this bird so far.

The big question now is, what colour was the inside of the canopy frame? Black or gray? Photos of Brit birds seem to be showing black, anybody got any thoughts?

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Great stuff, ya'll! Wish I could've been there.

O, technically, you could hang those 5 mini guns on any mark of the F-4. Hanging those in real life was probably for giggles anyhow.

Glenn

Or in the case of us ex-grunts, just a bit more ammo.. lol  Had a great time Berny, hope you had a good flight home.

berny13

Hang in there O.  A lot can happen in six months.  An old Crew Chief saying is "The difficult we do imediately, the impossible takes just a little bit longer".

berny13

Hang in there O.  A lot can happen in six months.  An old Crew Chief saying is "The difficult we do imediately, the impossible takes just a little bit longer".

Hi Berny,

Good to see you posting.  I guess that means your flight home went okay?

I just wanted to thank you again for the honor and privilege to spend the weekend with you at the museum.  I had a great time and I am still beaming and grinning ear to ear!  It was very entertaining listening to your stories about the time you spent in the U.S. Air Force.

Ken

Greetings everyone,

Well, I finally got home and unloaded the truck and unpacked my suitcase from our trip to the museum with Berny.  We had a wonderful time.  For those of you who were not there, you missed a really fun, informative, great time.  I am going to share some of the pictures.

This one is where we surprised Berny by having the museum reserve his very own parking place:

Berny was also given access to walk behind the barriers to get up close and personel with the RF-4C at the museum.  Here is a picture with him posing next to it:

Then Berny had a seat in the F-4 cockpit that the museum has set up.  Here is a picture of him investigating flight readiness:

Now this next picture would be a Mig's worst nightmare to see on it's six:

Thanks Dom for that shot!

I will post more pictures later.

Ken

Hang in there O.  A lot can happen in six months.  An old Crew Chief saying is "The difficult we do imediately, the impossible takes just a little bit longer".

Howdy F-4 junkies,

As much as it pains me to say this, I may have to throw in the towel on this build.  Maybe rescribing and riveting the build was too ambitious.  Here we are in July, and I haven’t even finished riveting the fuse yet!  It’s scribed, but I’m still stumbling along with the rivets.  I’m about 80% done with the fuse, but I’m not sure if I’m satisfied with the results.  Part of me thinks I should just cut my losses, box up my progress for another day, and turn my attention to another project. 

I’m on the fence here gang.  I still wanna build the 15 minigun Phantom,  but I don’t know if it’s gonna happen for this GB.  I have a Hase -B in the stash that I think I can turn into a –C, or I can pick up Revellogram’s –C, leaving both with their raised detail.  Or maybe I plug along and finish what I’ve started?  I dunno…I may be at the point where I’ve officially lost interest in this project. 

What do you guys think?

Cheers,

-O

Today's progress on the Fujimi F-4K:

The second round of filling and sanding is done, though there's likely to be a few spots that demand more attention before I commit to paint. The panel lines were gently run-through with a scribing tool and though they're very subtle in the sanded areas there was enough to guide the point, so they're still there. The instrument coaming was resprayed in tire black to better match the anti-glare characteristic, then the projector for the HUD was created with a spot of silver paint before the reflector glass was mounted. Then the canopy went on with plenty of Testor Clear Parts Cement and will dry overnight.

Of course, it was not until the canopy was on that I noticed some paint had worn off one of the ejection grips that I detailed so carefully (it took the magnification effect of these photos for me to see it...) Ah well, nothing I can do about it now!

Next up, mask the canopy, get some masking into the intake trunks, mount the gear bay doors or at least mask their mating points, and I can think about colour. On that note, I began masking the seeker heads of the Sparrows for this and two other kits today as well.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Jim -- Good point, we rather left the Luft 70s camo hanging. My own position is this: The topside gray I have an exact match for, Revell Aqua #36 378 Dunkelgrau. Nobody seems to make a match for the topside green, and it varies a fair buit in photos, from a yellowish olive to a very dark green. As the German name for the shade is Gelbolive, my gut tells me to add a spot of yellow to one of the dark greens until it 'feels" right. The underside gray was officially named Silbergrau, and my best description was that it was a metallic gray, but that the metallic component was very subtle and was often indistinguishable.

Best bet? Homebrew the green and silver gray until they look like the best reference shots. I'll be doing that with the RN -K, the topside Extra Dark Sea Grey is only found in the Gunze range, and everyone says Tamiya Panzer Grey is very close, but to me there's a blue component to the EDSL in many photos that Panzer Grey is missing, so I'm thinking of adding some XF-82 Ocean Grey 2, which is lighter and does have a blue feel. That might visually do the trick, and create a scale colour effect too...

Today's progress on the -K is nothing spectacular. The first round of filling is rubbed down and a few spots are refilled, hopefully that job will be done tomorrow. I'll turn to the canopy as soon as the heavy handling is done, and that'll be as soon as the panel lines are redefined in a few places. I've fitted the twin nose intakes and they were a largely custom job, the parts are a mile out so were carved to shape with a file and flushed into the bearers with adzed CA.

The lower tail antenna still needs to be replaced, and there'll be eight gear bay door parts that can go straight on, then it'll be time for paint. Black for the radome, two shades of metallic for the tail end, mask up and into the main colours, putting a total of 24 missiles into white at the same time. I'll do the engine bay auxilliary air doors open.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Welcome to the Wing, James -- I'll update p1 right away. Feel free to upload progress pics of your builds to date -- the more the merrier!

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Hey Thunberbolt and other Phantom lovers,

I would very much like to get in on this build if ya'll think it possible. I am already underway with two. One is an Italeri f-4J, that I'm marking as a Marine 333 Sq, from the movie The Great Santini for a Reels category in the  virginia Shootout in Roanoke va. The other is a Revell f-4c from Seymour Johnson of the 4th tfw 335th fs in SEA camo. As a side note I intend on building one of every aircraft type that has flown from Seymour and the 4th. I tried to finish a group of 4 Revell 1/72 Thunderbirds from the 70's for the last group build but was unable to complete as they are quite the problem child, lots of flashing and misfit but i'm still working on them slowly but do not wish to submit them for this build. 

So if I can that's an Italeri 1/48 f-4j and a Revell 1/48 f-4c. 

on another side note my keypad on my Mac is doing strange things so some letters that should be capital are not and some Rs my get thRough that aRe.

Thanks James

Thunderbolt379

Thanks, guys! Jimbot, the fit of the Fujimi birds is generally good, but here and there it was like they lost the plot. The standard tooling has issues with the wingroot, intake seams and where it all comes together on the underside between the ducts. This tooling was more accurate but there is still a mismatch in that area, thus the ten-thou shim. The mismatch extended to the ducts too, and was slightly larger, I would have shimmed them too but had already painted the lips (white, same colour as the plasticard that would have shimmed them!) that show up in the bottom of the ducts (so filler was used instead). Next time I build these molds I'll add a shim to the corners of the lower wing part that end up in the bottom of the ducts.

The RF-4E I have at an advanced state, waiting for a Norm '72 Luft scheme, really fought me in this area, the mismatch extended to the height of the cockpit, the GIB had no eyeline over the sills and when I adjusted that it changed the spread of the fusleage, so I adjusted that and it changed the fit at the wingroots... Fujimi Phantoms look good finished but there's always a certain amount of fiddling to get them there.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

I guess it's not unusual for any kit to have some fit issues. The Hasegawa with the fuselage made up of four sections took a bit of fiddling to get them just right and i did a bit fiddling with the fuselage as well to eliminate a gap at the wing root. Now I am having to work a bit on the intakes as they seem to be a bit too wide where they meet the fuselage, and leaves a step. I didn't realize this until I cemented it in place, but made some adjustments before cementing the other. Now I'm having to try to fix the first one without destroying too much surrounding detail.

Hey, I know we discussed what color to paint the bottom of the Norm 75 Luft "F", but did we actually come to a conclusion? I don't remember. I have read that factory painted on a silver (Painted, not bare metal) but this usually faded to a gray. I'll have to look back through our discussion here, but it seems we have filled 158 pages with our dribble....

Jim

Grab a badge when she's done...

M/TB379

Just picking on someone random, but what is the deal with the group build badges? Do you get them when you enter or when you finish! Thanks,

Noob (AKA ME)

By all means, welcome aboard MA101 -- updating the lead post...

Mike/TB379