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Eyes of the Corps - Converting a F-4B to a Recce Bird.


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Hi Everyone,

As you may know Hasegawa have somewhat shied away from properly completing the Photo Phantom Phamily by only choosing to issue a RF-4B based on the last ten airframes with the later F-4J wing. This inevitably excluded several schemes that needed the modeller to either ignore the wing issue or come up with a 'thin wing' solution. One option was the long defunct Cutting Edge or, more recently, the Royale Resin F-4B conversion and use it on the Hasegawa kit.

There was an alternative which actually came out before there was a proper RF-4C/E kit - Black Box produced a RF-4 nose for the Hasegawa F-4C (set 48-052). Now that Academy have produced a brand new F-4B it raised the possibility of resurrecting this option.

The plan is to shoehorn this lot:

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into this:

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to hopefully end up with this:

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(Wikipedia image)

Before I start this project fully I have to say that the basic paint has been started on the Aires cockpit as I tend to do these in batches, cockpit painting not being one of my favourite tasks. The resin block has also been removed from the nose. Apart from that the base kit is completely un-started:

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Hopefully this won't affect its eligibility in the Group Build. If it does I have several other options in mind.

Until next time,

Jonathan

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Wow! What a project!

Looking at the amount of work that's needed in this, the amount done to the cockpit is just fine. :)

Sean

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Thanks everyone, hopefully this one won't fight me as much as the A300-600 kitbash I did in the last Airliner GB has. (It's still in progress BTW but getting there slowly)

Wow! What a project!
Looking at the amount of work that's needed in this, the amount done to the cockpit is just fine. :)

Sean

Cheers Sean, I thought I better let everyone know about the cockpit first.

Had a really productive couple of days this weekend. Here's the progress to date:

First up was to adapt the fuselage for the Aires cockpit. I've found that you need to remove as much as possible from the upper edges of the kit aperture to get them to fit. The sections to be removed to fit the photo nose were also marked out. I chose to keep the section immediately forward of the windscreen as it would i) keep the original profile for the kit part, ii) provide a bit of extra area to stabilise the joint and iii) it has the rain dispersal slot missing on the resin part. There'll be a bit more filling but nothing some Milliput can't handle.

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The other big change is the deletion of the Sparrow wells under the fuselage. The Black Box set provides the fairings for the forward pair but you're on your own for the rear. To address this I started by gluing in some half round plastic rod then added some filler:

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Since the Black Box nose was designed for the Hasegawa F-4 the forward fuselage to wing joint also needed adapting. Here the rear section is carefully cut away from the Academy lower forward fuselage and trimmed it to match the RF nose.

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Now the big moment, cutting the sections away from the nose to fit the photo nose:

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A first dry fit indicates everything will go together as planned :yahoo:

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Even the cockpit went in!

There's a fair bit of fettling to do to close up the gaps properly but dimensionally it looks okay. Since it's the same length here's a picture taken against the F-4E plans in the Isradecal Kurnass book for comparison:

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This was a bit of a worry as I wasn't sure the stripes on the nose and fuselage would line up properly. Hopefully it won't be too much of an issue now.

No proper painting as yet although I have sprayed some white Tamiya primer on things like the undercarriage and general lower surfaces. The clear parts have also been dipped in Future ready for the addition of the Hypersonic interiors.

Jonathan

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Jonathan

Good to see you doing something easy for a change.

Looking forward to seeing this one at Telford, alongside my nearly completed Kurnass 2000.

Good luck with this one.

Ted

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Great piece of surgery. To succeed in applying a nose replacement for a different kit and get an Aires cockpit to fit (!) deserves the highest appreciation :)

Al

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks for all the kind words everyone, it's much appreciated. :D

Now, for the long overdue update.

As was inevitable, after doing the basic cutting, layout and initial fitting real life got in the way and progress has slowed significantly. Most of the work since then has been the little fiddly stuff for all the detail parts. Here's what's been done so far:

The resin nose has been glued first using thick superglue then, after adding a couple of plasticard strips, some epoxy adhesive to overcoat the joint:

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The fairings over the forward Sparrow wells were added, these still need to be faired in with filller

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The cockpit:

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I did paint the etched instrument panel faces but wasn't happy with the result so was stripped back ready for another go. This is the front IP as it is now:

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Here's the work that's gone into the jet pipes. Instead of painting them black inside I thought I'd have a go at recreating a more representative look. The J79 had a coating on the exhaust liner which gave it a green colour, so I airbrushed some Humbrol 120 on the inside. The turbine was sprayed with some Alclad Burnt Iron and after this was dry some red-brown acrylic was dry-brushed on. The etched flame holder was sprayed black. Finally the cans were sprayed with a combination of Alclad Stainless Steel and Jet Exhaust with a very dark grey interior.

The turbine and flameholder

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One of the jet pipes :

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The cockpit is now fully glued into the fuselage and I've added some strips on the lower section to support the upper fuselage and the inevitable filler once the two are joined.

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That's it for now. Hopefully now that I've got past the big hurdle of the cockpit the build will pick up speed. I just have to decide when to install the intakes in order to best tackle cleaning up the various seams.

Jonathan

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi Everyone, I can't believe it's been three weeks since the last update! The build has been progressing slowly but here's where it is as of today:

I opted to join the fuselage sections together first before adding the intakes . This allowed the join between the upper and lower nose sections to be cleaned up before adding the intakes. This left a gap at the aft edge of the intake which was filled with Milliput. This was also used to fill in the large gap at the front of the resin nose to fuselage. As you can see it came out pretty well after a coat of primer:

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Next was to scribe the photoflash section doors on the rear fuselage. These were measured off a Hasegawa RF-4B then any unwanted panel lines filled in:

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With the upper wings fitted and the joints sorted it was paint time. Since we all know what a Light Gull Grey/White F-4 looks like, I'll skip over that bit except to say I used Halfords Appliance White decanted and sprayed for the lower surface and Xtracolor LGG for the uppers. Once this had all hardened off the forward and rear fuselage sections were masked off. The rear has been sprayed with Alclad steel and dark aluminium as a base. This will be adjusted to vary the tones a little more. To mask the curve on the forward fuselage I photocopied the Impact Decals instructions enlarging the relevant part by 200% to get the right size. After applying the basic outline the curve around the nose was cut out oversize and glued on to the masking tape then, using the white curve as a guide, trimmed back. Impact Decals call the blue out as FS 15050, suggesting that you match this to the Modex; however Xtracolor actually have this as X123 Blue Angels Blue but mislabelled as FS15052. This has now been sprayed on to the nose and vertical stabiliser:

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This is all now drying ready for the second coat so it's back to some of the smaller details such as the wheels and landing gear.

The light is starting to glow at the end of the tunnel - hopefully it's not an oncoming train! :lol:

Jonathan

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