Ben Brown

I need to build one of those! I spent almost 500 hrs teaching in them, and flew one my company had purchased across the US, from California to eastern North Carolina. We taught spins as part of our PPL program, plus it was required as part of CFI training. A friend and I nearly killed ourselves trying to replicate Bill Kershner's spin films (he had one where he did 23 turns in a C-150!). We learned you lose a lot of altitude in a hurry, and the prop really does stop after 8 turns, every time. 😱 Oh, to be young and stupid again. IIRC, the only difference between our Aerobat and the vanilla 150s were the afore-mentioned seat harnesses, the rooftop windows, and the doors had quick release handles. Pull the handle and the entire door came off. Ours also had a faint aroma of vomit.... Ben

One cosmetic item you may or may not want to worry about is the aft fuselage around the afterburner nozzles was different on the jets fitted with the "short" J-79 afterburner nozzles (F-4B/C/D/RF-4C) vs those with the "long" nozzles (F-4E/F/G/J/S). Tommy Thomason's blog has an excellent post on this topic: LINK I'm currently modifying a 1/48 Hasegawa RF-4B to a C, and I'm using a little styrene sheet to extend the fuselage aft. It isn't too hard to do, just a little tedious in 1/48. It might be a little easier in 1/32. You'll probably have to do some minor sanding of the afterburner nozzles to get everything to fit. Cheers! Ben

To my eye, Koster's canopy looked a little better than C&H's. I read that these guys bought Koster's masters. Perhaps they could be persuaded to release a correction canopy & windscreen based on the Koster canopy? If they were to only release the clear parts for the RF-101 conversion, one could still use it with a Monogram windscreen. It fits almost perfectly. Cheers! Ben

Agreed. The panel line needs to be moved aft to a few scale inches forward of the intake lip, anyway, so there's no need to try to preserve it in its present position. LINK to photo You've done a great job fixing the intakes! Of course you realize that once you finish the model, someone will release some resin drop-in replacement intakes. At least, that's how my luck usually runs! 😁 Cheers! Ben

Nikolay, your modifications to the intakes look great! Ben

Hi Nikolay, I just now found your build thread and read through it. You are doing a great job on this kit! I'm starting to regret selling mine and might have to go find another one. 😁 I like your solution to the intake problem. I did the same thing on my two C&H conversions. Kitty Hawk's kit designer deserves a swift kick in the nads for that screw-up (and for using photo etch for the cockpit consoles!). They're releasing the RF-101A/C with incorrect intakes, too. If you decide to make a clear cover for the tail light, use cyanoacrylate glue to attach a chunk of clear sprue and then sand it to shape. If you don't like how it looks, it's easy to snap it off and try again with a new piece. Cheers! Ben

Thanks!

Neomega made a very nice cockpit for the ESCI kit. Pavla has some intakes and a seat, IIRC. Royale Resin has some nice wheels. High Tech had an extensive resin set that corrected most of the kit's accuracy issues and added a lot of detail, but I think it is long out of production, now. I have the Kitty Hawk kit. Typical of their kits, it is overly-complicated and has some accuracy issues. If you search the Works in Progress section, there was a brave soul who adapted some Pavla intakes and a Neomega cockpit for his South African Air Force model. Ben

Hi All, I received an email this morning advertising some corrected intakes for this kit from Aerocraft Models, sold by Meridia Hobbies. It looks like they've added the missing vents and they include parts to fix the vents over the afterburners as well. Here is the link to the product: LINK I know nothing about Aerocraft or Meridia. I've never ordered from them. I just somehow ended up on their mailing list. Mods, feel free to delete this if I've broken any forum rules. I'm just trying to help those with this kit to fix a couple of issues with it. Cheers! Ben

Most of the models people are adding metal gear struts to are not in need of them, anyway. The original plastic struts are more than adequate for the job. Even the spindly main gear struts on my 1/48 Monogram F-105 were fine for almost 25 years (until I dropped the model while moving it! ). SAC's soft metal struts are usually a step backward, since they're not as sturdy as the plastic they are supposed to replace. Ben

Tommy, Ron Downey just posted an F4H-1F flight manual in his Aviation Archives blog. There is a drawing that sort of shows the cooling air flow from the tail inlet on page 15 and a J-79 version of the air flow drawing John posted above on page 22. Ben

Hi Jackman, I'm doing this off the top of my head, so someone will probably come along soon and correct me. The F-C/D always had the 3 leading edge flap panels (sorry to sound pedantic, but slats are a different animal from leading edge flaps. F-4 wings can be almost as complicated as Spitfire wings!). The F-4A/B started out with 3 LE flaps, but they later disabled the inboard LE flaps in an attempt to improve stabilator authority. The J had the inboards disabled, but had them enabled for a short time when they were initially converted to the S, but eventually had them disabled again. The non-slatted F-4E didn't have the inboard LE flaps. Cheers! Ben

Michigan ANG kept an air defence detachment of F-4Ds at Seymour Johnson AFB, NC for years. They started out with the ADC gray scheme, then went to Europe 1, and finally Hill Gray. South Dakota ANG also went through all 3 camouflage schemes. Cheers! Ben

Hi Christian, The way you mentioned has worked the best for me, even though it's tedious. I'll tape a photocopy of the decals to the model, and then start masking along the decal. I'll use very thin (~1-2 mm) strips of washi tape so it will bend easily to follow the curves and then I go back and fill in with wider strips. I think Tamiya and other hobby suppliers sell their own brand of washi tape, but generic versions are available in bulk from other suppliers for less money. Cheers! Ben

Thanks, Dennis! Two of your three photos illustrate how crew names changed pretty often. Note that F/O T Newby's name appeared on both 004 and 007. Ben

In searching RN FG.1 images on Google, it looks like having the pilot's names on the port canopy rail wasn't very common. Were they usually only painted on the starboard rail, as in Dennis' photos above? Thanks, Ben

Outstanding! Thank you! Ben

Hello All, Thanks for all of the excellent information that's been posted in this thread! It's been quite an education and it will be a tremendous help with the Hasegawa 1/48 FG.1 I'm currently building. I don't have much to add to the discussion, other than to provide a link you all might find useful and a possible answer to the comment on p.17 about why the decal manufacturers don't include crew names. First, the link: The gentleman who runs this Aviation blog (LINK or copy & paste http://aviationarchives.blogspot.com/search?q=f-4k ) posts something new almost daily. There are a lot of good references from McDonnell on Phantoms in general and quite a few for the Spey jets. Most will probably just be for nerds like me to read, but there is some info that's useful for modeling purposes, too. Hopefully, the link will take you to a page that includes FG.1 and FGR.2 aircrew manuals, fuselage cross section drawings from McDonnell, a Plane Captain's handbook, and a few other odds and ends. If you haven't visited this blog, be prepared to spend a lot of time digging around. There is a boatload of interesting documents. The only problem is that some of the web sites to host some of the docs, and they have some ads that might not be safe for work. Other hosts limit the amount of data you can download, so you might have to occasionally wait to download more than a couple of documents. For the crew names, in researching crew names for Thunderbirds F-100s and 4th TFW F-4Ds and Es, I found it extremely difficult to nail down any crew names for a particular jet, except on the rare occasions where I found photos of both sides of the same jet taken on the same day. The crew names changed pretty regularly, so it was hard to say who had their names applied to what jet. The biggest problem I had was that most photos just are not high enough resolution to make out the crew names. Dennis, would you (or anyone else) happen to have crew names for any other RN FG.1s? Perhaps 004? I can sympathize with the comment that Xtradecals can't seem to get the style of lettering right. They consistently botch the stroke and style of lettering on their USAF F-100 and F-4 sheets. Is it just too difficult for the artist to compare what he/she has drawn with photos, or better yet, readily-available tech orders showing exactly how they are to be applied to the airplane? Cheers! Ben

Thanks for the additional info, Tommy! Perhaps Brigade can include a set of stabs, too. Here are some good profile drawings of the evolution of the intakes: The Phantom Phacts blog (A little off topic for this thread, but he also has some great info about the differences between the Phantom FG.1 and FGR.2) Ben

Hi Ted, Thanks for the info! I might have to add this one to my "to do" list. Ben

Hi All, I just discovered this thread and I'm waiting excitedly for this conversion! One thing I don't see in the photo of the parts is the fairing aft of the tail hook that was on the first flight jet. There is a good drawing and photo of it on Tommy Thomason's Tailhook Topics blog HERE, about 1/4 the way down the page. Will we be on our own for a nose probe (easy to do, I'm just lazy )? Have you heard any news about price? Thanks, Ben

Not at the moment. I haven't had time to work out a replacement for Photobucket, yet. Ben

I recently finished building a G with the Cobra Company conversion and Fireball decals. It went well. The only thing the conversion doesn't address is the G's tail rotor gearbox fairing is different from the J. It's easy to modify with styrene. Ben

Hi All, The FJ-1 cockpit appears to have been black, which was in line with North American painting it's F-86 cockpits black until around 1952 (IIRC), when they switched to Dark Gull Gray. FJ-1 NASM This 1952 video of the FJ-2 seems to show a Dark Gull Gray cockpit: YouTube FJ-2 video The jets in the film are actually the XFJ-2 prototypes, but one would think that production FJ-2s would have had gray pits, too. Cheers! Ben

Hi All, Ed, I just discovered your build thread, and your Wild Weasel turned out great! In the spirit of your statement that you like to post research information for the next person, I hope you don't mind if I pitch in a few things I've learned while researching Wild Weasel F-100Fs. I annotated that photo pointing out the antennae for a post I made on Hyperscale several years ago. The link to it died in the Great Photobucket Meltdown. I'm glad you were still able to post it here! I've since learned that that "unknown" antenna ahead of the ARC-34 comm antenna was installed on F-100Ds and Fs equipped to launch the Bullpup missile; it was part of the missile datalink system. You're correct about the shape of the antenna fairing on the tail. It was scabbed-onto the original fairing on the Weasel jets, but the later installations on RHAWS-equipped F-100s had the larger fairing, like what you've posted in the close-up photos of the fairing. The 1/48 Monogram F-100D has the RHAWS fairing, and the Trumpeter, Revell, and ESCI F-100D kits all have the original, narrow fairing. I have yet to find any photos, drawings, or even descriptions of the rear cockpit of the Weasel F-100Fs. I even asked a couple of Weasel pilots if they could recall what it looked like, and got 2 different answers, neither of which jibed with what little you can make out in photos. The front pit was supposed to be very similar to the front pit of a RHAWS-equipped F-100D or F. Finally, there was a film called "First In, Last Out" that was made about the Wild Weasels in Vietnam. You can find it on YouTube. There is a very good in-flight view of a Weasel F-100F with 2 rocket pods on the outboard pylons, and a single Shrike missile on the port inboard. It's the only photo I've found of a Weasel Hun with the Shrike. Cheers! Ben