1/72 F-4J

[mirageiv]

Hello all,

First WIP on britmodeller and I begin with some phantom builds, maybe 4-5 by the end (If I stick with them all long enough ). Some will be in flight, some parked with possibly flaps down. I know they will not be up to some of the standards set here (unbelievable dedication to detail on this forums) but I hope to learn a lot in the thread and you guys enjoy as much as I do some of my builds.

So first up, some of the decals. The airdoc sheets are excellent, especially the grouped stencils for the luftwaffe jets, some are unbelievably tiny! The model decal sheet is old but hopefully usable, I'll spray some micro decal film on them to make sure they do not brake apart when I eventually place them in water.

The first along the line will be an F-4J from 74 Squadron, not sure exactly which one yet, but it will be a repainted jet in barley grey as I'm not too fond of the odd blue/green on the US painted jets. This is the Hasegawa kit which to me has captured the phantom shape the best out of any kit in 1/72. I fitted some resin intakes from goffy models and they did not fit very well at all. I bought a few sets a while back and since they seem OOP, maybe because they make steps to the lower fuselage/side fuselage of greater than 1.5mm! Certainly will not use them on any other phantom kits. I will use the slotted stabs from the fujimi kit. The load will be 4xaim-9L, 4xSkyflash from Hase F3, 2 wing tanks and a fujimi gun pod.

Currently just finishing the seam work and will begin the rescribing. I read off the forums that the 3M blue tape is ideal for rescribing and I have found exactly that, far better than dymo tape, highly recommend it if you have not tried it yet.

Here are some seats and pilots. 2 are fujimi and 2 are hasegawa, they still need details adding yet. Also two pilots for the F-4J, Revell nato crew I think, still need work but I have always been rubbish at painting figures .

The second jet along the line is an FGR.2 from 2 squadron circa early seventies. Thinking of using full colour roundels on this and a final gloss finish. It is the Fujimi FG.1 Navy kit converted buy using a spare hasegawa fin tip, filled the catapult hooks and will use stabs from a revell/hase kit. I will go ahead and purchase the odds and ordinance phantom recce suite as I need the strike camera and E.M.I recce pod. I was thinking of buying another fujimi kit for these spares and build that into another FGR.2 but seeing a few go on eBay recently at £40-£50 , I'll get the OAO replacement set.

Again the cockpit needs to be finished, atm just finishing the filling phase. Nice fitting kit but had a few sink marks in a few places.

Thats all for now, probably a few days cleaning up the F-4j before primer. I will try and use xtracolor paints as much as possible but for the barley grey. I think humbrols hue is a better match, so I have a question. If I mix humbrol matt barley grey with their 'gloss cote' will it spray to a nice glossy finish like xtracolor and actually dry? Best regards,

David.

Edited April 14, 2015 by mirageiv

[DAG058]

I will be watching, this looks great!

[Duncan B]

Nice to see some Toom Foolery going on.

Be aware though that only a few of the RAF Phantoms were actually fitted with dual controls but maybe you know that already. (I notice in your last picture you have the stick fitted in the rear cockpit)

Duncan B

[Darby]

Looking forward to seeing the finished article.

[mirageiv]

Thanks guys. Duncan, thanks for the heads up, totally forgot about the small number of twin sticks in RAFG .

A little more progress,

I finished detailing the cockpit and installing the pilots. It is not perfect, but good enough for me when the canopy will be closed. I also found some little star shaped glitter pieces that can be used in making in flight HUD's, not too sure if you can see it in the photos though.

I then attached the canopies and filled the seam with vapourless superglue, normal superglue even with well Klear coated canopies I have found is a gamble for fogging. Quite a delicate job to sand around the front windscreen but the use of the blue 3M tape helped again to avoid any major scratches.

I then primed with tamiya fine surface primer, pretty smooth but rather thick, must get some alclad primer pronto!

I added the small sighting scope on the left cockpit side,

Sorry about the pants photo's guys, I'll try get them better for the painting

David

Edited April 11, 2015 by mirageiv

[Duncan B]

Some nice progress being made.

Duncan B

[Gene K]

I finished detailing the cockpit and installing the pilots. It is not perfect, but good enough for me when the canopy will be closed. I also found some little star shaped glitter pieces that can be used in making in flight HUD's, not too sure if you can see it in the photos though.

Very nice job, David. I'm particularly impressed with the clean seam you produced at the join of the intakes to the fuselage side - how did you do that???

A minor point - if it's not too late, you may want to reroute the shoulder straps on the seats to come from the top of the parachte bucket as shown here:

Gene K

[mirageiv]

edit, hmm cannot seem to quote?

Gene, the intakes are from goffy models which actually fitted far worse than the kit intakes. I just filled/sanded many times and used superglue to make sure I could scribe a neat line. In the future I ill just use the kit intakes and go from there. Thanks for the heads up on the seat straps, duly noted for future builds but it is too late now, glued/filled the canopies on . Best regards,

David.

Edited April 11, 2015 by mirageiv

[Gene K]

In the future I ill just use the kit intakes and go from there.

David,

As concerns resin, the XMM (revised) intakes fit well, but if you want an alternate method to go seamless using the kit intakes, consider this (XMM and My Method links in first paragraph).

Gene K

Edited April 12, 2015 by Gene K

[mirageiv]

Little update,

For some reason I am having a very hard time trying to spray humbrol, even when thinned 80-20 thinner-paint, it just 'peppers' the model and does not spray smoothy. In the pre-shading below you can see how the paint went on. Can anyone say why this is happening?

I pressed on anyways and sprayed the light aircraft grey from xtracolor. This went on well as as always and I added some rusting dryers to shorten the drying time. An initial thin coat then the usual post shading lightening/darkening of the standard colour. The photos do not truly convey the tonal differences but it is there .

I then masked off and began to spray humbrol barley grey but this too just peppered the model and just would not spray well despite differing thinning ratios and pressures. Really confused on this as humbrol usually spray ok . So I tried xtracolor barley grey but this just not seem the right tone to me, too browny, dark and no blue hue. I added a little blue and lightened it and it came out like this,

It came out resembling the original US spec of the delivery grey and not what I intended. Guess I'll go back to the mixing board to try and resemble the humbrol version of barley grey. Best regards,

David.

[mirageiv]

Thank you Gene for the links, good to know for future builds! I will try something along the lines of your method I think, the result will look good enough for me. For this jet, using the revell kit I will approach something similar, or chicken out and use FOD covers

David

[sunray]

David you are doing some excellent work here. Where did you get the 3m tape from? Is it the 3mm 3M 471 Fine line Vinyl tape? Keep up the great work.

[mirageiv]

David you are doing some excellent work here. Where did you get the 3m tape from? Is it the 3mm 3M 471 Fine line Vinyl tape? Keep up the great work.

Thank you , I got the tape off eBay;

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3M-471-Blue-Fine-Line-Vinyl-Masking-Tape-3mm-33m-Roll-/120992255799?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item1c2bb34f37

I believe it is that tape. Really is a lot better than dymo tape for rescribing and masking off areas for fine sanding/filling.

David.

[David H]

Rather impressive progress so far, David.

Agreed that the Hasegawa and Fujimi kits are the way to go for sea-going Phantoms. The Fujimi kit i built 2 of, and found them to be drama-free builds. The Hasegawa kit, by comparison is over-engineered due to its intent to be all Phantoms to All People, and the seam cleanup proved to be a real buzzkill for my. My Marine F-4B languishes on the Shelf of Doom. All the hard work is done, just lots of fiddly bits, like missiles, rocket pods, pylons and such....

david

[Winenut]

Really great work here.

The Phantom is a great subject.

Really nice detail on the pilots and seats.

Sorry you're having trouble spraying the humbrol....I agree they're normally fine .

Are you using the correct humbrol thinners?

Cheers

Bruce

[giemme]

Phantom phever spreading over ...

Ciao

[mirageiv]

Rather impressive progress so far, David.

Agreed that the Hasegawa and Fujimi kits are the way to go for sea-going Phantoms. The Fujimi kit i built 2 of, and found them to be drama-free builds. The Hasegawa kit, by comparison is over-engineered due to its intent to be all Phantoms to All People, and the seam cleanup proved to be a real buzzkill for my. My Marine F-4B languishes on the Shelf of Doom. All the hard work is done, just lots of fiddly bits, like missiles, rocket pods, pylons and such....

david

Thank you David. Yes there are a lot of parts on the hasegawa phantom, but I'll take it given its accuracy over the other kits. Thats the thing with phantoms I guess, they carried so many different stores, wore so many colour schemes and had so many different intricacies wrt version, they are always quite an involved build. Finish the F-4B off!

Sorry you're having trouble spraying the humbrol....I agree they're normally fine .

Are you using the correct humbrol thinners?

Thanks Bruce. Yes I was using humbrol's brand of thinner, I think it was the actual paint tins, maybe some of their Chinese crappy paint. I managed to sort it and find an old old tin of humbrol barley grey which went on like they usually do. Infact a few of the tins I have bought in the last few months have very corse pigments and just do not spray well, maybe just old stocks.

I managed to get the greys on over the weekend. The old tin of barley grey sprayed well, though its quite matt despite putting in some humbrol gloss cote, will probs need a light buff then tamiya clear for decaling. From the photos I have seen of the repainted F-4J's, the contrast between the barley grey and medium sea grey on the wings seems barely noticeable and that given the jet I want to model is a recent repaint, I kept it quite clean.

I mixed 50-50 xtracolor med-sea grey with humbrol barley grey to get the right hue to my eye, not sure you guys can see it on the photos though! The nose was sprayed I think 50-50 med sea grey-compass grey which came out something like the photos I have. I'll let these dry for a few days before the black fin and metallic areas for alclad.

If you can see the difference ,

I got a little heavy handed with the barley grey so some edges will need a little micro mesh,

Till next time

David.

Edited April 13, 2015 by mirageiv

[giemme]

Can't really see the difference between wings and fuselage greys, apart from the fuselage one being sort of "warmer", if that makes sense. It can be the pics, but probably it will also show differences after curing properly and after the transparent coats go on. Nevertheless, neat paint job! (by the way: you probably already know that, but looks like there's a rough edge on the right (starboard side) wing leading edge)

Did you rescribe all the panel lines on the kit? I know they are not very shallow, and as you said you got heavy handed airbrushing the top, but still I can see them very clearly.

Ciao

[mirageiv]

Can't really see the difference between wings and fuselage greys, apart from the fuselage one being sort of "warmer", if that makes sense. It can be the pics, but probably it will also show differences after curing properly and after the transparent coats go on. Nevertheless, neat paint job! (by the way: you probably already know that, but looks like there's a rough edge on the right (starboard side) wing leading edge)

Did you rescribe all the panel lines on the kit? I know they are not very shallow, and as you said you got heavy handed airbrushing the top, but still I can see them very clearly.

Ciao

Thank you. I sprayed a darker medium sea grey in the end to make the contrast more stark as you say it was a little too subtle despite the pictures not doing it any favours. Yes all the edges will be taken care of, I think it was a little masking tape peeping out from the lower wing . I did rescribe quite a few lines on the kit because they were poorly defined, some completely gone after a little sanding, so hopefully they will stand up to washes and further clear cotes without vanishing. I got a little heavy handed with the barley grey, but the paint was very thin, so no damage to the panel lines really, just a little build up in some places at the masking tape, fixed now though .

Best regards,

David.

[sunray]

This coming along very nicely David. Thanks for the link for the 3M tape it arrived this morning. Had a go rescribing with it and you are smack on the money. It is easier to scribe around curved areas of fuselage, a lot easier to apply and can be reused better than Dymo tape. All in all an excellent tip.

[mirageiv]

This coming along very nicely David. Thanks for the link for the 3M tape it arrived this morning. Had a go rescribing with it and you are smack on the money. It is easier to scribe around curved areas of fuselage, a lot easier to apply and can be reused better than Dymo tape. All in all an excellent tip.

Thanks . Glad to be of help but I picked up the tip somewhere on here, so many useful things you pick up off these forums. Also very good for isolating some fine sanding!

Regards,

David.

[mirageiv]

Hi chaps,

Managed to get the black gloss on, xtracolor night black. Painted the metal areas with alclad, will have to weather them better later on. I also sprayed some tamiya clear on the barley grey to protect it, imho easier to use then 'Klear'. Little concerned with how clean its looking though, although I wanted to build a pretty freshly repainted jet, I think I will go over some of the panels with some grey shades for a better tonal appearance.

Best regards,

David.

p.s does anyone know the exact colour match for the RAF Phantom gunpod? I cannot tell what it should be from photos.

[giemme]

Looking really good! I love the way you weathered the metallics. Oh, and now I can actually see the difference between the fuselage grey and the wings one

Panel line wash , IMHO, is the best way to give the AC life. Go for it!

Ciao

[mirageiv]

Looking really good! I love the way you weathered the metallics. Oh, and now I can actually see the difference between the fuselage grey and the wings one

Panel line wash , IMHO, is the best way to give the AC life. Go for it!

Ciao

Thank you, I will do some more the the metallic areas to give some panel variation, most were quite dulled/darkened with dirt. I am currently waiting for my airbrush to be repaired so progress has halted on the F-4J for the time being.

I got this going though, planning it to be an Israeli F-4E during the Yom Kippur War, loaded with as much as i can fit on it

I used Revell consoles/panels as the hasegawa kit is plain (not finished yet),

If anyone is interested I am also building an F-4F and RF-4E for the phantom group build, I originally planned to build them in this thread but I saw the group build instead;

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234980659-f-4f-jabog-36/

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234980660-rf-4e-pair-2nd-entry/

Thanks for looking, David.

[giemme]

Now that's a true Phantom obsession!

Ciao