A Bigger, Badder Aardvark: 1/48 Zoukei-Mura F-4J Phantom

[billn53]

After a couple of relatively short, mojo-restoring builds I'm finally ready to begin my next big project. Being a big fan of the F-4 Phantom II, I've had in my stash for a while Zoukei Mura's 1/48 F-4J.

 

 

 

not to mention, a bunch of aftermarket items that might, or might not, be used:

 

 

 

My last Phantom build was Academy's excellent 1/72 F-4J, which I clothed in the markings for VF-114, the "Aardvarks"

 

 

 

For me, the Aardvarks' bright orange scheme is one of the most attractive Navy high-visibility markings, and I couldn't resist doing it Bigger and Badder in 1/48 scale.

 

My starting point in this build was to decide on what to do for the Phantom's ejection seats. The ones provided by ZM are quite detailed and serviceable, all they lack are harnesses for the crew:

 

 

 

Looking through my aftermarket options, I compared Phantom seats made by Legend Productions, AeroBonus, and Aires.

 

 

 

It was immediately apparent that the Legend seats (center) are much too tall:

 

 

 

 

 

I ultimately selected the AeroBonus seats, mainly because they come complete with crew figures.

 

Most of my effort thus far has been with painting the bang seats and figures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll attach arms and heads when the cockpit is more complete and I've adjusted the seats' height, if needed.

 

Speaking of the cockpit, here's what the tub looks like with parts dry-fitted together:

 

 

 

Plenty of room for the seats to fit:

 

 

 

The bottom of the cockpit tub makes up the nose gear bay. ZM has included plenty of detail in the gear bays (though I cannot vouch for accuracy):

 

 

 

I thought the best way to approach the nose gear bay would be to do my detailing before gluing the parts together. Here they are with a white base coat and gray wash:

 

 

 

The nose gear bay after assembly:

 

 

 

In the cockpit, I sprayed a base coat of dark gull gray, followed by some post-shading with a darker gray to add depth and shadows:

 

 

With that, Step 2 of the kit instructions is complete.

 

Finally, being Halloween, I thought I'd amuse you with my lame attempt to paint the pilot and RIO's faces:

 

I first painted a warm flesh color and dry-brushed with a lighter shade:

 

 

 

Pretty ugly.  So, I applied a thin wash of the lighter shade to hide the ugly brushmarks:

 

 

 

Better, but some detailing is needed:

 

 

 

Just look at those lips! And, where are the eyes? Let's see what I can do about that:

 

 

 

Well, it is Halloween, after all 🎃

 

In truth, the camera brings out the worst of the details. The faces look much better with the naked eye.

 

That's all for now!

 

 

 

[Col.]

VF-114 markings and a crew; well played

[billn53]

Time for an update.

 

Deep into the cockpit now. My biggest effort has been on the instrument panels. I have ZM's add-on PE for the panels but thought I'd give a try at painting them instead. Here's how my paintjob worked out:

 

 

 

Not bad, but not great either. Fortunately, the kit has two instrument panels for the pilot (one for the 'J' model and another for the 'S' model). The only difference is in the surface detail, and since that must be ground off to make room for the PE, I built up the second panel to compare with my hand-painted one.

 

 

 

 

 

The PE looks much better, so that's what I'm going with. In the pic above you can see that I also added the PE instrument cluster to the RIO's panel.

 

I prefer the 3D look of the side panels over the flat PE offerings:

 

 

 

Here's how my cockpit is shaping up thus far, with parts dry-fitted together:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recall how I said earlier that there's plenty of room for the crew? Well, things are starting to get a bit tight. In fact, the RIO has lost his right foot! 

 

 

 

That's all for now. I'll be traveling for business this week, so no more work until next weekend.

 

[Col.]

Excellent work there

[phildagreek]

Looks good!

[billn53]

No, my trip hasn't started yet! I fly out in the morning, and had some free time this afternoon so decided to finish off the cockpit as best I can. Here are the pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice that the crew now have their arms, although they are still missing their heads. Getting the arms in place was a real pain... In some cases, they aren't long enough to reach the controls (see how the pilot's right hand is reaching for the stick, but not quite there). In other cases, I had to do some more surgery to keep the arms from interfering with the cockpit (especially the pilot's left arm, which does reach the throttle but barely clears the cockpit frame).

 

I also haven't added the ejection seat pull-handles, firstly because I must get the heads in place first, but mostly because they're fragile and I think it best to wait until much later in the build to add them.

 

Thanks for viewing!

 

-Bill

 

[billn53]

I returned from my business trip a week ago, but have been under the weather and progress, as much as there is, has been in dibs and dabs. I'm leaving for another trip tomorrow, so let me show you where I am thus far on my big, bad, aardvark:

 

Test fitting of the cockpit in the fuselage revealed some interference between the cockpit and the ledges molded in to the fuselage sides, on which the canopy is supposed to sit. I had to do some surgery to the cockpit sides and rear bulkhead, shown here:

 

 

 

This is the cockpit now sitting properly on its fuselage ledges:

 

 

 

Trimming the cockpit sides lowered the nose gear bay a bit, which will cause a problem when the fuselage bottom is assembled. More on that when I get to it....

 

ZM's engineers have thoughtfully avoided a long seam along the fuselage spine, displacing the joins to run along natural panel lines:

 

 

 

 

 

I had only very minor gaps along the resulting joins, easily filled with acrylic putty. To protect the molded-in panel details, I masked either side of the join to create a trench for the putty.

 

 

 

 

 

The radome went on without any problems, although I did have to carefully sand down a slight rise along the fuselage top & bottom join which allowed the radome to rock side-to-side.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, I lost a molded-in blade antenna just forward of the nose gear.  I'll have to replace this later.

 

 

 

I'll also have to be extra careful with the finely-molded fuel dump at the stern, else the same happen here:

 

 

 

I opened up holes on the vertical stab for my brass pitot probes -- better to do this now than at the end of the build. The rectangular opening forward of the probe holes is for a nav/position light. ZM provides a clear piece that I'll fit later.

 

 

With the fuselage halves assembled, I moved on to the fuselage bottom. ZM gives us full intake trunking, engines, and afterburner cans/nozzles.  This is how they mount to the fuselage bottom:

 

 

 

I will be using some resin aftermarket pieces here, specifically, seamless intakes from DMold Modelworks, and Aires afterburner cans & nozzles.

 

Here's a comparison of the kit and DMold intakes:

 

 

 

And here's the kit vs Aires nozzles:

 

 

 

The Aires afterburner cans also have very nicely detailed interiors compared to the kit offering:

 

 

 

Of course, these aftermarket items preclude me from using the kits engines:

 

 

 

But I can't simply leave the engines out, otherwise I'll have gaping holes at the belly's rectangular cooling openings between the main gear bays. (Normally, one can see a part of the engine bottom through these holes).

 

My solution is to cut away that part of the engine which would be visible, and mount it over the cooling openings. To be correct, I needed to duplicate the distance and angle of the engine from the holes. First, I crafted a set of cradles sized to fit the engine's normal position:

 

 

 

Here are the cut away engine parts sitting on the cradles:

 

 

 

The engine sections were sprayed with flat black primer. I then applied gun metal powered pigment, followed by some chrome pigment to bring out highlights:

 

 

 

Here's the result of my efforts, as viewed through the belly cooling openings. Even less will be visible when the doors for the coolings are in place:

 

 

 

That's all for now, folks! Thanks for viewing.

 

- Bill

 

[billn53]

Wow! It's been two weeks since my last update, which is quite unusual for me. So long, in fact, that I had to go all the way to page 9 to find my build thread. Lots of stuff to show you today -- in summary, they are:

 

- Assembling the wings

- Painting and assembling the Aires afterburner cans & nozzles

- Painting and assembling the GT Resin seamless intakes

- Putting it all together

 

Let's get started!

 

Before gluing the upper and lower wing halves together one must decide pylons and armament. Since I'll be adding both the inner and outer wing pylons, I had to drill out the appropriate mounting holes in the lower wing:

 

 

 

The forward AIM-7 Sparrow bays will be empty, so I installed blanking pieces as called for in the ZM instruction booklet. They didn't fit very well and I had to fill in gaps with acrylic putty:

 

 

 

Next step was to build up the main landing gear bays:

 

 

 

It was then time to glue the wing halves together:

 

 

 

I then turned my attention to the Aires resin exhausts. A test fit convinced me I would be able to slide the exhaust assembly into the completed fuselage. I had to remove the rectangular engine mounts on the belly pan. I also added styrene stops to preclude me from accidently inserting the exhausts too deep into the fuselage:

 

 

 

Painting and assembling the Aires exhausts was straightforward. I used reference photos to guide my choice of colors. The interior of the afterburner can is a greyish-green, becoming more gray toward the engine:

 

 

 

   

 

I sprayed the turbine rear cone and blades with a dark metallic, and used gun metal for the afterburner flame holders:

 

   

 

I primed the exhaust nozzles with Tamiya gloss black, followed by Humbrol "polished steel" MetalCote:

 

 

 

 

 

I lightly polished the Humbrol MetalCote to highlight details, and finished off by adding some rust pigment to the nozzle interior:

 

 

 

Here's my finished exhaust, and a comparison with the real thing:

 

 

 

 

 

Next item on my list were the GT Resin seamless intakes. This is what's provided in the kit:

 

 

 

You can see in the above pic that I've given the compressor face a layer of gunmetal, using this photo as reference:

 

 

 

The GT Resin intakes are a "drop fit" package, meaning no surgery is needed on the ZM kit. However, I found that the resin intakes needed some trimming to fit correctly. In particular, I had to grind down part of the intake lower edge where it interfered with a guide tab on the belly pan:

 

 

Detailing on the resin parts is very good -- at least as good as the kit pieces:

 

 

 

I painted the intake interior gloss white, with a band of light gull gray around the intake lip.

 

 

 

This is the assembled intake, compared to the real thing:

 

   

 

Last thing before installing the intakes was to paint the fuselage side behind the splitter plates. I also added the refueling probe door on the starboard side:

 

 

With the intakes and exhausts done, I was at last ready to piece everything together and close up the fuselage:

 

 

 

Good news is that the kit's wing-to-fuselage join is perfect; absolutely no filler needed (unlike some other Phantom kits I've built)

 

 

 

Bad news is that there are lots of gaps around the resin intakes. Nothing too serious, but they will take a fair amount of work to correct:

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

To be honest, I have to wonder if I wouldn't have been better off dealing with the kit's intake seams, and thus avoiding the above fit issues with the seamless intakes.

 

I also have a mysterious gap at the front of the belly pan, where it joins the radome:

 

 

 

But, the other good news is that the Aires afterburner cans fit nice and tight after some minor sanding of the rear fuselage openings:

 

 

 

And, that's the end of my progress report. Hopefully it won't be another two weeks until my next one!

 

 

 

 

 

[billn53]

My focus the past couple of days has been on tackling the poor fit around the resin intakes. To fix this, I began by filling in the worst of the gaps with various thicknesses of styrene strip:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I then sanded the strip down until flush with the surface. Although the gaps were filled, there remained areas with a step where the kit plastic and the resin intake met. I'm guessing that these were caused by the resin shrinking as it cured:

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to use "sprue gloop" to build up the resin surface and thereby eliminate the step. I choose sprue gloop because it doesn't flake off like many putties. It also accepts scribing well, and I'll definitely have some panel lines to re-scribe where I've applied the sprue gloop.

 

 

 

I'll be building up my new surface with multiple layers of sprue gloop. The stuff works great but takes a good day or three to harden, depending on its consistency. So, it will probably be the weekend before I find out how well I've done with eliminating the annoying steps.

[billn53]

The sprue gloop set up nice and hard, and my job this weekend was to sand smooth the gaps and steps around the resin inlets. I'm pretty happy about how things look now, considering where I started. Some before & after shots:

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

I airbrushed Mr Surfacer 1200 over the finished seams to help find any remaining blemishes. Mostly all I need to do is scribe the panel lines that have been lost.

 

Moving on to other areas...

 

ZM provides separate flaps, ailerons, and leading edge slats for the wings. Curiously, they are designed to be installed only in the full-up position! 

 

 

 

I don't desire to have everything "hanging out", but it would be good if at least the ailerons were drooping, as is often seen with Phantoms on the tarmac. Here's what I'm shooting for:

 

 

 

If I were to simply glue the ailerons at an angle, a huge gap would be created on the upper side between the wing and the aileron. To avoid this, a little surgery is needed. First, I used a ball-shaped diamond head on my rotary tool to grind out a groove in the flat mounting surface at the rear of the wing:

 

 

 

I also removed some material from the bottom leading edge of the ailerons:

 

 

 

Now my ailerons droop nicely:

 

 

 

(The gap seen in the photo is because the ailerons are just taped in place, it will be smaller when I actually glue them to the wing)

 

Lastly, I have assembled and primed the landing gear. With some detail painting and addition of brake/hydraulic lines they should look great:

 

   

 

I'm off this week on another business trip, so I won't have any bench time until the weekend.

 

 

 

 

[billn53]

Back home and back to the workbench!

 

I finished up the landing gear by adding brake/hydraulic lines and PE placards from Edmund:

 

 

 

   

 

Moving on to the wings, the leading edge slats went on perfectly but I can't say the same for the outer wingtips. The port wingtip had a big gap on top, which took some careful fretting to fix:

 

 

 

The Phantom's wingtips have 12-degrees of anhedral, ZM thoughtfully provides a template to help get the correct angle:

 

 

 

I copied the template onto cardstock and glued the wingtips in position:

 

 

 

My Aardvark is starting to take shape!

 

 

 

 

 

It won't be long now until I'm ready to paint 😀

[Chemguy3000]

Looking good! Nice work filling the chasms around the intakes. 

 

David

[billn53]

1 hour ago, Chemguy3000 said:

Looking good! Nice work filling the chasms around the intakes. 

 

David

Thanks! It turned out better than I had feared. 

[billn53]

My work is closed between Christmas and New Years, so I've plenty of time free for modeling. When I last left off, I was just about ready to paint. I'm happy to report that painting has begun!

 

I primed the Phantom's upper surface with gray Mr Surfacer 1500, thinned 50-50 with Mr Leveling thinner and applied by airbrush. I primed the lower surfaces with Tamiya fine white surface primer, which I decanted into a bottle from the rattlecan. This was also applied using my airbrush. I then pre-shaded in darker grays select panel lines, etc. using Tamiya acrylics. After the primer and pre-shading had dried, I sanded everything smooth with extra fine polishing cloth.

 

  

 

 

 

I also primed and pre-shaded the centerline fuel tank. These habitually took a beating, so I was extra-generous with my pre-shading:

 

   

 

For the base colors I'll be using enamels from True North. I tried them out on my recent Skyhawk build, and was very happy with how they spray and their excellent coverage.

 

 

 

Here is my Phantom's undersurfaces after a couple coats of North Point's gloss white:

 

 

 

 

 

Being enamels, they do take a couple of days to completely dry, so I have time to fill before I can mask and apply the gull gray upper surfaces. I decided to work on my Aardvarks teeth and claws: two AIM-7E Sparrows and four AIM-9D Sidewinders:

 

 

 

These are the kit weapons built up straight OOB, using ZM's decals for the various colored stripes. Everything went together smoothly, except for the yellow decal stripes, which were stiffer than the other stripes and did not want to bend around the missiles' bodies. Eventually I was able to get them into place, but it might have been easier in the long run to paint the yellow stripes instead of struggling with the decals.

 

That's it for now. Next I'll be painting the gull gray upper surfaces.

 

-Bill

[billn53]

I gave the white undersurface enamel a good three days to dry completely, then masked and sprayed the gull gray topside:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The upper color coat is looking pretty good, I've found only a couple of glitches to be fixed:

 

Airbrush "spit" on the radome:

 

 

A "cut" in the not-completely-dry paint just forward of the starboard wing root (my bad):

 

 

I'll want to give the gray a couple more days to dry before tackling the above blemishes.  In the meantime, I did a weathering experiment using the centerline fuel tank.

 

The True North paints are enamels, and I'm hesitant to use enamel-based washes to bring out the panel lines. Instead, I thought I'd try a water-based Flory wash. My first attempt, over the True North white, did a good job on the panel lines but had no 'bite' on the glossy surface, so the fuel tank was left looking too pristine (sorry, I forgot to take any pics).

 

For my second attempt, I sprayed the tank with clear flat acrylic, then applied the Flory wash:

 

 

 

After the wash had dried, I cleaned the fuel tank with a damp cotton cloth. The wash adhered almost too well to the flat acrylic -- it took significant effort to clean the surface. This turned out to be an advantage, because I was able to modulate the level of weathering, so that the top of the tank was relatively clean and dirt collected at the bottom:

 

Centerline tank side view:

 

Centerline tank bottom view:

 

 

The F-4's lower surfaces are notorious for collecting grease and grime, especially beneath the engines (see pic below), so my experience with the centerline tank will come in handy when it's time to weather my Aardvark's fuselage.

 

 

 

 

[Christer A]

Wow! This was a VERY inspired build! That tank is just lovely!

[billn53]

A week has gone by and I haven't updated this thread. I haven't been idle, however. While my Phantom's paint job has been curing in the warming box, I have been working on the canopy. To help add to ZM's already good detailing, I've been using this aftermarket from Hypersonic Models:

 

 

 

The Hypersonic kit includes resin and photoetch, two sizes of wiring, and very detailed instructions. It also includes a vinyl mask -- not for painting, but for protecting the clear parts while they are being modified for the resin additions.

 

The first step is to apply the masking to the pilot's canopy piece and reduce the thickness of the rear frame by sanding and/or grinding. Here is the piece with the masking in place:

 

 

 

In the pic below, I've thinned down the left side of the canopy frame. Compare to the original thickness on the right:

 

 

 

This is the resin part test-fitted to the thinned canopy frame:

 

 

 

I masked and painted the canopy pieces in preparation for installing the Hypersonic resin and PE parts. The paint masks came from DN Models and performed excellently.

 

 

Once the paint was completely dry I proceeded install the Hypersonic Models kit. The pic below shows the pilot's canopy with resin and PE detail parts added:

 

 

 

The center canopy piece varies from one Phantom variant to another. Hypersonic provides parts and instructions for each Phantom version. Here's a snippet:

 

 

 

And here's my center section with parts appropriate to the F-4J installed (front view first, rear view second):

 

   

 

Finally, in some photos it appears that the Phantom's forward windscreen is tinted blue. I tried out this product from Furball Aero-Design:

 

 

 

which ends up looking like this when installed:

 

   

 

I'm not sure I like the blue tint. Fortunately, the Furball film can be easily removed (I tacked mine in place with clear canopy glue around the edge of the film). If anyone reading can confirm or deny that the F-4's windscreen is tinted, I would appreciate very much.

 

Here's my final pic before signing off for tonight:

 

 

 

- Bill

 

[coneheadff]

Looking great so far!!!

 

The windscreen of the F-4 had a blue shade, but not like the one of the decal. They weren't tinted. It's just that from certain angles, due to the thickness of the armored glass, it looks blue/green.

I airbrush the windscreens from the inside with a mix of Gunze clear blue and clear green diluted with Future.

 

Alex

[billn53]

1 hour ago, coneheadff said:

Looking great so far!!!

 

The windscreen of the F-4 had a blue shade, but not like the one of the decal. They weren't tinted. It's just that from certain angles, due to the thickness of the armored glass, it looks blue/green.

I airbrush the windscreens from the inside with a mix of Gunze clear blue and clear green diluted with Future.

 

Alex

Thanks Alex. I too thought the Furball item (not a decal, but a piece of semi-rigid film) is much too dark. I will discard it as an unsuccessful experiment and try your method. 

- Bill

 

[coneheadff]

34 minutes ago, billn53 said:

Thanks Alex. I too thought the Furball item (not a decal, but a piece of semi-rigid film) is much too dark. I will discard it as an unsuccessful experiment and try your method. 

- Bill

 

But try it on a spare part first...it sounds easier than it is. At least I needed a couple of tries 🙄

[billn53]

Much better:

 

 

Thanks again, Alex.

 

- Bill

[DonH]

You, those Hypersonic detail parts really add to the canopy. Great job adding them, it must take some cojones to hack a clear part around like that.

 

Agree with previous posts about the tint on the windscreen, your painting attempt turned out great and much better than the film IMO.

[coneheadff]

22 minutes ago, billn53 said:

Much better:

 

 

Thanks again, Alex.

 

- Bill

Definitely much better

[Col.]

A vast improvement indeed. Along with the added canopy details that screen tint is yet another highlight to your project.

[billn53]

With the canopy now sorted, I turned my attention back to the aircraft itself. My first challenge was to find an orange paint that matches the VF-114 decals. The closest off-the-shelf paint I was able to find is Testor's TS-12 spray paint:

 

 

Remember the headless crew? Having found an orange paint for the helmet stripes, I was able to finish off their heads:

 

 

What a pair! "Pretty Boy" on the left must be the pilot. The other guy, who must be the back-seater, looks like he just came out of a bar room brawl 😁

 

More orange applied, on the fin tip and fuel tank nose:

 

 

I also wanted to highlight the aircraft panel lines. I didn't want to over-do it -- the panel lines on Navy F-4s were usually very subtle. See photo below:

 

 

I decided to go with a gray Flory wash (black would have been too stark, IMO). Here's my Phantom with the Flory wash on the right side, the left side is bare:

 

 

And here it is with the wash complete:

 

 

Which I think compares well to this photo: