Graham T Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Back in the late 80s when I returned to the hobby after a 10 years lay-off, I built a lot of Hasegawa F-4s & at the time I thought they were pretty much state of the art. Yes, the early issues had raised panel lines, yes the cockpit was a bit sparse (nice seats though) & there was absolutely nothing down the intakes but with all the different marks they produced, coupled with the various upgrades & decals provided by AM suppliers, it really was possible to produce a reasonably accurate model of pretty well ANY F-4 in service with ANY operator - full marks Hasegawa. Move forward 30 or so years & we have the Academy kits. To be honest I don't find these to be much of an improvement over the Hasegawa kits - the cockpit is stills sparse, the seats are no better (IMHO probably retrograde) & the main u/c is poor. On the plus side new technology provides that one-piece fuselage. Now we have the ZM kits which surpass the previous offerings significantly. The only area where there seems to have been no progress is the seats which are better than Academy but no better than Hasegawa. It's a nice model with lovely surface detail, nice AIM-9s & -7s, nice cockpit. It also features good, strong location for the main u/c legs & stabilisers - these areas were always an issue for me with the other manufacturer's kits. Only a single decal option though - tight! I wonder whether ZM could be persuaded to produce UK Phantoms? Anyway, pretty well OOB. The only issue of any consequence I encountered was with the missile decals where the brown bands went on a treat whereas the yellow bands simply refused to wrap around the bodies without repeated softener application & even the I'm afraid they're a bit poor so please don't look too closely! 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob K. Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Nice job Graham, how did you do the blue front windscreen or does it come with the kit? Rgds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SAT69 Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 I like it ... a lot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham T Posted March 16, 2020 Author Share Posted March 16, 2020 17 minutes ago, Rob K. said: Nice job Graham, how did you do the blue front windscreen or does it come with the kit? Rgds Thanks, the blue is simply Tamiya clear blue. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unfinished project Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Very nice F-4 looking great in these colours 👏👏👏 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMCS Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Niiiice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F-32 Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 Awesome build and great scheme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FIGHTS ON Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 oh yes - surely the best looking F-4S kit ever displayed here in Britmodeller - wow, what a job you've done there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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