1/72F4H-1 Phantom II Kit-bash

[TheRealMrEd]

Hello everyone.

 

Let's all hope for a happier new year.

 

Some time back, I acquired a DB Models F4H-1 Phantom II Prototype conversion kit for the Hasegawa F4B/N kit.  I had earlier decided that building this combo would be my first build of the New Year.  But, after successfully building my kit-bash of the Republic XP47J, and with new-found courage, I decided instead to swim upstream again!

 

After all, how many of us 1/72 modelers are going to ever be able to find such a conversion kit (or possibly afford one!).  The odds aren't good.  SO, I decided to fight back, and see whether any reasonably skilled modeler could do it themselves, without an expensive conversion kit.   This will be that attempt -- wish me luck!

 

In any event,  I have determined to try and use NO part of the conversion kit, although I WILL use the parts to help convert my own, and to gather the info on how to do so, which I will pass  on to you.

 

Here's the Hasegawa kit, one just re-released. 

 

 

The Hasegawa kit has a few irritating small fit issues, which can be overcome.  Also an old complaint of this kit are very fine panel lines -- probably close to scale! -- which will mostly be obliterated in some areas.  I can live with that, as all I want is the shape of that very first F4, and I will be happy.  I sort of suspect that any of these Hasegawa F4 kits could possibly be used, but I'm not certain that all of the kits come with all of the optional parts parts that will help here.  Other maker's kits -- I have no idea.

 

Above right, the DB set comes with new intakes, a nose, and some metal parts, such as an ejection seat, nose probe instrument panels (plain) and some very nice decals.  I shall shamelessly copy these as closely as possible, but out of plastic, except for the decals, of course.

 

In looking at the project, it seems to me that the hardest conversion would be the intakes, so that's where I'll begin, on the theory that if I can't get past that, why continue?   Just quit and fall back on the conversion set?

 

As seen below, the Hasegawa kit (hereinafter referred to as "HAS") has two parts for the intake backplate, kit parts J3,4,5, and 6. They are shown in the photo as temporarily joined together:

 

 

A little work to do here, to remove the front edge, leaving about 4.5mm as shown, and removing completely the other more-or-less arrow shaped parts on top and bottom.  Above right, the modified parts are on the left, the stock kit parts on the right.  The arrow points to where the tips of the splitter should be rounded slightly; in the case the upper one perhaps a little too rounded.

 

Next, looking at the right intake, when the front edge of the splitter is shortened, it the becomes too thick at the leading edge, and needs to be thinned item "B".  Line "A - A " needs to be glued up as straight and flat as possible, as the thinning will change the angles a bit.  "C" shows where the upper leading edge if the kit intake is trimmed back a bit, to allow more gluing surface for a new front edge to be glued on:

 

 

Above right, figure "C" shows the thicker, trimmed edge.  My next thought was just to glue on a thin piece of plastic, which extended forward a bit more, to reshape the intake:

 

 

Above right shows this idea a bit better, as well as showing the vents which will need filling.  After filling and sanding on this area for a while, I soon found that getting the upper hood to curve down properly was not going very well.  Suddenly, the light came on, and I determined that a curved piece added onto the front would would work much better, giving material to make the hooded, curved shape required.  So I used a strip of the same plastic, held it over a screwdriver with a 8mm diameter shaft, and used a paint stripper gun set on medium heat to warm the plastic.  As soon as it got warm enough, I set down the heat gun and used my fingers to bend the softened plastic into a 90-degree curved shape:

 

 

Above right, this gives a better material around the curve.  I suspect that a hair dryer, even the flame from a candle might work as well, care taken NOT to burn the fingers!

 

Below, preliminary result are looking good compared to the resin parts.  Just needs more refinement of the leading edge on both pieces:

 

 

Above right, the toughest part of all may be replicating these vents, shown atop the DB Models resin part.  Fellow modeler JohnR accomplished this on his build of a few years back, by using some decals, which he has stated he will try to find the masters of for my use here.

Anyway, while not a build thread, his final product is outstanding!  I will provide a link for your perusal HERE

 

I doubt that my effort will look nearly as good as John's, but I will do what I can.  As I've often said, I'm a much better builder than painter!

 

Johnr, if you're watching, feel free to chime in with whatever comments or tips you'd care to share!

 

Anyway, after a bit more massaging, they are coming along:

 

 

Well, that's all for now.  Hopefully, there will be more, when I figure out the next step...    Thanks for looking in!

 

Ed

Edited January 6, 2021 by TheRealMrEd
spelling error

[BLACK_MAMBA]

Excellent work thus far on a plane that spawned a dynasty! I'll be here watching with popcorn in hand.😃

[billn53]

Great start! I’d love to have an F4H in my collection some day, so I’m taking careful notes. 

[Gondor44]

I have the Falcon tripple conversion set for the F4H-1, didn't know about the DB resins conversion so will watch this build with great interest.

 

Gondor

[TheRealMrEd]

 Moving along, one of the early things that needs to be done is getting the cockpit ready for insertion, prior to joining the fuselage halves. The first item on the agenda is the rather unique seat used in the early F4s, which looks like this image, kindly provided by Tommy Thomason:

 

 

A slightly more detailed drawing can be found  HERE

 

Since the Hasegawa kit had a seat with some vague resemblance to what was needed, I decided to start there.  Plus, there were two seats provided, so I could afford to mess one up!

 

I began by sawing off the headrest from the HAS seat, sawing at an angle to preserve the seat back:

 

 

Above right,  I then sawed only part way through between the seat back and cushion, so that the angle of the back could be changed.

 

Next, the BACK of the seat back was sanded as flat as possible:

 

 

Above right, after gluing together the two seat frame halves, the headrest part was sawn off along the pencil mark (arrow).

 

Next, the seat is glued into the seat frame, with the seat cushion back flush to the frame part:

 

 

Above right, a couple of scrap pieces of plastic are glued on to extend the seat frame sides upward a bit.  They will need to be sanded to shape when dry.

 

After they are sanded to shape, another scrap piece is added to extend the seat frame upward a bit:

 

 

Above center, some pieces of scrap plastic are glued together to make a chunk, out of which to carve (or sand) the headrest, shown above, far right, as roughly shaped.

 

Next, after more headrest shaping, a couple of vertical pieces are added to the seat back, as ejector rails.  I used some small channel section, as that is what I had laying about, but plain strip would be more accurate.  Also, a little scrap piece and some wire were added here and there:

 

 

Above right, the painted up seat with some aluminum foil seat belts looks sort of like what I needed to accomplish, so that's good enough for government work.

 

Thanks for looking. Back later.

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

[Tailspin Turtle]

For more information on the early Phantom IIs, you can buy my monograph from Steve Ginter (https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2018/11/birth-of-legend-mcdonnell-f4h-1-phantom.html)or for free, look at my blog posts: https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2013/03/f4h-f-4-phantom-index.html

[AV O]

More details about the different shapes of the intakes during their evolution to the final design :

 

https://phantomphacts.blogspot.com/2014/07/f4h-1-intake-splitter-plates.html

Edited January 8, 2021 by AV O

[TheRealMrEd]

Thanks for the input Tommy!  You're always welcome to jump in on any of my builds.

 

AV O, thanks for the link.  I had seen that page and chickened out when it came to removing all the detail from the intakes...

 

 

Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

Okay AV O, you've shamed me into it!  After thinking about it a bit I've decided to bite the bullet and remove the extra detail, as referenced in the first photo of the intakes:

 

 

I used sanding twigs, but for those that don't have them, a suitable substitute may be made by gluing cut down craft or Popsicle sticks to the back of sanding media, in this case Testor's film:

 

 

Anyway, the look at least a little more like the #1 ship early on.  Sure would have been easier to do this BEFORE gluing any parts together...

 

Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

Next, more cockpit.   The DB kit gives nice metal instrument panels front and rear, but they are devoid of any detail, and are basically the same shape as the HAS kit parts, so I will modify the HAS kit parts a bit.  First off, the front IP.  The blade tip points to the bump on the face of the kit IP which must be sawn or shaved off:

 

 

Above right, a crop of a much larger photo found on-line that shows that for at least the fist flight, the hood was left off the IP, and the backs of the gauges can be seen, along with some of their wires.  If you wanted to replicate this, either sand the kit IP much thinner or cut out a new IP of much thinner plastic, and add bits of cut-off stretched sprue and wires as desired, on the back side.  I am not that sincere, so I will just add the IP hood/shroud on this build.

 

The rear IP needs to have it's upper bumps, etc. also sawn off, as not much instrumentation was installed there on the first flight:

 

 

Above center, the finished rear IP will look like this, the longer slot left from this process will face to the front, and is for the canopy lift mechanism, should you wish to build the front canopy open.  Above right, both the IP are installed, as well as the rear bulkhead. I read somewhere, probably on one of the Tailspin Turtle blogs that the rear bulkhead was vertical on the prototype, not slanted rearward as on the later models.  The primed seat is just stuck there for looks at this stage, not glued in.

 

Next, a bit of stretched sprue is pulled into the hole for the kits backseat control stick (not used on the earlier F4H1), and then marked at the top side,  at the floor level.  It is then removed, nipped off at the line, and re-installed with liquid glue, later trimmed at the bottom side.  A good way to fill holes in models, but had I thought of it, I could have just installed a "black box" atop it, skipping the whole process...

 

 

Above right, the nose halves are filled with some plastic putty, taking care not to leave it so high in either half that the halves would not mate later on, and making certain that none was left on the gluing surface.  Milliput would also work fine for this, but the JB PlasticWeld is more readily available and cheaper on this side of the pond!

 

Next, all the major interior parts are painted Interior Grey (Dark Gull Grey FS#32361), as was the custom by then:

 

 

Oops, sorry.  Forgot to re-size the photo!

 

Next up, a template is made by tracing around the DB nose, to get a pattern:

 

 

The re-shaping begins with the glued-together nose halves being sanded top and bottom to nearly the size of the pattern.  Not trying to get a perfect fit yet:

 

 

Above right, some preliminary sanding on the sides. 

 

Below, the top view of the cockpit shows the rough shape of the nose, the HAS kit cockpit decals (modified, with some added from spares), and some spurious "black boxes" added to the rear compartment.

Much of this is talked about on Tommy Thomason's Tailspin Turtle blogs about the F4H1, such as  HERE

 

 

Above, shape getting closer!  Next, comparison with the DB conversion parts:

 

 

You will note that the shape progresses from more-or-less a square with rounded corners at the rear, to completely circular at the front, with nice gradual transitions.

 

The next problem is the NACA ducts on the side of the nose.  Perhaps Johnr will wade in and describe how he made these on his F4H1 build...

 

Anyway, I made mine using a set of micro blades and chisels from MicroMark HERE

 

 

Above right, for those who don't have any small chisels, one way to make some is to remove the reinforced back part of a single-edge razor blade, and then snap off varying widths of the blade with pliers.  Pliers wider than the ones shown above, such as linesmen's pliers work even better.  Anyway, you just split the end of a matchstick or other small piece of wood, insert the blade, wrap thread around it, and then glue everything, much the same way as old-school arrow and spear points were fashioned.  They make great little chisels for fine work.

 

On mine, I laid out the placement as shown, with the center-line of the ducts right along the center-line of the cheek "jowls":

 

 

 

The one above is shown after some Mr Surfacer 500 was added, and it will be re-shaped a bit more, as seen above right.

 

More later,

 

Ed

 

 

[Tailspin Turtle]

Note that the aft bulkhead of the front cockpit was always slanted aft at the angle of the ejection seat rails; it was the aft bulkhead of the rear cockpit that was always vertical since it was originally a compartment that housed the 20 mm cannon ammunition and aircraft system components.

[TheRealMrEd]

NOW you tell me Tommy!  Well, I'm too far down the road on this one, but to anyone else building this, be aware!

 

Ed

 

PS  Tommy, it would be most useful to all if you could post links here for ALL the blog stuff on the F4H-1.  Also, a short digression on your new F4H-1 book would be useful.  I am only interested in the very first F4H-1.  How much of the book is dedicated to that, vs more info on all the other F4H-1's?  It would be useful to have as much info as possible, referenced in a single space.

 

BTW, for any of you that are interested in this book, it is available to order HERE among other places.

Edited January 10, 2021 by TheRealMrEd
added PS

[TheRealMrEd]

Time to finish up the front end.  One thing I had forgotten about building these Hasegawa F4 kits was how critical it was to properly align the rear end of the lower nose part correctly:

 

 

Above, note the two arrows.  The sides of the lower part of the fuselage to the upper part are not equal.  This is a critical thing I had forgotten about.  The cure for me is to loosen the glue join in those areas to allow me to "shift" the lower fuse back into alignment, when the rear half of the fuselage is assembled to the front half.  I'll show this later on.  Figure "X" shows where I will add some weight to the front end of the model, just in case!

 

Next up, the upper surfaces of the cockpit and front cockpit area have been painted flat black, prior to starting work on the canopy:

 

 

Above right, the canopy is set into place.  First the main front canopy (not the windscreen) is glued into place with white glue, so the it can be removed later, should I wish to pose it open  (although that may destroy the unique look of the F4H-1 profile).

After that dries, the front windscreen and the back center section (all these parts are HAS kit parts!) are glued into place permanently, so we can figure out the rear canopy.

 

It was during this process that I discovered that my home-built ejection seat was too tall to fit under the canopy.  I had to sand the lower part off to almost the bottom of the seat, as well as sand down the "headrest" part some more to get it to fit.  But a little paint later, I was good to go!

 

Below, a view show the filled hole for the rear control stick, now painted, as well as the area where some spurious "black boxes" will be added to the rear cockpit.  Note that there is also a piece of two-sided cello tape (arrow) to help hold the next step together:

 

 

Next, above center, I just took a piece of plastic blister packaging, to get a thin clear piece, upon which to trace a pattern outline, shown above right.  To held hold the plastic in place against the earlier installed canopy parts, I put a piece of two-sided cello tape across the rear cockpit opening, and then, using a marker pen, I traced out a rough outline that I wished to use for the rear cockpit.  Using another piece of two-sided tape, I taped the new clear outlined part to a scrap sheet of white plastic card, so I could cut out the shape needed.

 

Since the material that I will be eventually using to vacuform a new rear canopy is 20 thou thick, I will attempt to sand the pattern to allow for that thickness of plastic, so that the final canopy will be flush with the kit canopy, along the outside:

 

 

Above right is just a piece of 20 thou (green) to show about how much needed to be sanded on either side, to fit the kit canopy, and "W" shows the added weight.

 

Next, some scrap plastic is propped up (not glued) to the kit canopy for the forward part of the new canopy master, and a vertical strip is added length-wise, On the front part, a pencil line is draw, and eventually, these pieces will be sanded down to correct fit and profile (for the inside "fit" of the yet-to-be vacuformed canopy:

 

 

For those following along, here are some of the templates/patterns I used, with C3 being the original outline of that vertical piece reference above.  The outlines within the box on the lower left corner are pretty much very close to the final shapes, as they ended up.  If you use these, be sure to cut/sand to the inside edge of the lines, as these are tracing of the parts themselves.  Other outlines shown will be explained later.

 

After some trial-and-error sanding, we now have this:

 

 

Above left, note how the front bulkhead of this new canopy master framework is more or less 20 thou smaller than the outside of the canopy.  Above right, here are two pieces of foam glued into place for shaping, because the foam is very easy to work with.  This foam is very dense, about like that on art project foam board, with the skins removed:

 

 

Above right, I used UHU Por cement here, because it will not attack the foam, but white glue would work as well.   Next, we're coming along:

 

 

Above right, I then added a fairly light film of my favorite putty, to help assure a smooth surface for the mold surface.  I had tested this first on a scrap bit of foam, and it seemed not to bother the foam a great deal, at least with very fine coats...

 

And here, everything blew up!  Not because I had been wrong to this point, but because I had trouble with sanding the foam to the correct shape, and had to correct, and ended up using too much putty, which then began to attack the foam!  I will try to explain further, after I show how I neatly recovered!

 

Basically, I started over, this time with the old standby, a sheet of hard balsa wood, because it has a finer grain, and is less "fuzzy" when sanded than soft balsa:

 

 

I still had problems, sanding correctly, as witnessed by the darker areas (putty) on the foam masters above.  The problem is, that while the shape of the rear canopy front-to-back along the top center-line is close to dead flat, it stays more rounded in shape as you come down the sides.  So, whiles it is rounded and curved on the sides, it is only flat along the top center-line, lengthwise.  I hope that makes sense, If not, please don't hesitate to ask questions!

 

Eventually, as shown above, I ended up with a well-shaped master.  I coated everything with several coats of gloss acrylic paint, giving each time to dry thoroughly, sanding lightly with very fine grit paper after each coat, until I finally got a smooth surface. As you can see, the plastic parts help to gauge the proper shape, except as noted.

 

The old balsa technique was used years ago, only we used to do the sealing topcoat part with a mixture of talcum powder and dope, which I'm not sure you can even find any more...

 

Anyway, after vac-u-forming the master on my trust old Mattel Vac-U-Form machine, it looks like so:

 

 

A little sanding and some glue, and we'll be good to go, with only one slightly challenging seam, at the front, where the vacufomed part meets the kit canopy.  However, I'll leave the canopy off for now, until after the rear fuselage is joined to this front half, which God willing, will be coming up next.

 

Be safe  -- and kind to your dog  (It's OK to molest your cat, but just a bit!).

 

Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

Now, a little work on the rear end.

 

First off a piece of Lit-Brite peg or red translucent toothbrush handle, is glued into a slot filed into the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer (arrow) "A":

 

 

Above left, at "X" the flare chute doors need to be glued in and the seams filled.  Next, the benefit of building the Hasegawa kit is that a lot of different variant parts are provided, such as the smooth fin tip shown, which was used before all the sensors were added to later variants.  While the kit does not offer the exact needed tailcap, I simply  chose the simplest one provided to fill and modify "B").  Above right, the red light lens after being sanded and polished a bit.

 

Next, the tail cap is sanded to shape, and a single piece of sprue is glued into place ("X").  I cannot tell from photos whether this is a light, vent, or dump:

 

 

Above right, the tail-hook on the prototype has a different profile than later version, and a unique prototype fairing has been added, as well as a better view of the tailcap.  Below, a much-lightened view of what I'm trying to achieve.  Note the shape of the tail hook:

 

Below, the little box on the lower right marked "fair" shows the thick end and and side profiles for the fairing:

 

 

Above right, all the little "bumps" marked "X" need to be removed, and (arrow), the "blank" pieces from the HAS kit need to be installed here.  The optional pieces in the kit are, I believe, the launch bridle hooks, and were not present on the first prototype.  Below, after these steps are done:

 

 

Assembly of the upper and lower rear fuselage/wings begins by aligning the rear exhaust shrouds as carefully as possible, (See arrows).  I use Weld-On #3 for my liquid cement, as it's rather "hot" and fast setting.

 

 Next, because of the cockpit to lower front fuse alignment problem mentioned earlier, I had more problems at the front fuselage join than I needed to have, had I aligned everything properly at that stage:

 

 

Caveat modeler!

 

While the putty is drying on the front end, it's back to the rear end.  Although not shown here, I primed the metallic areas of the exhaust area of the fuselage, then masked it with strips of tape on the straight edge, and Parafilm "M" everywhere else, plus enough Parafilm to reduce any over-spray.  I then spayed a light color of Alclad Dark Aluminum  all over, masked off a couple of areas on the upper fuselage and shot the lower part with a darker color, Magnesium.  When all that had dried, I used a piece of tape with most of the sticky removed, and placed it along each needed panel line, fore-and-aft, and sprayed a tiny mount of Alclad II jet exhaust lightly along the edge of the tape only, using reduced air pressure, then moved the tape to the next panel line, and so on

 

Above right, the exhaust nozzles were started by being given an overall prime coat of Alclad II Grey Primer, and then a shot of White Aluminum into the nozzles, primarily on the molded in detail on the bottom (lower right), then a couple of disks of paper were cut to the correct diameter, and placed into the nozzles, to mask the White Aluminum.

 

Next, though hard to see i n the photo a darker metal shade was shot around the lower part inside the nozzles, and a much darker shade of exhaust was sprayed near the outer end:

 

 

Above center, the lower outer part of the nozzles were painted a dark metal color, and when dry, everything on the outside was masked, save the petals, and then rolled-up paper tubes were used to protect the inside from over-spay, while the outer petals were painted another dark  metallic color.  Above, far right, the final result, after some water-based black wash was applied to all the cracks and crevices, inside and out.

 

Next, a view with all the masking removed, and the nozzles glued into place:

 

 

I should mention here that I don't try to match any paint colors to the types of metal that might have been used to make any of the actual parts, mostly because I have no idea of which metals they were constructed.  Therefore, the effects are mostly artistic, designed to enhance various areas.  Secondly, I have found that for me, it's simpler to do the metallic areas on the rear end BEFORE painting the rest of the aircraft, because the masking, etc. is pretty complex back here, often involving several layers at a time.       I feel that if I make a mistake, it's just easier to strip or repaint the areas needed, without concern for the rest of the paint.  Here again, because of the metallics, and delicacy of masking some areas, PARAFILM "M" IS YOUR FRIEND!

 

Well, enough work for now.  Back to thinking about the next steps...

 

Later,

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[billn53]

Very effective painting of the Phantom’s metallic exhaust areas 👍

[busnproplinerfan]

Another one I want to do. I have the vac form parts, but this will be interesting. Definetly watching this.

[Anthony in NZ]

Sensational build so far.  Really interesting and informative.  

 

Thank you for posting!

[giemme]

Ed, I'm impressed   Will be closely following this

 

Ciao 

[TheRealMrEd]

Thanks folks, for the kind comments!

 

Let me now announce that I have had an epiphany!  As I was getting ready to glue on the vacuformed canopy, I was just setting around looking at the model, and I thought, "maybe there's another way to do the canopy.  I will try to explain.

 

The DB conversion kit utilized their vacuformed canopy to fit between the parts of the kit canopy that I glued into place, and a little rear "turtle-deck" or whatever, at the back end, which was to replace the kit "turtle-deck", and consequently, was much lower in profile.  I elected not to go that route, because I only wanted to deal with one seam at the end of a vacuformed canopy, rather than two.  Here are the DB parts in question:

 

 

The red line denotes (more-or-less) where the edge of the canopy is, and you can see that it is not very tall, where the two parts meet at the back end. 

 

Here are on the left, the HAS kit part, and on the right, the DB metal part:

 

 

Above right is how I re-shaped the kit part to try and mimic the DB part.  DON'T DO THAT YET, IF YOU ARE BUILDING ALONG!  You will see why at the end of this posting!

 

Either way that the canopy is built, the back upper deck of the fuselage, in the rear area of the canopy, needs to be sanded flat ("X"), sort of along the red line shown.  On the HAS kit, the original rear canopy (like the front main canopy), was "sunk down", to a level below that of the rear deck.  The rear deck needs to be sanded down, to remove this discrepancy:

 

 

Above right, this what needs to be achieved.

 

I began by sanding the HAS kit rear canopy on the bottom, holding it at an angle so that the rear of the canopy would be shorter than the front. Since by now I didn't have another rear canopy to show, on the right is shown one from a Fujimi kit, which will at least show the effect that I'm looking for:

 

 

Above right, a rather poor photo shows the modified Has canopy on the left, and the vacuformed canopy I made on the right.

 

In my usual ham-handed way, I managed to sand too much of the rear of the HAS rear canopy, which I'll have to correct.  Also, the tiny "X" shows where the rear deck or "turtle-deck" piece is now the wrong profile, which is why I said earlier, don't do it!:

 

 

Above right, two things to notice.  Toward the rear of the canopy is a small strip of white plastic card of the needed thickness to fill the above-mentioned gap. I painted it flat black on top, and then slide it in from the side, and then glued.  After it dried, it was trimmed to fit the canopy.  Second, the canopy, to the point where the arrow points, should be a flat line from the fuselage top, to the high point of the entire canopy.  Mine is a little tall, but I will have to live with it.  More on this a little later on!

 

Because I had previously glued the windscreen and front canopy and the little center canopy into place, my only recourse here to try and get the flat line from the fuselage to the canopy is filling the deck with putty, and sanding down both it and the clear parts a little (the "X"s).  I went slow, sanding the top part of the canopy and "turtle-deck" as flat as I dared:

 

 

Above right, sanding sticks on the right are the best thing I've found for sanding clear parts.  The two sanding sticks are actually the top and bottom views of the same kind of stick, which actually has four faces or "grits" on each stick.  As you progress by wet-sanding thru each grit, the plastic becomes very smooth.  The last step in the process is to use a little plastic polish on a finger-nail buffer.  All the tools (save the polish) are available at beauty-shop suppliers or on-line.

 

After a little work, the canopy is shown almost done, just needed clean-up with alcohol and a coat of Aqua Gloss or Future/Pledge:

 

 

If I were to do another of these, I would also sand the front main canopy, and the little center part of the canopy, each at a slight angle, before gluing into place, and try to drop the high point of the canopy assembly down just a millimeter or two, to perfect the flat alignment with the fuselage.  While this is a bit fiddly, it is entirely possibly, and would eliminate the need to sand the top of the canopy at all.  Unlike my methods, "slow and easy" is the ticket here.

 

Well, we now have two different methods of making the F4H-1 canopy.  Dealer's choice!

 

Ed

 

PS: for those who happened to notice the earlier, incomplete post -- I hit the wrong darn button again, and posted the post before it was completed.  Getting old...

 

 

Edited January 15, 2021 by TheRealMrEd
hit the wrong key

[giemme]

Impressive (and very brave) job, Ed

 

Ciao 

[Planebuilder62]

Hear Hear

 

Cracking job Mr Ed with sanding the canopy.

 

regards Toby

[busnproplinerfan]

The canopy line is the first thing you notice on the early F-4s. Looks very good.

[Tailspin Turtle]

In response to a suggestion that I provide links to the material I’ve posted on the F4H, here’s one of interest in this case: https://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2013/02/f4h-1-flush-canopy.html

 

As for the rest, until I finally do this myself, I suggest that you go to each of my three blogs and type F4H (or similar search terms) in the search block located at the upper left of the blog:

 

https://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/

 

http://thanlont.blogspot.com

 

http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/

 

Note that the first and third links look identical at first glance, but they aren’t...

 

As far as my monograph on the first 47 Phantom IIs is concerned, I’m pretty sure that you won’t be disappointed, either as a modeler, an F4H enthusiast, or simply someone with an interest in carrier-based naval aviation in the 1950s and 1960s. Still not convinced? Go to Amazon.com books, search for Birth of a Legend McDonnell F4H-1 Phantom II, and read the reviews. But I request that you buy one from Steve Ginter (see http://tommythomason.com/books/McDonnell F4H-1/) to increase his income (he has to sell books to Amazon at a ridiculously low wholesale price) and therefore have the wherewithal to publish my next and last monograph, which will be on the F7U-3 Cutlass.

[TheRealMrEd]

Thanks everyone, for the comments, and thank you, Tommy, for the links.  I'm sure otther modelers will find these most useful, as I have!

 

Ed

[Gondor44]

You lot are a bad influence. I've only gone and ordered Birth of a Legend McDonnell F4H-1 Phantom II 

 

Gondor