1:72 Fujimi McDonnell Douglas FG.1 Phantom A&AEE

[Navy Bird]

How about an update?   

 

A quick slice and dice and the bird loses its proboscis:

 

 

This, of course, is so we can fit the special A&AEE radome (which fits perfectly). The black lines on the fuselage sides above indicate where the forward instrument panel and the mid-cockpit bulkhead are located according to the kit-supplied cockpit tub. Using these marks will help me locate the resin cockpit which fits amazingly well even though it's designed for the Airfix kit.

 

 

 

I think I mentioned earlier that one area of concern is with the rear of the cockpit where it meets the aircraft spine. You can see that the front of the spine on the kit has a wide notch - what should be here are two small notches for the rear canopy hinges. Fujimi engineered this so that a tab on top of the rear cockpit bulkhead slipped into the wide notch on the spine, leaving two small notches for the hinges. I'll have to reconstruct this, and my plan is to cut off the tab from the kit cockpit and glue it into the spine notch and then use the photoetch part provided by Fujimi as a "detail-up" part to cover it so you can't see what I've done. Trust me, it will look OK.

 

The lower portion of the front fuselage has the nose gear bay moulded integrally. There is a separate part for the front of the nose gear bay, and when in place it sticks up too far and interferes with the bottom of the resin cockpit. Easy fix, just sand it flush with the top of the nose gear bay:

 

 

Next, those of you who have built this kit will remember that two tabs at the rear of this lower front fuselage piece spread out the fuselage sides so that everything aligns nicely. On this specific kit, the tabs worked great for the rear of the lower front fuselage part, but forward of that I still needed to spread the fuselage sides out some more. Measure once, cut thrice, and I have a spreader in place that does the job:

 

 

I've never had to do this on any other copies of this kit that I've built. Maybe it's the white plastic...    

 

Remember that I have a set of FOD covers designed for the Airfix kit? Just for giggles I decided to test fit these against the Fujimi intakes that I taped together. Wow! I wasn't expecting this - the resin FOD covers fell right through. They won't work at all. Too narrow and not tall enough. In fact, they are too small for my Hasegawa USN Phantoms as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the intakes on the British Phantoms were larger due to the Spey engines? What's up? Are the Airfix intakes too small? Hasegawa/Fujimi too large? I also have photoetch FOD covers designed for the Hasegawa kits that I can make work, or I can scratch them. In any event, it's odd.

 

The rest of the fuselage will assemble quickly. Stay tuned, more to come...

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

EDIT: I had a closer look at photos of the FOD covers on XT597 and I see they are recessed slightly when in place. Still, the Quickboost resin covers will "recess" all the way to the engine. I'll figure something out. I want to use FOD covers since they have those nifty coloured stripes.

 

EDIT 2: The Aires resin exhausts, specifically designed for this kit, will not work without mods. The long exhaust tube interferes with whatever those open panels are on the aft fuselage sides. Same thing happened with the Aires exhausts on my F/A-18C, I had to cut the tubes shorter.

[Navy Bird]

Here is the fix for the spine - first, the tiny bit of the kit cockpit glued into the wide notch on the spine, leaving just two narrow slots for the canopy hinges:

 

 

Next, the photoetch piece from the kit in place:

 

 

I think this will work nicely. Of course, I have to paint and glue that photoetch part first, but this fixes the issue and closes in this area. Science!    

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. Oh, yeah, I glued on the bottom fuselage and lower wings. Fits like a charm - I had forgotten just how good of a kit this is.

[billn53]

Excellent problem solving! This is shaping up nicely.

[heloman1]

Hi Bill, I've come late to the party, shame on me! Nice choice of scheme, I remember seeing it at Greenham Common for the Phantom anniversary gathering.

It's  nice kit but showing it's age now. I have  the FAA anniversary scheme version under way, which I believe was the original Brit version release. It didn't have the extras. I do like the am cockpit and exhausts. Great work so far.

 

Colin

[Terry1954]

Great to see this one moving again Bill, and it must be a pleasant change from the Privateer work!

 

Nice work in the cockpit.

 

Terry

[giemme]

Smart fix on the spine - looking the biz!

 

Ciao 

[Navy Bird]

On 16/01/2022 at 03:13, heloman1 said:

Hi Bill, I've come late to the party, shame on me! Nice choice of scheme, I remember seeing it at Greenham Common for the Phantom anniversary gathering.

It's  nice kit but showing it's age now. I have  the FAA anniversary scheme version under way, which I believe was the original Brit version release. It didn't have the extras. I do like the am cockpit and exhausts. Great work so far.

 

Thanks Colin. I'm rather envious that you attended that Phantom Anniversary. Must have been amazing - I would love to have been there. The closest I came to something similar was the F-111 25th(?) Anniversary in the mid-80s at London, Ontario. I don't recall how many Aardvarks were present, more than 10 for sure, but to see them all lined up on the taxiway was an impressive sight. And since I'm a bit of an F-111 nerd, they sure tickled my...um...fancy.   

 

On 16/01/2022 at 03:54, Terry1954 said:

Great to see this one moving again Bill, and it must be a pleasant change from the Privateer work!

Nice work in the cockpit.

 

Thanks Terry. Actually, I'm going to miss the Privateer. Not! I used up my entire allotment of cuss words on that project alone. St. Peter will never let me in, unless I atone for my sins somehow. Maybe by building a vacuform or Amodel without saying anything at all. Nah, can't do it.    

 

On 16/01/2022 at 07:57, giemme said:

Smart fix on the spine - looking the biz!

 

Thanks Giorgio. Not sure it was smart, but it's all I could think of. I started out trying to carve a small piece of thick sheet styrene into the correct shape, and then I had one of those light bulb moments. Why not use the part that's supposed to go there? Jeez, what a dummy. It's not like I was going to use the kit cockpit for some other project.     

 

*****

 

Hey, she looks like a Ghost Phantom.

 

 

No putty so far, but I can see a few spots that will need it (all on the underside). The fit so far is very nice indeed - the wing roots really surprised me. They are perfect. The special radome fits extremely well (which I guess means that I cut off the old one at the right spot, perhaps the first time that has ever happened). The radome looks a little odd, but hey it's a Phantom. There are a bazillion different versions.

 

I'm still shocked at the Aires exhaust tubes. There seems to be no way to use them without shortening (Crisco?). The tubes have a stepped outside diameter, so there is a smaller section and a larger. Aires have you put them in prior to adding the lower fuselage due to the larger diameter being too big to fit through the hole once assembled. Fine, no problem with that, but the tube runs smack into the open bay on the side of the rear fuselage. It also would run into the cross brace that Fujimi added as a spreader/stiffener for the rear fuselage, but Aires tell you to remove that. Anyway, I'll just have to do what I did with my Hornet - shorten the tubes by cutting off the entire section with the larger diameter. The the exit face of the engine and the flame holder will have to be modified to fit the smaller diameter. Eez pain, no?

 

It's just about time to add the gear legs so I can get some paint on this baby, right @giemme?

 

Cheers,

Bill

[heloman1]

Yes, Bill twenty-five Phantoms on the ramp plus more in the flying display was awesome. I think I had slides somewhere but emigration and successive house moves!!!

Then Modeldecals produced a couple of sheets with attending subjects.

The Vaak interested me when the US Navy had a n interest as that was my modelling interest at the time. All I have left of that time is twenty plus A-7's of all the kits produced for a large wall hanging and all the Navy units represented. However, Micro-Scale never produced all the unit markings. But I digress!

 

Colin

[giemme]

10 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

It's just about time to add the gear legs so I can get some paint on this baby, right @giemme?

 

Amen, Brother Bill!

 

 

Ciao 

[Navy Bird]

14 hours ago, heloman1 said:

Yes, Bill twenty-five Phantoms on the ramp plus more in the flying display was awesome. I think I had slides somewhere but emigration and successive house moves!!!

Then Modeldecals produced a couple of sheets with attending subjects.

The Vaak interested me when the US Navy had a n interest as that was my modelling interest at the time. All I have left of that time is twenty plus A-7's of all the kits produced for a large wall hanging and all the Navy units represented. However, Micro-Scale never produced all the unit markings. But I digress!

 

25 Spooks on the ramp! Be still my heart! No, wait, keep beating - at least until I work my way through the stash.  

 

I always thought the F-111B was the best looking one of the bunch, but then I'm partial to LGG over White versus SEA camo. At the London Ontario Airshow F-111 Anniversary I believe they had most every mark that entered US service. I recall an A, E, and F as well as an FB and EF.

 

Time to start building all those A-7s!   

 

14 hours ago, giemme said:

Amen, Brother Bill!

 

Speaking of landing gear, Fujimi included white metal landing gear as an extra "goodie" in this "Royal Collection" edition of the kit. Now, I've never quite understood the appeal of white metal. It doesn't seem to cast as sharply as styrene can be moulded, hence the details are soft. It's very malleable (compared to styrene which is not malleable at all but instead somewhat brittle). I'm told that white metal is preferred for heavy models, but come on - the stuff used by modellers bends just by looking at it. If you bump it, it bends, especially in this scale. Why Fujimi felt it was necessary for this kit is beyond me. I've never had any problems with styrene landing gear on any 1:72 F-4 model.

 

Unfortunately, Fujimi did not supply the sprue with this kit that contains the nose gear. (This is a small sprue that also has the Sidewinders that aren't required.) Therefore I have to use the white metal nose gear. Arghh. Plus, the casting mould for the nose gear was considerably misaligned and there are some nasty seams. Another arghh. Oh well, such is the life of a modeller.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[general melchett]

Apols for a late arrival Bill, I'll give Darling a good dousing down for his shoddy scheduling skills. Great stuff, I remember building one of these when they were first released, lovely kit. Like Colin I also remember the IAT anniversary show and the spectacular line up of F-4s that seemed to stretch the full length of the static display line, great times. I'm also a big fan of the Vark and just reminiscing for a moment, recall the two most spirited shows I witnessed, one at Mildenhall in 1987, (SAC FB-111A) the other at RIAT 1993, (Aussie F-111C) the latter being thrown around in wild abandon. Sadly this aircraft along with it's crew was lost a few months later. After the staid set-pieces offered by the USAF every year, involving three Es or Fs trundling around the sky, line astern with wings in different configurations, taking five miles circuits and ten minutes between passes, these was very refreshing. In fact, the only other heavy lump I saw thrown around in such 'reckless fashion' was the 1988 display Phantom FGR.2 XV428, flown by Flt Lt Chris Lackman and Flt Lt Jack Thompson that took place at my then local airshow at West Malling in Kent. Wild display, especially the Sunday departure! Sadly XV428 and the same crew perished a few weeks later practicing for the Abingdon show, pushing too hard...

 

Luckily someone recorded the West Malling display, terrible quality but if your eyes can stand it you'll get the gist....(not sure why the YT screen shows a 74 squadron F-4J (UK)! )

 

Apologies also for the slight, yet predictable diversion Bill. Looking forward to progress.....

 

  

 

Edited January 18, 2022 by general melchett

[Navy Bird]

8 hours ago, general melchett said:

In fact, the only other heavy lump I saw thrown around in such 'reckless fashion' was the 1988 display Phantom FGR.2 XV428, flown by Flt Lt Chris Lackman and Flt Lt Jack Thompson that took place at my then local airshow at West Malling in Kent. Wild display, especially the Sunday departure! Sadly XV428 and the same crew perished a few weeks later practicing for the Abingdon show, pushing too hard...

 

Thanks for posting the video. Such a great performance and so sad to know that the crew perished a few weeks later. They served their Queen and country, and provided excitement for the rest of us. RIP.

 

Airshows are finally back on schedule in New York this year. The Wings of Eagles show, held in Geneseo, NY and featuring primarily WWII warbirds, is near my home and one that I never miss. This year they are using a "drive-in movie" style for herding us fighter jock wannabes onto the grounds. You pay by the car and you can bring in as many folks as you can safely stash in your vehicle (based on number of seat belts I think). Everyone will arrange their cars in rows just like at the drive-in. I paid a little extra so I could park the Jeep in the first row on the flight line. My 5 year-old grandson is very excited as the F-22 will be appearing and it's his favourite. He's already built the Airfix Lego-style Raptor and he keeps eyeing the Revell styrene version sitting in my stash. He makes pretty good jet noises too, better than me.   

 

And don't worry about being late to the build - usually not much happens in my builds until several pages in...

 

*****

 

Finishing up a bit of putty here and there, and then I'll prime her and see how bad my assembly technique was.    

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Terry1954]

Great video @general melchett! Takes me back to my youth and Biggin Hill Air Shows, watching the Royal Navy show off their F-4's and Buccaneers. Always put on a great show!

 

The drive in airshow idea sounds great Bill. I'm hoping to go to this one this year https://www.airtattoo.com/airshow which should be a very special one celebrating the 75th anniversary of the USAF. One of my sons works in the aerospace defence industry, so I'm hoping to go with him so he can show his Dad what sort of toys he gets to help produce!

 

Terry

[Cookenbacher]

The drive-in style airshow sounds like a great idea! I hope the F-22 rattles the jeep windows!

And a beautiful build as always Bill, can't wait to see the paint!

[general melchett]

Thanks Bill, ironically the crew were told to tone the display down a bit as a few weren't happy with what they saw.

 

Abingdon Phantom FGR.2 XV428 crash

 

Great to hear your shows are back on and hope you and the family have a real blast...front seat views, as well. 

 

Quote

He makes pretty good jet noises too, better than me.    

 

Yep, me too, used to do a very passable Vulcan howl....but that's enough about my private life...

 

 

Quote

Great video general melchett! Takes me back to my youth and Biggin Hill Air Shows

 

Cheers Terry, remember them well (also recall an FGR.2 blowing a tire on landing in 1988 after another spirited display, watch at 8.11).

 

 

 

 

First time I can recall seeing RN Phantoms was at the 1969 Yeovilton show, along with massed ranks of Sea Vixens, Buccs and Gannets, all caught for posterity on my father's cine camera..

[Steve Coombs]

On 1/16/2022 at 9:27 PM, Navy Bird said:

t's just about time to add the gear legs so I can get some paint on this baby, right ?

Coming along very nicely there.

I had a decal disaster when I tried building this particular kit, then stalled utterly at an early stage when attempting the Airfix kit with a suitable replacement nose and binned it just before moving flat recently. I really ought to have another go at this.

Bad timing; I never got to see XT597 at Greenham Common in 1983 because I was on a course in the Netherlands at the time. Shocking to think that's the best part of 40 years ago.

[Navy Bird]

Here is a quick picture to show how long the Aires jet pipe is, and how it would seem to interfere with the structure behind the auxiliary intake door on the fuselage side:

 

 

I couldn't check this for actual contact as it would require me cutting out the cross brace at the bottom of the fuselage sides, which I didn't want to do. However, based on some quick measurements and the incredible acuity of my ancient Mk.I (retired) eyeballs, it would hit the auxiliary intake. Getting out the razor saw as we speak...

 

Anyone out there ever use these exhausts from Aires? What was your experience?

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

7 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

Anyone out there ever use these exhausts from Aires? What was your experience?

I've only ever used the ones for American Phantoms, so no auxiliary intakes in them, I'm afraid I can't be of any help. On the Hasegawa kits, however, I always needed to remove quite some plastic from the inside of the fuselage halves to get the exhaust to fit, like this:

 

 

Ciao

[Navy Bird]

Wow, ten days since I've shown any progress. But fear not, progress has been made - painting the beastie to be specific. These Raspberry Ripple jobs are so cool, but kind of a pain to mask off. Combine that with some of the crazy contours of a Phantom and you can go masking crazy. Which I did...but I think the basic paint scheme is ready.

 

 

 

The colours are Mr. Hobby White, MRP Oxford Blue and MRP Signal Red, the same colours I used on my Qinetiq Harrier. The metal areas behind the exhaust are Alclad Dark Aluminum and Magnesium. You may notice that the red stripes that goes on top of the blue sections of the fuselage sides are not there. I have these stripes as decals (both on the Xtradecal sheet and the Fujimi sheet) and after measuring the length of the decals and the corresponding locations on the model, it looks like they will work. If not, I'll paint them on. The red in the decal sheets (both of them) is quite close to what I've painted so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

I've followed photos of the actual aircraft and not the Xtradecal instructions, which miss the white on top of the wing wrapping around the leading edge. Naughty, naughty.

 

Next up is to paint the canopy sill and then give her a gloss coat for some stickers. The anti-glare area and the radome are flat black, and that will be added later so that its "flatness" is not affected by all these varnishes. That's the plan anyway.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[bentwaters81tfw]

On 15/01/2022 at 20:39, Navy Bird said:

 

 

EDIT 2: The Aires resin exhausts, specifically designed for this kit, will not work without mods. The long exhaust tube interferes with whatever those open panels are on the aft fuselage sides. Same thing happened with the Aires exhausts on my F/A-18C, I had to cut the tubes shorter.

Those open panels are a second set of aux. air doors.

[Navy Bird]

3 hours ago, bentwaters81tfw said:

Those open panels are a second set of aux. air doors.

 

They are indeed labelled that on my cutaway drawing, but the Thunder & Lightnings website refers to them as "suction relief doors." Cooling air perhaps? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[bentwaters81tfw]

I will not see my Phantom Phixers for 2 weeks now - show next Sunday. I must try and remember to ask. Anything that close to the nozzles would indicate cooling air, the afterburner section is as long as the engine itself.

[giemme]

Wow, that's one mighty phine looking Phantom already!     

 

Ciao

[Terry1954]

That paint job looks superb Bill and the coulours have gone on very nicely indeed. I'm using Mr Hobby and MRP increasingly more these days. Superb paints!

 

Terry

[ROB61]

I was thinking about the exhaust as I have them and the kit. There are 2 versions of the fuselage the original has shallow auxiliary air doors the Aires exhausts will fit this one, the newer boxings have deeper ones, try the Reskit ones they look shorter and the tubes are less diameter and there are versions for Fujimi Reskit RSU72-0112 and Airfix