MENG F-4E Phantom II (LS-017) 1:48

[Mike]

F-4E Phantom II (LS-017)

1:48 MENG Model via Creative Models Ltd

 

 

The Phantom bears a familial resemblance to the F3H Demon due to the company of origin of the type, which was intended to be a Super Demon with a modular nose for different mission profiles, but in typical military procurement style the world over, the specification was changed completely at the last minute, and resulted in a two-seat, two-engined beast that could carry a substantial war load, a large, effective radar in the bulbous nose, and the workload spread between two crew members to prevent confusion of an overwhelmed pilot in the heat of battle.  The type was adopted by the US Navy as the F-4A, and as the F-4C by the Air Force, with a confusing (to me) allocation of letters throughout its career, with more confusion (again for me) when it came to the British airframes, and don’t even mention the engines and other equipment.

 

The F-4E was the most numerous of all the Phantom variants, with over a thousand produced for the US Air Force, and bringing the gun back to the gunfight by mounting an M61 Vulcan cannon that utilised the nose of an F-4C but with a smaller radar that allowed space for the cannon.  Low-speed handling had been improved by the addition of leading-edge slats, which although it affected top-speed was a compromise that the designers felt was worth making.  The engines were more powerful too, increasing the thrust available under afterburner, first flying in 1965 and reaching service soon after.  Later in its career its avionics were upgraded to allow it to carry the AGM-65 Maverick missile that was a capable Air-to-Ground missile widely used in US and NATO forces.  There were several sub-variants and upgrades to the most numerous variant, such as Israel, Turkey and Greece, who have all fielded enhanced versions of the E, and some US airframes were converted to the later G or ‘Wild Weasel’ variant that served in the Gulf War, eventually retiring from service in 1996.

 

 

The Kit

This is a minor variation on a brand-new tooling from Meng that was greeted with some happy faces when it was first announced.  It arrives in a deep satin-finished top-opening box with a painting of the type carrying tanks and Sidewinders, showing off its dihedral outer wing panels and anhedral stabilisers to the rear.  Inside are eight sprues in grey styrene plus six separate parts to build the airframe and wings, plus another twenty in the same colour for the weapons.  The clear sprue is deeply recessed to accommodate the sliding moulds that depict the blown canopy profile, plus another seven smaller clear sprues for lenses and missile sensors.  A small bag includes two Photo-Etch (PE) parts that have two swash-plates that have been etched without attachment lugs, so don’t need any clean-up, plus a turned aluminium pitot for the nose.  The package is completed by a set of pre-cut and weeded masks on a piece of white paper, plus a large decal sheet and colourful instruction booklet printed on glossy paper with colour profiles in the rear.  Detail is excellent, as we’ve come to expect from Meng, and the main assemblies that aren’t on sprues are impressive straight from the box, as they test clipped together without glue and the seams just blended-in, most of them running along carefully chosen panel lines, which are finely engraved with lots of variations of recessed and raised detail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins with the cockpit, which starts life as a blank tub that has detail inserts with decals added to depict the side consoles front and rear.  A pair of rudder pedals are inserted into the front cockpit, and the two positions are separated by a bulkhead, with another at the rear, plus a floor insert with pedals in the rear ‘pit.  Both crew members get an instrument panel and control column, the panels having numerous decals applied after painting according to diagrams nearby, to add realism to the raised and engraved details already present.  At the rear of each cockpit a ladder-like launch rail is fitted and an insert is fixed to the right side of the RIO’s seat, although the other sidewalls don’t have any details added.  The completed cockpit is inserted into the nose of the fuselage from beneath, then a boxed-in bay with contents is applied to the aperture in the left side of the nose.  Moving aft, the lower tail insert is prepared by adding the slotted stabilisers, sliding their tabs through the PE swash-plates as they are applied, with an additional scrap diagram showing them from overhead.  They are allowed to pivot by a semi-cylindrical block that fits into the space between the stabs without glue, so that when the insert is offered up to the fuselage and glued in place, they should remain mobile unless you were too frivolous with the glue.

 

 

 

 

 

The auxiliary intakes and landing gear bays are made up from four and three parts respectively and inserted into the lower fuselage/wing part along with the nose gear bay from the inside, which is made from five parts and fixes inside the raised brackets within.  The engine intake path is depicted as a pair of linked A-shaped halves that by necessity have a couple of ejector-pin marks on the interior surface, which are best dealt with before you have joined them together.  Once together and the seams have been dealt with if you think they’ll be seen, the front engine faces with separate bullet are inserted into the rear end and the completed assembly is slotted into the lower fuselage on curved supports and circular turrets to hold them in position.  The engines themselves are absent as they won’t be seen, but the exhaust trunking is visible, and it is made up from two halves plus the rear face of the engine and an afterburner ring.  There is some nice ribbing moulded into the interior of the halves, and once complete they too are dropped into supports and rectangular turrets in preparation for closing the fuselage after the wing uppers have been joined to the moulded-in lowers.  The dihedral of the outer wing panels is obtained thanks to the angled tab that fits into the lower, and it is also a single thickness part.  With the outer panels in place, the inner panels are laid over them and these mount on circular turrets in the lower to ensure they locate accurately on the wing.  The upper fuselage is then dropped over the lower, with a variety of pins and turrets plus a pair of rectangular tabs and slots moulded into the root of the upper wing panels, which is a neat design trick.  The intakes either side of the cockpit are made up from two inner layers plus the outer skin, and they fix to the fuselage by two pins and turrets moulded into the splitter plates, and by two ledges that should hold the intake skins flush with the rest of the fuselage.  A quick test-fit showed that the do, which is always nice.

 

 

 

The wings have most of their flying surfaces as separate assemblies, starting with the flaps on the inner trailing edge, and the ailerons on the outer, both of which can be posed flush or dropped by cutting off a different set of tabs as per the additional drawings between the steps that show the two options.  The arrestor hook is filled out by adding the other half of the housing, and it installs between the exhaust nozzles, which are each made up on a shallow ring to which four sections of exhaust petals are added, forming a slightly tapered cylindrical can with good detail.  Above the tail, the fin and separate rudder has the base fillet and a small insert glued to it before it is fixed to the top of the fuselage on three pegs, plus an insert under the rudder and a fairing over the rearmost tip of the fuselage.

 

The inner wing panels have retractable leading-edge slats, and these can be posed deployed or tucked away by inserting spacers under the slats or not, taking care to deal with any visible ejector-pin marks under the slats if they are deployed.  Unusually, the inner main bay doors and auxiliary air intake doors are applied to the underside at this stage, the latter having retraction jacks, and remembering that the interior is painted red except for the oleo on the retraction jacks.  Similarly, the air-brake panel just behind the main gear bays is painted red inside, while the jack is white and the oleo metallic.  The main gear struts have the two-part wheels and captive bay door fitted before they are installed with their retraction jacks and additional outboard bay door, the bay doors painted white to match the bays.  The nose gear leg has a two-part scissor-link and a cylinder fitted plus two smaller wheels, then it is inserted into the bay and supported by a retraction jack, adding a combined cross-member with door actuator in the centre, which links to the bay door on that side.  The bay door on the starboard side is made from two layers to match the contours of the fairing under the nose, and has a blade antenna fixed at the rear.  The front door hinges forward, and is made from five parts with clear lenses for the landing light and its pass-through window, and a U-shaped actuator that links it to the strut.  The bay on the port side is covered over by its door if like me you have no idea what is in there, then the fairing under the nose is installed, fitting just about perfectly into the recess on two pegs after gluing three small parts near the front.  The nose cone over the radar is clipped into the front of the nose, with an oval insert on the hinge-point, adding a small flat intake under the starboard side, locating it using a peg that fits into a socket in the fuselage.

 

You may have noticed that the cockpit wasn’t quite finished earlier, and the pilots don’t yet have anywhere to sit.  The seats are made from two halves to create the shell, into which the L-shaped cushion and horse-shoe top cushion are installed, adding a top to the headbox that also incorporates the twin loops that instigate the ejection sequence in an emergency.  Once painted they are slipped into the cockpit on the front of their launch rails, and the pilot’s coaming is fitted with a HUD frame and clear lens with reflector so that it can be inserted in front of the pilot and covered by the windscreen, adding  few clear parts on the spine behind the cockpit.  The windscreen and the rest of the canopy parts are moulded with a realistic ‘blown’ profile by using a sliding mould, so the outer surface has a fine seamline along the line of flight, which you can either ignore or sand away and polish back to clarity for additional realism.  The centre-section of the canopy has a styrene part added to the front that the front canopy is hung on and a clear part behind, then the two canopy openers are joined to their styrene frames.  The canopies can be fixed closed or open by adding actuator jacks into the rear, which is given a little extra realism by including the crew access ladder that is made from three parts and hooks into the port side of the front cockpit.  The last task is probably best left until the very end, and it involves a choice of styrene or metal pitot applied to the tip of the nose cone.  The styrene pitot is a single part that fixes directly into the radome, but if using the metal probe, there is a conical styrene adapter that fits into a 0.5mm hole drilled into the tip of the radome, into which the metal pitot slides, using CA to fix it in place.

 

 

The quantity of weapons included in the box is generous, and they are shown being made up before the rest of the model is finished, possibly in the hope you won’t get bored and leave them in the box.  There are three fuel tanks included, two for under the wings and one under the centreline, the two types having different styles of pylon.  There are two large pylons under the inner wing, and these are augmented with strakes and defensive countermeasures dispensers to the rear on both sides, plus anti-sway braces to accept a choice of either a pair of AIM-9M or NPs with separate fins and adapter rail, a pair of AGM-65s that have separate fins, mounting pads and clear seeker head, fixed to the twin rail, or replaced by a pair of GBU-10s with separate fins, seeker heads and two mounting holes drilled out.  An AN/ALQ-131 pod can be carried under the nose, or it is ousted by an AIM-7M, with another three carried semi-conformally in the depressions under the fuselage.  There isn’t a traditional diagram giving the locations for the stores, instead there is a diagram showing the underside of the aircraft with various arrows and alternatives that are a little confusing to this easily confused modeller.

 

All the weapons, tanks and pods have painting and decaling instructions after the main painting pages that should make the process relatively tedium and confusion free.

 

 

Markings

There are three decal options on the sheet, and there is enough variation in era to appeal to many modellers out of the gate.  From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• 480th Tactical Fighter Sqn., 52nd Tactical Fighter Wing, USAF Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, June 1986
• 3rd Tactical Fighter Sqn., 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing, USAF Clark Air Base, Philippines, May 1991 flown by LTC Mike Livingston & Weapons System Operator Maj Jim Miyamoto
• 152nd Sqn., 17th Fighter Wing, ROKAF, Cheongju Airport, North Chungcheong Province, ROK, October 2012

 

 

 

 

Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas.  There are a lot of stencils included for the airframe as well as the weapons, but knowing how covered with stencils the Phantom was, it’s hardly surprising.

 

 

The back page of the instructions shows the location for all the masks that are included in the box, which have been pre-cut on a backing sheet of clear paper and weeded so that they stand out, but not in pictures as you can see above.  The canopy sections with compound curves are handled by using frame hugging masks, while the highly curved areas should be in-filled with either liquid mask or additional tape from your own stock.  In addition, you get a set of hub/tyre masks for the wheels, allowing you to cut the demarcation perfectly with little effort, plus masks for the landing light and the see-through panel in the bay door it is mounted on.

 

The inside cover contains a printed table of colour references that include the colour names in four languages including English and Japanese, plus a Cyrillic and another Far Eastern language that I’m not familiar with.

 

 

Conclusion

The MENG Phantoms are by far the most impressive to date as far as moulding is concerned from my perspective, although the absolute Phantom fanatic may find some issues if they look hard.  The detail is phenomenal, and the styrene engineering techniques on show are just as impressive.  It is so tempting to break open the liquid glue, but I have other builds to finish at some point before this.

 

Extremely highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

 

 

 

[Julien]

This and the G are really good looking kits.