​ 🇺🇸 ​USAF F-4E Spangdahlem AFB 1980s

[bianfuxia]

I'm going to use this:

 

...the old Hasegawa F-4E kit, with this:

 

 

And some Rockeyes to make a scene like you see on the box top there.

 

I've always - since I was literally a kid in the 80s - wanted to make that scene. 

 

I started in a previous GB but never really made any progress (like the F-4 is still wrapped in plastic) but maybe I'll have more luck this time.

 

I envisage it as a half hour before one of those scenes in Red Storm Rising like this (ok, this episode was set in Iceland and was F-4Gs, but this is what I had in mind):

 

"The Phantoms jammed his fire-control radar, leaving behind a series of chaff clouds as they came in at thirty-foot height. As each pilot raced to the target area assigned to him, he conducted a hasty visual search. One saw an undamaged SAM launcher and streaked toward it, dropping Rockeye cluster-bomb canisters that fell short but spread over a hundred bomblets all over the area. The SA-11 launcher exploded in his wake; its crew never knew what had happened. A thousand yards beyond it was a mobile antiaircraft gun vehicle. The Phantom engaged it with his own cannon, badly damaging it as he swept across the rest of the peninsula and escaped back over the sea, a cloud of chaff and flares in his wake."

 

Edited March 29 by bianfuxia

[vppelt68]

"...a cloud of chaff and flares in his wake." What a way to leave the scene, after leaving his mark on the premises  I love that book, well, 98 % of it! V-P

[bianfuxia]

1 hour ago, vppelt68 said:

"...a cloud of chaff and flares in his wake." What a way to leave the scene, after leaving his mark on the premises  I love that book, well, 98 % of it! V-P

Haha yeah it's a good story although I never really bought the idea that it somehow conveniently didn't go nuclear after about chapter three...

Edited March 25 by bianfuxia

[MARADER]

9 hours ago, bianfuxia said:

I envisage it as a half hour before one of those scenes in Red Storm Rising like this 

It is a very good book! Successes and building!

Edited March 25 by MARADER

[bianfuxia]

I dug out the kit tonight. Turns out I have got all three Hasegawa ground sets - the aerospace ground equipment which is all the little power cart things; the ground crew which has the blue air force van and some ground crew; and the loader set which has a tractor, a weapons loading thing and some trolleys...plus the old Esci ground crew set. And a pair of quickboost F-4 seats.

 

 

So I better get started.

 

In accordance with my desire to replicate the front of the Hasegawa box and have a busy-looking scene, I found a few images along the lines I was after.

 

this, from wikipediea, is an F-4G at Spangdahlem...good set up but it doesn't have all the little carts everywhere:

 

This is a little better - some activity and also it's in a revetment...but I believe this is in the Gulf War:

 

I would rather have a revetment like this one :

 

But all I can find at Spangdahlem is actual hardened aircraft shelters:

 

So...I'm just going to make it up. 

 

What I plan is for my F-4E to be in a revetment like the Jaguar one above, and there to be some guards at the top looking down the back where I think I will have some protesters. Meanwhile, the ground crew are getting the jet ready. 

 

I don't really want to go to the effort of doing a HAS even if I were to pose the plane in front of it rather than in it.

 

With that said, though, I assume the planes are fuelled and serviced and loaded with bombs out the front of the HAS? Or would that happen inside?

 

 

[bianfuxia]

Captain's log, supplemental:

 

In googling for more images I found my old thread where I had tried and failed to get this project going.

 

Here are they, and this in particular might give me roughly what i had in mind, with that grassy hill behind:

 

 

 

 

 

[bianfuxia]

The first thing that surprised me was that the fit of the fuselage is actually pretty good. It's not glued or taped together in this pic but a test-fit showed it'll be ok for a kit of this vintage.

 

I'm glad I got the resin seats - even just painted up (no PE) they're going to be way better than what's in the kit. I do like the pilots, although they are too small. The rear seater has a mapboard in his lap. Nice touch!

 

This is the progress I have made so far.

 

There's almost nothing you can see in the cockpit especially those control panels which will be hidden once it's sealed up. There are no instrument panels and no control sticks either.

 

I will tidy up that untidy paint though.

Still a good long way to go!

 

[vppelt68]

On 17/04/2024 at 16:43, bianfuxia said:

 

 

This green one . V-P

[bianfuxia]

7 hours ago, vppelt68 said:

 

This green one . V-P

That's the scheme I am building in this build...stick around!

[bianfuxia]

 

I've made a little progress. The painted seats are the Quickboost ones - still not finished of course. The plastic bits are seats from a modern Hasegawa Phantom, also far from finished. The panels are from the modern Phantom kit too. I got them out so I could see if they could be a template for this kit, which doesn't have any.

 

They are way too big:

 

This is the kit they came from:

 

So since these pics I have traced them out on some plastic, and trimmed them back to roughly fit inside the tighter cockpit of this older mould kit.

 

I also had to cut some off the bottom of the rear seat so it would fit inside the canopy.

 

More pics next time.

[bianfuxia]

 

Progress continues. The fit is better than you'd think and because it's such a simple kit, it comes together quickly.

 

The only exception to the fit is this underside part:

 

 

 

Wing to fuselage has a gap, but it's easily filled with a swipe of Vallejo plastic putty, wiped off with a Q-tip. Takes only a few minutes and probably no sanding required.

 

 

 

 

 

I can't believe it took me so long to realize Vallejo Plastic Putty existed - or alternatively, assuming all putty works the same way, that you can clean it up with a Q-tip. How many hours of my life have I wasted sanding off huge clumps of excess putty? 🙄

 

You can see that the join on the fuselage is a bit of a mess but that will clean up quickly with some basic sanding. 

 

Compared to the more modern Hasegawa Phantom kit, the detail is obviously very soft. But I am increasingly confident this will look half-decent when finished.

[bianfuxia]

Well...this one has got to that place I call the Hot Mess Stage. 

 

I am using Vallejo Model Color paints, brush painted, which I really like except for the fact that for whatever reason they don't just have a series of really obvious colours like USAF greens.

 

 

My research tells me that Euro 1 on a Phantom was slightly different to other planes with Euro 1. The grey is FS36081 which is a kind of middle grey. 

 

 

There you might think it is too light, but in different light it looks like this:

 

 

In the literally never-ending collection of grey paints I have, they all pretty much start to look the same and I can make different ones look the same just by changing the temperature of the light out of my lamp.

 

So that middle bit is "London Grey" which claims to be FS36081 and actually looks about right based on pictures.

 

The greens are another matter.

 

The greens on an F-4E in Euro 1 should be FS34102 (the lighter, greener looking one) and FS34079 (the darker looking one). A-10s would have FS34092 instead of FS34079.

 

(Incidentally, the Hasegawa instructions are wrong in calling for the darker green to be FS34092. 

 

I wound up with US Dark Green in Vallejo Model Color because the green you see in this pic (70.888 Olive Grey) struck me as too close to the RAF green:

 

 

Vallejo US Dark Green actually calls itself FS34079 so not only did I not use the bottle I had, then I went and bought a bottle of it, only to discover I already had it.

 

Then I conducted various experiments in search of the lighter green.

 

This turned into a wild goose chase of conflicting advice.

 

Where I have landed so far is either to go with Vallejo Intermediate Green (top left wingtip) or that but mixed down to make it not quite so....verdant as it is straight from the bottle. You can see my best effort so far at the bottom (right wing, first patch above the darker green). 

 

All that other mess is just mistakes.

 

Anyway, I did have some success elsewhere.

 

I got rid of these unfortunate moulding artefacts on the inside of the air intakes:

 

 

(or at least well enough for government work)

 

And I discovered that - after all the effort I went to making instrument panels - the kit actually does come with them! They were hidden away in the instructions and I only noticed by seeing them when looking for another part.

 

 

They're not even that bad for a 1972 kit.

 

On the weekend I was at the food markets in my city which aren't too far from one of the few hobby shops - a place I only go as a real last resort because it's way overpriced. I thought, all this work to save me five bucks on a jar of Mr Color FS34102 I could use straight from the jar? Luckily it was closed when I drove past...so I am forced to persevere with mixing the right shade from what I already have.

 

I don't believe in "real modelling" but this old kit is the closest I've come in a while!

[bianfuxia]

Well this thing really ground to a halt because of the lighter green. I just couldn't mix it for the life of me so one day I finally snapped and went to a shop that sells Mr Color and I bought the right colour. Of course, it's semi-gloss, compared to the super-matt of the Vallejo Model Colour I used for the grey and darker green.

So then i tried mixing again, and failed, and then I thought, ok for a ten buck kit, let's just go with it!

 

 

 

I'm not super convinced that the darker green or the grey are really spot-on either. 

 

BUUUUUT at the end of the day it'll probably be ok.

 

I still need to attach the TISEO thing, and maybe some touch up paint on all three colours (especially the dark green where I missed a few spots. 

 

Then I will call the camo done, add the canopy and get on with the metal parts, the u/c and the load-out.

 

I haven't forgotten my idea of a diorama setting with every conceivable piece of ground equipment...but maybe not by the end of the week when I will be away until after the end of the GB.

[bianfuxia]

So this pic here is the one from above from last week:

 

 

And this is how it is now - using a newer bottle of US Dark Green from Vallejo. I feel like it's better - it doesn't have the same kind of brown hue to it. I'm happier with this as being closer to this:

 

 

Still one more coat of the grey to go.

 

 

the underside is a mess - you can see the grand canyon sized gap between the intakes and the back end. 

 

For this kit, given that it's underneath, it just isn't worth the effort!

 

Like my Mig-21 this will have to go on hold for the next three weeks while I am away but I will continue it as it's getting pretty close to done.

 

 

[bianfuxia]

Ok, so back on this one:

 

We have some undercarriage.

 

And I am about as happy with the camo paint scheme as I think was ever going to be given what transpired earlier in the build.

 

 

 

So while I doubt I will get the whole diorama done by Monday, I did make a start on the ground equipment.

 

 

First I picked the items that appeared to be operational rather than maintenance related. This one is a portable lighting unit. These ancient Hasegawa moulds have held up really well:

 

 

Before long I had built the main parts of a start cart, the lighting unit, and an air conditioner. Not sure OD is the best colour for them though.

 

I also took the ALQ-119 jamming pod from here:

 

It goes with these 6 Rockeyes - time for a quick mission into the Fulda Gap to hit the mobile SAM launchers escorting those Soviet tank columns. (Leaving a trail of chaff and flares in his wake...)

 

 

Quite a bit still to do! I will try to get the jet done, at least, by the end of the GB. It's really close now - seats in, decals, touch up paint...and the tailplanes. Mustn't forget them!

 

[danbuoy]

FYI, Humbrol 163, Satin Dark Green is a good match for USAF ground equipment and vehicles. 

[bianfuxia]

Closer, closer...

 

 

 

Might still be a chance to get the jet into the gallery.