Royal Navy Phantom FG.1

Like most aviation modelers my age, the F-4 Phantom is one of my very favorites. I currently have in the stash 7 Phantom kits, but as yet none completed. To rectify this, I pulled down the Hasegawa 48th British Phantom FG. Mk.1 "Ark Royal."

While many air arms around the world operated F-4s (and a few still do!), the Royal Navy was the only one outside of the United States to operate them from Aircraft Carriers.

British Phantoms were unique in that they were powered by Rolls Royce Spey engines instead of the typical J79s. It has been suggested that British Phantoms were the poorest performing F-4s, with shorter and wider Spey requiring 20% larger intakes as well as a boxeyer aft fuselage adding increased drag. However, Spey Phantoms better performance at lower altitudes.

Another unique feature was an extendable nose gear which allowed the nose to be raised and increased the angle of attack for carrier launches.

I intended to practice some scratch building, so first I wired the back seater's instrument panel. This turned out to be a waste of time since the extra wiring wouldn't let the fuselage halts come together

Here are the True Detail seat before painting...

...and here is after.

Using the micro thin tape to mask off the ejection handles.

The cockpit out of the box ain't bad. (Sorry about the glare...)

Fit wasn't bad, but I also made an alignment mistake...

The kit come with only Sparrows and drop tanks although there are sidewinder launch rails, so I stole 4 from an old Italeri F-15.

She smoothed our pretty nicely.

I wanted to try silver as a primer. This is Tamiya chrome acrylic.

I have seen builders struggle with the Phantom tail. I looked a lot of images and decided there are no shortcuts to this, so.....

...micro masking!

This is round one...

Since all operational Royal Navy Phantoms were Extra Dark Sea Grey on top, White undersides, I wasn't sure if my tried and true pre-shading technique would work, but I decided to give it a go anyway.