McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom II

Hayden Scott-Williams
As the instructions indicate starting on the intake ducts I decided to start off with my old trick of replacing the moulded turbine blades with metal ones. In the end, though, I may not land up using these parts. I've ordered some seamless suckers that appear to come with their own version of this part. I'll decide which looks better when they get here and use that one.

Hayden Scott-Williams
After a little break for work and research, I've continued with work on the nose section. I'll be displaying the radar extended on a rail so the radome needs to be cut off for starters. Tamiya has molded the radome with a number of 'ribs' running around the interior which seem to represent the copper wire rings found in the real thing. These have been removed as I intend to use real copper wire to represent them. The mounting plate for the gun and radar also needed a little work including the removal of the attachment point for the radar and the creation of a foil panel to fit at the bottom of the nose section.

Hayden Scott-Williams
Well, it's certainly been a while and not that much to show for it 🙂 Most of what HAS been done is in the radar bay. As I said previously, I intend to have the radar run out on an extender bar so the actual radar bay will be partially visible. After scouring the web, I couldn't find too many references for the inside of the radar bay until a friend sent me a link to a video on the breakdown of a German F. Near the end of the video, there's a pan shot of the empty radar bay which provided a decent screen shot to use as a basic reference. From that, I built up the bulkhead between the radar bay and the gun bay as well as some additional ribs within the radar bay. I also added some hoses to feed air from a scoop on the top of the nose to the gun bay. Finally, I added the internal mounting rail on which the radar is suspended

I also managed to do some work on the Rhino seamless suckers I bought. I've cut out the necessary parts from the fuselage and then mounted the kit splitter plate to the resin intakes. I also added the custom engine faces I'd made previously to the back of the intakes. To be honest, the fit of the seamless suckers is not fantastic. There are large steps between the resin part and the kit fuselage and I'm still debating sanding down the external parts of the resin and using the kit external part to the intake over the resin internals. We'll see.

So, that's it for now. Hopefully I'll be a little more active on this build now

Hayden Scott-Williams
Managed to get the seamless suckers attached without too much hassle. In the end, the fit was a lot better than I had anticipated. I'll see just how good it is when I attach the lower fuselage part 🙂

Hayden Scott-Williams
After a hectic month at work, I've managed to snatch a few moments at the bench to work on a few bits and bobs.

First up were the afterburner cans. I noticed, in a number of reference photos that the cans are actually perforated with hundreds of little holes. Apparently these are to allow cool air to form a layer between the flame and the metal, keeping the metal cool. To replicate these, I used a riveting tool to add holes to the plastic. Having a riveting wheel certainly made this a lot easier. I shudder to think of having to add each hole one at a time 🙂

In some references I also noticed bands around the inside of the cans which I decided to add using plastic strip. They're all together now and ready for filling and painting

Back to the nose section ad I started work on the Vulcan. I ordered myself a set of Master Models turned barrels for the Vulcan cannon. Their arrival coincided nicely with my first free weekend in a while and I spent a rather frustrating 4 hours putting them together. The end result is well worth it though.

After they were all together and fitted, I decided to paint up the various parts and see what they look like when they're all together. I must say, I was so impressed with the result that I've decided to mount the cannon on aq stand outside of the aircraft, rhater than hide all of that work inside. So now it's on to scratch building a stand 🙂

Hayden Scott-Williams
And the stand is done! A little mini build of it's own. I've mounted the Vulcan and added a couple of bits and bobs. Still a little more work needed but I'll set this aside for a bit and get on with the main kit for now

Hayden Scott-Williams
Now that the Vulcan is basically done, I figured it was time to get some work done on the main kit. So, we go back to the instructions to follow the steps 🙂

The next thing on the agenda is the cockpit tub. I'll be using the Eduard painted PE set for this. I've resisted using this stuff in the past as I feel it is (a) too glossy, and (b) too 2 dimensional. Sure, there's a lot of printed detail that i would never be able to add myself but and the printed buttons and knobs are probably more accurately to scale but I still like the raised detail of the Tamiya kit parts.

I raise this point now as there is another wrinkle to using the PE. Typically, I simply use good ol' XF-19 as my interior grey for cockpits on Phantoms. Eduard, however, uses something a whole hell of a lot lighter with a little hint of blue. There's a good chance that theirs is the correct colour but it means I need to knock up a mix to match it. I'll be honest, I cannot tell you the ratios of my mix simply because it was a lot of 'a brush load of this? ... No. Try a brush load of that ... closer'. All I can say is that I started with XF-19 Sky Grey with a load of XF-2 Flat White added to lighten it and then a bit of XF-8 Flat Blue for the blue. After that, I tweaked using XF-66 Light Grey to darken and XF-2 to lighten. the whole lot is going to get a fairly heavy ink wash at some point so I simply wanted to be in the ballpark.

So the tub was sprayed with the concoction and then the side consoles were added. The control boxes on the consoles and the rear panel were then picked out with XF-69 NATO Black - my preferred replacement for black. I really should have been using my brain at this point. If I'd used X-18 Semi-Gloss Black, I'd have been able to match the Eduard PE very well. Ah well ...

After that, I decided to start on the rear panel. The cover for the radar scope in the kit panel is circular, which is correct for the C and D models but on the E, this was replaced by a rectangular rubber cover, to make viewing the scope easier for the RIO. This seemed like a fair challenge to me so I took the offending kit part off and fashioned a new one out of heavy foil (to allow me to bend and shape it). I'm fairly pleased with the outcome (which you can see in the attached album) although looking at the reference photos now, the edges seem a little square and boxy. I may whip it off and reshape it later.

Then it was on to the details on the rear panel. I'd already added the couple of PE boxes for the panel and then started out on the fiddly job of adding the 2 PE T handles for the emergency gear and brake controls. After much swearing and removing of skin with CE glue, i had one on and it just didn't look right. Once again, too 2 dimensional. So it was off with the PE part and out with the styrene strip and rod. A created a couple of parts that look a little more realistic (at least to me) and then painted them up. Naturally, the paint job is nowhere near as neat as the printing but from a distance, they look the part 🙂

I then added the rest of the little parts to the rear 'pit and then hit it with another weathering wash. Calling it a day there for now

Hayden Scott-Williams
And so it was on to the front. As with the rear, I couldn't be bothered with the fiddly little PE T handles so I made one for myself ... which was an even MORE fiddly process 🙂 Go Figure. That turned out so well that I decided to scratch build the gear handle as well. The result is a little oversized but I'm going to stick with it.

And then it was time to bring it all together. The PE document box from earlier got positioned. The main panel was fixed in and the kit stick and throttle were added. I made a start at adding some extra detail to the bulkheads by scratch building the emergency canopy actuator and have plans for a few more bits and bobs before I fix the tub into the fuselage.

I think I want to resist fixing it in for a while as there's a lot of work to be done on the inside of the fuselage and I don't want to be knocking off little pats of the pit by accident.

Next up (I think) will be the engine bay. As soon as I find the courage to attempt that 🙂 Oh, wait! I didn't tell you all 🙂

My masochistic streak got the better of me the other day. I thought 'Wouldn't it be nice to drop the engine out of this beast?' 'Now, where do I find a J79 engine to do up?'

As it turns out, Most Hasegawa (and some Italeri) 1/32 F-104 kits have the J79 engine in the kit. I managed to pick one of these up on the cheap and so I now have an engine to detail. In addition, I'm going to have to detail up the engine bay as well as build a trolley for the engine. At this rate, I'm going to finish this build in 2021 🙂