boomer46

As with most of the kits I build, Wheel wells and intakes are pre painted with White or what ever color would be needed. Then the construction continues per kit instructions. After all the construction is finished, Clear parts, wheel wells and open intakes or other areas are masked off and then usually the lower surfaces is painted. The upper surfaces are done next. For Navy subjects, the upper portions of the control surfaces would have been painted along with the lower surfaces. these areas are then masked off prior to upper surface paint. For Air Force planes, again the lower surface is pai

Now on to the RF-8. The new Sword kits are out, and at first glance the only thing I could see different between the two boxes was the decals. At first I thought that the RF-8G was wrong but as it turns out not entirely so. There is some light detail on the side panels and main instrument panel, just no decal. The seat is nice, and is a cast resin type, not a 3d Printed one. The pull rings are a bit heavy. Replacements would be an improvement. I am not really sure which seat it represents, the early or late, or possibly just a mid time period one. The kit decals are pretty plane

Now on to the RF-8. The new Sword 1/72 scale kits are out, and at first glance the only thing I could see different between the two boxes was the decals. At first I thought that the RF-8G was wrong but as it turns out not entirely so. There is some light detail on the side panels and main instrument panel, just no decal. The seat is nice, and is a cast resin type, not a 3d Printed one. The pull rings are a bit heavy. Replacements would be an improvement. I am not really sure which seat it represents, the early or late, or possibly just a mid time period one. The kit decals are p

Being as there are no decals for this kit I started looking through my F-4 stash to see if I had any that would work. No luck, all the sheets I had were for aircraft that were used in later times and in other parts of the world. I could not find anything from the early years for the RF-4Cs. There were a few overall ADC Gray birds from the 1980s and later, but no Gray and White ones and nothing from the Viet Nam time period. I started with some leftover F-110 pieces and found about a half dozen tail numbers that I could do up with out much problem. When I started checking the serial number list

More work has been done. Decaling has started. Hope to have some in progress pics up later today. John

Thadeus, Thanks for the comments. The FineMolds kits do have the open Aux Air doors. It would be great to have the speed brake doors and LE Flap options. Aside from that, they are a step above the Hasegawa kits. It is too bad they are in such limited availability and do not have the Thin Wing variants or the RFs and G models.

More progress on the RF-4C. The other day I mentioned the use of some 3D printed resin replacement parts. This post will deal mostly with some of those items. First up, to do an early AF F-4, you will need to backdate the seat to the Mk 5 variant. The seat guys can tell you all about the many things that were different, but in scale most of those things can't even be seen. The biggest tell is the metal shroud around the parachute container at the top of the seat. That little addition is all that is needed to portray the Mk 5 seat. One other thing, if you are modeling an AF F-4, cut a small not

I decided to start on some of the planes I worked on during my first 8 years in active duty. The first up will be the RF-4Cs. There will be 2 from Tan Son Nhut AB in Viet Nan, 67/68 time frame and 1 from RAF Alconbury from the 68 to 70 time frame. I know the header says FineMolds RF-4C build, and befor anyone gets their knickers in a twist and says they don't do a RF. Stop and take a deep breath. If yoou take one of their F-4C or D kits and you look around real hard and dig around a bit, there is a very nice RF in the box. Hold on to your shoe laces and I wil explain. When the F-4

It was about 51 years ago when I first saw Chico. We had finished refueling our fraged offload and were just waiting in the refueling anchor to provide gas for anyone who needed it till we reached our go-home fuel point (normally about an houir). Normally it would be a pair of F-4s or some A-7s who were providing ground fupport that needed the gas. This day we got a call that single F-4 was inbound to get a top-off. I figured that being a single ship, it was a RF-4 doing weather recon on target areas. A few minutes later I got a call from Chico 01 about 8 miles off our left wing requesting cl

Thanks guys for the comments. Glad you liked the results.

Next up is the Hasegawa F-110A. In repesenting the Air Force's new Fighter/Bomber. The Air Force got their First F-4s in May of '65. In realty, they were just F-4Bs that were on loan from the Navy. They got their first real F-4C in November. The Hasegawa F-4s are pretty decent kits. I have 2 major complaints with them. First is the intakes, mostly because there isn't any to speak of. The second issue is with the stabalator atachment pins. They are a major flaw with ehe kit and are a big problem in that if you just look at them too hard after they are installed, the pin will break. The fir

Here is my recently finished Fine Molds F-4C. It is done as 64-0725, from the 557TFS, 12TFW at Cam Ranh Bay Viet Nam ln 1968. This was the Capt. Gene Korotky and Lt. Jerry Stalanker's aircraft named "Sandy Bay-Bee". It is mostly out of the box and the only place I had to do any seam filling was around the pare where the bridle hook panels were replaced with faired over panels. I did replace the landing gear with 3D printed parts, as well as the Hook, Fuel Dump Mast and Burner Cans. The kit parts were better than what most kits offer, it is just that the 3D printed parts were just a tad bit m

genek, please contact me at johnp46@huggins1.com. thanks John