JNordgren42

With my F-4B on its way, I'm digging into research once more. I found this film that's got some great footage from the Independence during her WestPac deployment to the Gulf of Tonkin. There's a fair amount of the Phantom in there, but also lots of Scooters and Intruders. I wish they had shown a little more of the Jolly Rogers Phantoms during the deployment portion, but it's great stuff none the less.

Thanks! Plaza Japan has them in stock and for $5 less than HLJ, and cheaper shipping too. So I just went ahead and ordered it from them. 🙂

Good news, HLJ has the F-4B's and are fulfilling orders. Bad news (for me anyway), the card I used for my pre-order was lost and I had to replace it, so the payment failed. For some reason HLJ insta-suspended my account before I even had a chance to do anything about it. Email is off to customer service and hopefully they can sort it quickly.

Now that the F-4Bs will be shipping any day now, does anyone have a good suggestion for Vietnam era pilot figures? I want to do mine in a cat shot diorama so I'll definitely need a pilot and RIO in there. Reedoak has a 1969 to late 70's era pilot and RIO, and I was extremely happy with the late 70's pilot and RIO I got from him for my F-14A. The description says that the figures are modeled with SV-2B survival vests introduced in 1969, but I don't know how different that is from the previous vests, or if it's even really noticeable at that scale.

Thanks! The airframe is about 12" L x 11.5" W x 3.5" H. With landing gear and the gun pod the height would be a bit more. Edit: I forgot to say, the width is with wings at full forward sweep.

Thanks! It's been a fun build so far. The kit isn't perfect, but fit is generally excellent and lots of test fitting and paying careful attention to the build order helps a lot. Plus the fact that there are definite subassemblies that you can keep discrete until the last minute really helps as well. One thing I did end up doing is cutting off almost all of the alignment pins, they're close, but at least on my example they forced tiny misalignments.

I've got the paint, decals, grime wash, and semi-matte coat done on all of the big assemblies. I'm working on oil paint weathering now as well as all of the accessory parts. Test fitting the PE compressor blades. I'm going to paint the rings so they're not so noticeable. Starting on the oil paint weathering. Smoke effects on the gun pod. Thinning down the edges of the landing gear doors. The left one is done and the right one

I can't wait to get my F-4B! I also noticed that FM has pics of a finished model up on the product page now. It looks gorgeous!

Fantastic work! I've got one on my build pile to do at some point.

My first project of the new year is the Hasegawa 1/48 VF-1S Valkyrie. I'm doing a "What If" paint scheme as a U.S. Navy aircraft from VF-84 Jolly Rogers in low vis TPS. I sourced decals from DXM and Furball Aero Design. I'm also using photo etch from Hasegawa and Jasmine Models to enhance detail. For paint, I'm using MRP lacquers and doing an acrylic ink patina technique from Luftraum/72 for primary weathering. Finally, I've done a few spares bin enhancements, most notably removing the sensor from the gun pod and replacing it with the chin pod from a 1/72 F-14A. Current state of th

What scale are you building in? If you're doing 1/72, I hear the Fine Molds F-15 is exquisite, and they have a D model.

Here is my understanding, and I could certainly be wrong: For the Sidewinders '77 could be AIM-9D or L, it may be squadron/air wing dependent or even mission dependent. I'd say more likely L though. '83 is probably AIM-9L, but might be AIM-9M, again that may be dependent on the exact unit you're modeling. And unless you're modeling in large scale, it will be difficult to physically tell the difference between an L or M, and will mostly boil down to slight color variations (which also had some differences between blocks and upgrades). For Sparrows, it would probably be an AIM-7

Those are looking great! I've got a B on preorder and I'm most likely going to do it ready for a cat shot, and it looks like getting the control surfaces in the proper positions shouldn't be too much of a chore.

That's great info Rich, thanks again. Also, just an FYI for everyone, avialogs.com is now free to join. I just downloaded a truckload of F-4 docs. 😁

Great video Rob! Thanks so much Rich! That is a huge help.