1/48 Academy F-4B

[jminer]

Hello all,

I am happy to announce that I have officially started work on this group build. For this project, I will be working with the Academy 1/48 F-4B. I'm pretty excited to tackle the Academy Phantom after seeing some of the builds and reviews of it, and I'm a long-time Phantom Phan.

First, the kit:

This will be an OOB build, including the decals. I will be building this with four Sidewinders and a lot of iron under the wings, along with the centerline fuel tank. I went back and forth deciding on whether or not to include the centerline MER with more iron hanging off of it, but ultimately, decided that the centerline fuel tank would be the better option. I'm hoping to try something a little different that I've never tried before for this build along the lines of displaying the aircraft. I'm hoping it will add some visual interest once it's completed. More on that as the build progresses.

So, without any further adieu, let's get started, shall we?

As per the instructions, I began with the nose wheel well assembly. The fit was good, and it went together without a hitch. Because of my plans for later, this will be built as a gear-up model, so I'm not too concerned with the wheel well interiors.

I then glued the wheel well assembly to the underside of the cockpit tub. Again, fit was good and no surprises here.

I then turned my attention to the top side of the cockpit tub. I started with getting the various pieces cut off their sprues and prepped for assembly, then started gluing certain pieces in place. My goal is to assemble the cockpit tub as much as possible, prime, then paint. The multi-colored pieces are nice, but for the purposes of my build, I'll be priming and painting everything anyway. The pieces of masking tape are to mask off where the sidewall that covers the in-flight refueling probe bay and the control stick module will go, as these two items will be painted separately and then glued in place before the final wash is applied.

And speaking of the control stick, there were a couple of ejector pin marks on one side and a sinkhole on the other to deal with. A little putty and some sanding takes care of those.

And that's where we're at for now. Work will progress as my schedule permits, but I'm hoping to be done with this build sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Stay tuned, it should be a Phantastically Phun build!

Justin

[RKic]

Watch it with the landing gear parts. They can snap like twigs.

[john53]

NICE, one of my favorite squadrons! Been wondering about this kit, heard a lot

now I get to see it built. Thanks---John

[Skinny_Mike]

off to a great start!

[jminer]

Hello All,

A quick update on the Phantom. I was able to spend a little time getting the cockpit in order. Work has started on the ejection seats, but no progress to note on those yet. Hoping to get a little more bench time this week to get the entire front office done and ready to close up.

All of the cockpit parts got a shot of Tamiya primer from the rattle can. It's my first time using it, and so far it's worked great. After the primer had dried, I began to paint up the various parts using a combination of Vallejo airbrush paints, MM acrylics, and Tamiya acrylics. After the paint dried, I gave everything a coat of Future, let that dry, and used Flory Models' dark wash to give it all some depth. The end result is below:

More to come as the build progresses (slowly).

Justin

[jminer]

Hello All,

Work has been slowly progressing on the Phantom. In this installment, I'll cover what has been done with regards to the main landing gear wells, speed brake wells, and intakes.

To start with, I worked on assembling the main gear wells as directed by the instructions, which is to assemble the pieces for the main gear wells separate from the aircraft. The main gear wells come in five pieces (four sides and a cross piece). Assembly was a bit awkward as the only connection points you have are at the corners, which makes getting the correct shape/angle of the corners correct while the glue dries is tricky.

Here, you can see one of the two assemblies completed:

And here are both of them:

Now, after assembling these and letting them dry, I attempted to fit them to the lower wing section as directed by the instructions. Despite my best efforts to keep the assemblies aligned and in the correct form for the area they fit in, the assemblies still didn't fit quite right. I'm convinced that the better method of assembly for these is to assemble the individual parts to the lower wing piece by piece instead of doing them as a separate assembly and then gluing that assembly to the lower wing. Since my model will be posed in-flight, this isn't much of an issue for me and I just kept them as-is.

While waiting for the main gear well assemblies to dry, I tackled the speed brake wells, which also must be glued to the lower wing. While fitting the speed brake wells to the lower wing, I noticed a fairly sizable gap along the forward edge. While I'm sure that wouldn't be noticeable once the wings were closed up and the model sitting on it's landing gear (or in this case, while in flight), since the speed brakes will be posed as extended on my model, I wanted to correct it anyway.

Here you can see the gap after fitting the speed brake wells to the lower wing:

My fix for this was to simply glue small bits of strip styrene to the front as seen here:

And here they are, glued in place:

Once those strips were glued in place, the gap is no longer visible.

Since my model will be of an in-flight Phantom, no landing gear construction is necessary, but I do need to close up the landing gear wells with the kit provided doors. Having tried this on several other models in the past, I dreaded the fit of the doors to the holes as fit has traditionally been poor on other models when using the kit doors to close up the landing gear wells.

I'm happy to say that the fit of the doors here is pretty impressive. You can see that, with the exception of a minor gap on the inside door, the fit is quite acceptable just by running some glue around the outside edge of the gear well and the outside edges of the doors.

I may need to tweak the doors just a little more to make sure they're flush, as well as address that small gap. But other than that, I think they'll be good to go with little fuss.

After the gear doors for the MLG were glued in place, I started assembly of the intake trunks. Assembly is straightforward with the trunks coming in two halves that need to be glued together. Very little sanding was necessary, and after dry fitting the trunk halves, I put some glue on and let it set up for a minute before joining the halves to try and make them as seamless as possible.

Once the glue was dried on both of the intake trunks, some minor sanding was done to remove the excess glue/plastic that had oozed out of the joint, and I used the latex paint pour method to complete the smoothing out of the inside of the intakes.

And that brings us up to where I'm at today. I'll be doing at least one more pour of latex through the trunks to insure a smooth and seamless intake, and work will continue on the outside fuselage assembly as time permits. I will also be working on the ejection seats and pilot/RIO figures when I get bored with doing the fuselage work.

Thanks for checking in, hopefully more updates in the not too distant future.

Justin

[Bravosierra001]

Looking good. I have a few of these kits so I will be watching with interest. Cant wait to see how the intakes turn out.

Brandon

[jminer]

Hello All,

A little bit more progress on the Phantom over the weekend, so I thought I'd post up what's been done to date.

First, let's take a look at my attempt at the intakes. As you recall from the last post, I had assembled the intakes and performed the first round of pouring gloss white latex paint through them. The intakes required another three rounds of pouring before they were to the point I felt they were acceptable. The end result of the pours is shown below:

As you can see, there's an imperfection on the right side about halfway down. Not sure what happened there, but I suspect a dried bit of paint from around the lid of the can found it's way into the pour and deposited itself there. I can't blame it, however, as it's very glamorous to be part of a Phantom.

And the other intake:

With the intakes sufficiently showing no seams (or, at least working hard not to show them), I turned my attention to joining the uppper wings with the lower wing assembly. Nothing special here, just some sanding and dry fitting to make sure everything aligned properly and sat where it should. Everything was going fine until I accidentally dropped the assembly while moving it out of the way. Of course, it couldn't drop any other way but in a manner as to break something. The part landed on the floor with the most delicate part of the assembly hitting first. This is the result of my hamfistedness:

Luckily, it didn't break all the way off and I was able to glue it back together again. I'm waiting for it to dry completely, a little sanding, and it should be good as new.

After that minor problem, I decided to take a break from the main assemblies and work on the pilot and RIO figure. Since the model will be posed in-flight, I have to make them look like they're doing their jobs. Working a little bit with head placement, arm and hand placement, and creating some new oxygen hoses out of bits of wire will help with that. First comes assembly. I decided both figures would use the heads with the visors down (I'm horrible at painting faces, anyway). Then I removed the oxygen hoses from the heads and cleaned up the seams. I also removed the left hand of the pilot figure and reoriented it about 90 degrees clockwise to make it appear to be grabbing the throttles.

Don't worry, buddy....someday you'll grow arms, too.

Once I set aside the figures to dry, I turned my attention to the nose. Again, nothing fancy here. Two pieces (you have a multitude of choices for the various Phantom models, but the instructions tell you which ones to use), a little careful sanding and dry fitting before the glue goes down and the fit is almost perfect.

With the nose drying, I then decided to tackle some of the openings in the fuselage that will need to be closed. I started with the opening on the spine with the addition of the "blank plate" where the Air Force style of refueling receptacle would go if this were a C, D, E, F, or G model.

Fit here is pretty good, though there is room for improvement as there is naturally a larger gap than the average panel line. It looks like I have a small amount of filling and sanding to do here, but nothing major. And since my model will not be displaying the extended IFR probe, I glued the IFR bay door in the closed position, virtually guaranteeing that this plane will never get gas while flying ever again.

And that's when I noticed it. *GASP* The unsightly seam lines that extended from behind the cockpit, traveling all the way down the spine on either side and coming across the spine where the front of the tail would go.

So a little careful work scraping the seams with the edge of my X-Acto knife, and I was able to remove the visual abomination, some light sanding, and I was able to remove the seams with little removal of any surface detail around the area.

And that brings us up to where we're at today. Hopefully you've enjoyed the update. I'll keep plugging away when I can and updating when interesting things happen (well...interesting to me, anyway). Thanks for riding along!

Justin

[ALF18]

Justin, you can just say it plainly... those two crew members look FAR too friendly to me - but back in the Vietnam War, that kind of thing was frowned upon in the military.

Actually, it reminds me of a kindly old instructor I worked with at the Big 2 in Moose Jaw. Sitting side by side in the Tutor, if he saw a student getting hyper-stressed, he would reach over and pat his knee, saying softly "it's OK, tiger... you're doing fine." Students would visibly deflate and do far better after old "Jean-Guy" did that. Some of them even grew their arms back!

I'm enjoying your build. Those parts on the wings outboard of the ailerons are definitely fragile.

ALF

[twhite80]

Those intakes look great! I am excited to see more progress. As always top notch stuff!

[jminer]

Hello all,

It's been a while, but I've managed to get some more done with the Phantom. Let's see how things are progressing, shall we?

When we last left the Phantom, it was awaiting the join of the major sub-assemblies upon completion of the intakes. So work began on getting those major sub-assemblies completed.

We'll start with the gluing of the intake trunks on to the lower fuselage:

Followed by the engines and engine shroud:

Those with a keen eye will notice that the pieces that get glued to the back side of the engines are missing. This is because I will be mounting the aircraft on 1/2" acrylic rod through both of the engines for a display on a wooden base and the rod will extend through the engines.

Paint for the engines and shroud is a mix of flat black and aluminum to make a darker gunmetal color. This color was sprayed on the engines, as well as inside the engines and the lower part of the metal portion of the tail as seen here:

Next, I joined the forward lower fuselage to the main lower fuselage. Getting this together wasn't terribly tricky, but did still require some dry fitting, a little bit of sanding, and more test fitting to insure the fit was good.

And a little bit of tape to hold it together while drying. I used a combination of Testors liquid cement as well as super glue as one section of the forward fuselage tended to try and bow upwards (or...downwards if you're holding the fuselage as it would be in real life). The super glue allowed that section to dry rather quickly and prevent it from creating a nasty step as the liquid cement cured.

Even with careful sanding and fitting, I was still left with a minor gap along the intakes on both sides that needed a little putty to address. Some tape on either side of the gap, a little Tamiya putty, and some sanding, and the gaps were addressed:

After the lower fuselage dried, I went ahead and attached the upper fuselage, the nose, and the air scoops just aft of the nose. Just a couple of minor issues with fit on these parts, but I did have the right side of the upper fuselage separate a little from the lower fuselage just forward of the intakes while it was drying overnight, so I had a small gap to contend with. On the left side, right up by the nose, there was a slight step from where the upper fuselage stuck out a little over the lower fuselage at the joint along the bottom. I needed a little bit more putty and some careful sanding to take care of that issue.

The nose fit very well to the front fuselage and only required a little swipe of a sanding stick to even things out on both surfaces. A little sanding around the join to get the little bit of excess cement off is all it will take to clean this up and have it looking good.

While those assemblies were waiting to dry, I assembled the tail. Again, no major issues here. Some careful cleanup of all the parts results in a great looking tail. And, maybe it's just me, but I think the probes on the front of the tail are a bit sturdier than other Phantoms I've built. Maybe I'll still end up breaking them off....we'll see. I've since hit the tail with a shot of primer just to verify everything looks good, and it does.

I then turned my attention to the fuselage portion of the intakes. The outside portion contained some nasty ejector pin marks on both parts that needed to be addressed. So out came the sanding stick and putty to make things uniform on the inside surfaces. Here it is prior to the putty so you can see what you'll have if you tackle this kit:

And that brings us up to where things are at today. Still chugging along, and it won't be too terribly long before I'll be ready for some paint. I'm having fun with this build and enjoying the progress. The kit is a fun build, albeit that it has it's own eccentricities. More updates to come as things get further along. I hope you have enjoyed the update.

Justin

[ALF18]

Good progress, Justin. Caused me some serious déjà vu as I looked at the assembly steps. You are doing a terrific job filling in gaps and overcoming the minor fit and finish issues this kit has.

ALF

[jminer]

Hello all,

It's been a while since my last update, but rest assured, work has continued on the Phantom. As we last left it, the fuselage assembly was in full swing. That's where we'll pick it up, so without further delay, let's get to it, shall we?

The canopies have a seam that runs down the center of them that needed to be addressed. Using various grits of sanding sticks, I was able to remove the seam. I followed up with a little toothpaste and a rag to polish them to the point where a dip in Future will clear the minor scratches.

Once the canopies were addressed, I put the outer wings on, taped them to keep them in the proper angle, and set those aside to dry.

After the outer wings had dried, I needed to get the nose gear doors glued to the fusleage. Doing so required the removal of the bracket on the forward nose gear door that allows it to be glued in the open position. Using my knife, I was able to remove the bracket so that I could glue the forward door in the closed position.

Because there was no good way to insure that the forward nose gear would fit in the closed position, I had to come up with a way to make it fit flush. Looking at the nose gear bay, the best way I could come up with to accomplish this was as follows:

I used some liquid cement to coat the inside of the nose gear bay, then cut some small strip stock. As the glue started to set, I put the strip stock around the three sides that the nose gear bay, glued the sides of the forward nose gear door, then slid it into position, pushing the strip stock down the glued sides. The glue was set up enough that the strip stock held in place at the right location to keep the nose gear bay door flush with the bottom of the fuselage.

And here we are with both doors in place. As you can see, they fit very nicely.

I then turned my attention to getting the intakes attached. This was a bit of a pain for me. The fit, overall, was fairly decent. I had to do a little trial and error with some dry fitting to get the fit dialed in, but overall the fit was decent. After getting the intakes glued, I taped them in place to keep them from moving at all.

After the intakes dried, there was a little bit of putty and sanding that needed to be done to clean up the seams. Once that was complete, the fuselage was pretty much set.

While the fuselage was pretty well set, I turned my attention to the things that hang off the bottom of the aircraft. I have decided to put on the centerline drop tank, four Sidewinders, four Sparrows, and six of the Mk82s using the underwing TERs. Assembly was straightforward, and after the glue dried, I set out to decorating them.

As ALF had pointed out in his build of the F-4C, the yellow and brown stripes on the Sidewinders also did not want to lay down for me. Ultimately, I ended up taking some Future, tacking one end of the stripe down, letting the Future dry, then adding more Future and working the decals around the missile body as the Future set up and became tacky. I also had an issue with the yellow stripes for the bombs not going fully around the nose, no matter where on the bomb's nose I placed them. The stripes don't fully encompass the bomb, but I arranged the decals so they will be on the bottom and won't show.

And here's the finished results:

I've also assembled the pylons:

Once the pylons and ordnance were assembled, I got the pilots finished and placed in the cockpit and the canopies masked. I used a leftover set of Eduard masks for the Hasegawa Phantom, which required a little tweaking to get to fit properly.

And that brings us up to where I'm at today. Getting ready to lay down some primer and paint very soon. Primer will go on today or tomorrow, with major painting of the sub-assemblies beginning this weekend. I hope to have this completed before Christmas and will post further updates as I get them done. I hope you've enjoyed the updates. Please feel free to share any comments or criticisms.

Justin

[AX 365]

I always liked those 'Sundowner' markings on a Phantom.

Very nice work and continued success to the finish line.

Mike

[jminer]

Thank you, Mike!

Justin

[ALF18]

Great progress, Justin.

You've done a terrific job on those missiles and bombs. The cockpit looks good too. Looking forward to seeing some paint on that bad boy!

ALF

[jminer]

Thanks for the compliments, ALF!

I don't have a lot to update with for right now. Work has slowed for multiple reasons, primarily because I was notified a couple of weeks ago that my job was being eliminated just after the first of the year due to a reduction in force. So most of my time is now spent on job hunting (*shameless plug* btw, if anyone is in need of an experienced Telecom Administrator working remotely, PM me */shameless plug*). Not the best thing ever right before the holiday season, but sometimes that's life and you have to deal with what you're handed.

In the meantime, I managed to get a little bit further along with the Phantom. Primer was put down on the fuselage and other major parts in preparation for painting. I used Tamiya Surface Primer from a spray bomb to give my paint a good base. After working out any obvious flaws, everything was re-primed with the Tamiya surface primer and pre-shaded using Vallejo flat black.

MM Acryl flat white was used on the underside. I still have some blending to do before it's all said and done with, but overall, it's starting to look the part.

I also sprayed the outside halves of the horizontal stabs, the pylons and stores holders, and the vertical stabilizer flat white. And that's pretty much as far as I've got so far. I'm hoping to get the gull gray painted sometime in the next week or two. Then it will be the metal parts around the exhaust, then the various details. Depending on how things with the job hunt go, I'm hoping to get this finished up by February. Hopefully, you enjoy this small update, and as always, if you have any comments or criticisms, please let me know.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Justin

[rom]

nice belly painting! very subtle ;^)

[ALF18]

Justin

Really sorry to hear about the job... sorry I have no contacts in that area of business. I went through a lay-off 4.5 years ago, but luckily I had already started to line up something else, and was just waiting for the right time to make the jump. In my case, they gave me a big bag of severance pay to do what I was going to do anyway - leave!

Still hurts, though. Hopefully you can find some zen moments at the modeling bench in the meantime, as you job-hunt.

That underside is looking good. Keep it up!

ALF

[jminer]

Hello All,

I was able to get some work done on the Phantom over the past week or so. Primarily just masking the white parts and preparing to lay down the Gull Gray. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of the masking work that was done, so all I have are the photos of the finished Gull Gray paint.

One thing I'll note is that I've been using Tamiya and MM acryl paints for several years now, but I've always used acryl primer. I've had problems with paint peel when removing any masking. I've tried all kinds of things to prep the plastic before primer to make sure I had a good base, but I've still run into issues using the acryl primers. For this model, I've used Tamiya Surface Primer from a spray can and I am happy to say that I've had zero issues with paint peel when removing the masking.

So with that being said, here are the results of the Gull Gray coat:

Right Side

Left Side

Top View

Hope you've enjoyed the update. Slowly, but surely, we're getting there. I'm giving the paint a few days to cure, then I'll start masking and painting the exhaust areas. Shouldn't be too much longer and we'll be able to start applying decals.

As always, if you have any comments or criticisms, please feel free to share.

Justin

[ALF18]

Nice weathered paint job. I have used that Tamiya rattle can "Fine Surface Primer" for years, and it is wonderful stuff. You will find it never lets you down.

ALF

[jminer]

Thanks, ALF!

I'm definitely impressed with the Tamiya primer so far. It goes down smoothly, is very forgiving, and has given me a rock-solid base for paint.

Justin

[jminer]

Hello All,

It's time for another quick update on the Phantom.

For this update, I've masked off the rear metallic areas around the exhaust and the horizontal stabilizers. I've laid down a base coat of MM Aluminum. Once that dries, I'll re-mask and do the darker areas with some MM Steel and a home-made mix of gunmetal (black and silver). Then I'll do some weathering with some MM Jet Exhaust and Tamiya smoke and hopefully have a decent replication of that area.

So...not much along the lines of photo updates, but here's where I'm at:

And the other side

It will likely be this weekend before I will get to painting the rest of the exhaust area, so more updates will follow in a few days.

:cheers:/>

Justin

Edited January 19, 2016 by jminer

[jminer]

Hello all,

Work has commenced on the Phantom to the point where the model itself is complete. I'm still working on a base for my Phantom, but I'm calling the model itself done. So let's get to the good stuff!

After painting the base coat for the metallic exhaust area, I followed that up with a custom mix of black and aluminum to get a gunmetal color for the burner cans and lower metal areas, masked, and sprayed that color. I followed with a bit of MM Jet Exhaust to give everything that "burned" look. Then did some highlights and shading of the metallic areas.

I was fairly happy with how it turned out:

Once I had the base colors down, I gave everything a gloss coat of a 70/30 mix of Future and Simple Green. Two or three light coats sprayed, allowed to dry, and a final medium coat was applied and left to dry. That gave me a good base for the decals.

Overall, I will say that the decals went down very well. The only place I had real issues was with the shark mouth decals. They just wouldn't fit around the nose without wrinkles. So multiple applications of MicroSol got them to behave at least better than when originally laid down:

Yikes!

The decal process took quite a bit of time given the overall number of stencils included with the kit. It was a daunting task to say the least, but working in sections definitely helps. Here's a shot of the bottom with most of the stencils applied:

And the top side:

Once decals were complete, I did another gloss coat of the 70/30 Future/Simple Green mix with multiple light coats and a medium coat, then commenced with weathering.

Since I'd seen a few other models weathered with artist's oils, I thought I'd give them a try. All I can say is, I love it. Using some oil paints and a combination of brushes and cotton swabs dipped in Turpenoid, I was able to give the Phantom what I think is a great looking weathered look. I used Burnt Sienna and Lamp Black as my color choices.

Here's the bottom (it's a little washed out by the lighting):

And here's the top:

Once the weathering was completed to my liking, I gave everything a coat of MM acryl clear flat to seal everything in (I still need to flat coat the ordnance). I then turned my attention to the stuff that hangs off the bottom of the wings. I glued the missiles and bombs onto the pylons, with the exception of the two bottom Mk 82s. I wanted to portray those as being pickled on a bomb run, so I drilled a hole in the bombs and the bottom of the lower pylons and attached the bombs at an angle as though they are being dropped, suspended by a thin brass rod.

And a few more shots from various angles:

And that brings us up to where I'm at today. I'll be getting a base and some clear acrylic rod to mount the Phantom to. I will also be putting a satellite photo of a Vietnamese rail yard down on the base so as to make it look like the Phantom is letting loose with some mud movers on some rail lines. I should have that done in the next few weeks, so look for another update when that comes about.

I hope you've enjoyed the updates and progress. As always, any comments or concerns are appreciated.

Justin

[kurnass77]

Great job!

The Sundowner markings was amongst the must beautiful of the Navy inventory!

Just one suggestion that you're naturally free to ignore:will be better change angle to one of the dropped bombs,maybe one nose- and the other tail-down?

Just to add variety.

Gianni