Ben Brown

Woo hoo! Ben

Kursad, I’ve got a few good reference pics and some markings info for pre-war 4th FG F-86As if you’re interested. Ben

I didn’t notice they were shaped differently until I started digging through my references to start this thread! 😄 Ben

I’d definitely buy a 1/144 sheet if it’s reissued. I missed it the last time. Ben

I was asked if I knew how either team stowed the rear seat harnesses when the seat was unoccupied, but I don't have that info. Anyone? Ben

A good reference photo for the topside of the F-4J. The round ADF antenna is visible on Door 19, just aft of the rear canopy. This jet also appears to have the elongated stab reinforcement plates installed. They show up as lighter metal at the outboard ends of the dark center spars. Closeup of the engine area with the silver-painted aft fuselage. Source

Tommy Thomason has a great blog post on Blue Angels colors HERE. For the F-4J through the F/A-18, the Blues went with commercially available paint. Even though different paint manufacturers were used over time, the colors were pretty similar, so you can paint your F-4, A-4, and F/A-18 the same color. The F-4J used a yellow that was a close match to FS 13538 “Chrome Yellow.” As Tommy mentions, what is usually sold as Blue Angel Blue, FS 15050, has sometimes been thought to be too dark and too grey and that FS 15052 is a closer match. ARC forum member 82Whitey51 was able to compare 15052

A short note about Blue Angels afterburners. Tommy Thomason has a great blog post about the difference between the afterburners on the F-4. The Blue Angels jets had the early, short nozzles, with the exception of 153876 and 153839, which were brought in later to replace losses. LINK Modeler's note: Unlike the long nose F-4s, the short nose jets had the pitot tube mounted to the leading edge of the tail. All F-4s had a bellows probe for the artificial feel system mounted on the leading edge of the tail, directly above the red anti collision beacon. This system was deactivated on the

Thanks, Jari! Here is what I have for the BA F-4J. All I have for the rear cockpit is this scan of the instructions from the Yellowhammer decal sheet (picture shamelessly stolen from Rare Plane Detective). Blue Angel 2 is traditionally flown by a Marine pilot. As a joke when the team switched to F-4Js, a "banana dispenser" was added to the #2 jet. I haven't found where in the cockpit it was installed. Source Ben

Both teams had a tape antenna added to the rear canopy. All of the BA jets seem to have had that antenna on the spine. Here is more info on the canopy antenna from Tommy Thomason's excellent blog: LINK Via Bill Spidle & YouTube Smoke system fitted to both teams. Ben

I'll start out with scans from a USAF manual showing some of the mods made to the F-4E. I failed to make a note of how I got these. If you sent these to me or posted them somewhere, please let me know so I can give you proper credit. First up is the smoke probe location. My notes say the tube was ~1" in diameter. The Blue Angels probe was the same, just one panel farther aft. This photo came from the same source, photographer unknown. If this is you or your photo, please let me know! Here are the stabilator mods, as discussed in the FineMolds F-4

Hi All, Per a discussion in another thread, I thought I'd start a new thread covering the T-Birds F-4Es and BA F-4Js to save folks from having to dig through multiple threads for info. I'll try to keep from going full-on nerd with technical stuff. I'll mainly stick to what we can do to modify our models to look like these jets. If you have any info on either team's jets, feel free to add it here. The more contributors, the better! Questions are welcome, too. I'll add content as time & family allow. Via Wikipedia Via Wikipedia Ben

@Mike J. Idacavage, thanks again for posting these fantastic pictures! Great view of the fuel tank vent tube and the drag chute door pull rod just ahead of the door. Regarding the stab reinforcements, I think in normal, non-T-Birds service, the stabs were reinforced as needed and they could have had the plates on top, bottom, or both. The stabs seem to have been changed out fairly often, I assume to repair damage or for whatever maintenance they needed. I have several photos of a particular 4th TFW F-4E where I know the approximate time frames each was taken. It goes from having th

@Mike J. Idacavage, thank you for the awesome pics!! As for the opening for the smoke probe, Jennings Heilig checked another former T-Birds jet (can't recall which one) and the entire panel had been replaced, so there was no hole or patch. It would be interesting to know if the other survivors have that. Would the mods permit a sticky in this sub-forum? We'd definitely get a lot more input here, although a dedicated thread would show up in a Google search no matter which sub-forum it was in. Ben

The Replica In Scale article on the T-Birds goes into detail about the evolution of the F-4E paint scheme. IIRC, the wing tip stripes were added soon after training started and the nose scallops started out a little differently, too. I was looking for a pic of the "Lizard" jets and found this grainy film of them, along with the jets later being painted white. Good shot of the starter smoke pouring out of Gabor's mystery parts on the belly, too! YouTube link Ben