1/32 Tamiya f-4e questions

I worked on real F-4Es for five years at George AFB and Ramstein AB, and F-4Cs at Kelly AFB for a year and a half, just to give you my credentials for my following answer. I don't have a Tamiya Phantom yet, so I can't answer the question about the screws. But I most certainly can answer the question about the raised panels. They are NOT "Battle Damage Repair" patches. As you noted, they are symetrical from left to right side, so the BDR explanation makes no sense. True BDR patches are random in placement and are often oddly shaped. The raised panels on the model are maintenance access panels which on the real jet are flush with the surrounding surfaces. One can only wonder why Tamiya depicted them raised, since doing so must have added expense to cutting the molds. They did the same thing on their F-14 kit for whatever reason. I'm glad to see they dropped this silly notion for their F-15 kits. Whether or not to sand them off is your choice, but I know I will when I finally get around to buying one of the kits. Sand them flush, then scribe a panel line around where they used to be. As far as paints, the colors for SEA Phantoms are pretty basic, you should be able to use any brand. The wheel wells, gear struts and speed brake wells are white. The insides of the speedbrakes and the barrel portion of the actuators are red. The nose wheels are white or silver (your choice, and you could even have one of each on a particular jet from what I've seen!) The main wheels are silver on the outboard side, but typically so covered in grime that they look almost black. The inboard side has a silver rim by the tire, while the center hub portion is dirty rust. The undersurfaces are 36622 light gray, but I'd suggest lightening the paint with half light gray, half white, as the paint out of the bottle just looks too dark on a model (scale effect?). The greens on top are 34079 dark green and 34102 medium green. The tan is 30219. The cokpit should be overall

"JP Wade" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

I have built 3 of these so here is my take on the issues concerning this kit.

Screws work fine, with glue or without. I have done it both ways and neither seems to be preferable to the other, it's your choice.

If you want realistic intakes you will have your work cut out for you with this kit.

I have used the Cutting Edge set and it helps the look A LOT but you will still have to contend with the multiple piece intake trunking and all of it's seams. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal but in the case of the Tamiya kit you will have to sand seams while the trunks are glued INTO the fuselage, trust me, this sucks big time!

I personally think the best way to do it is to assemble the trunks completely, do this OFF the model, fill the seams with white milliput and smooth it out under running water in the sink with your fingers. If you do this right you won't even have to touch it with sandpaper, it will be smooth and ready for paint. Of course this means cutting the small portion of the intake trunk that is integral with the fuselage off of both sides of the fuse and attatch them to the rest of the trunk(s) OFF the model before the filling/smoothing can be accomplished. I used a Squadron panel line tool to cut mine off, use multiple light passes and take your time.

Once the trunks are done, paint them white and glue them to the Cutting edge intakes and attatch the whole works to the fuselage. It sounds like a lot of work but it's really not that bad and the results are WELL worth it IMO.

I haven't tried the Seamless Suckers set but I hear there is a lot of work involved in fitting them.

I have done mine both ways and unless your doing a shiny paint scheme I wouldn'y bother sanding them off, they eally aren't that noticeable IMO. I did my F-4J up in the VX-4 Black Bunny scheme and I'm glad I sanded them off since every little thing gets magnified with a glossy finish. For a bird with a flat or especially a camo scheme I wouldn't bother.

Scott Wilson covered this one pretty good so I'll defer to his recommendations.

HTH, Scott Sampley

Very helpful suggestions and comments. Thank you one and all - Jack

On your adivce I am going to get the CE intakes; at half the price of the seamless suckers, this seems like the right choice. I notice they hace a center line tank for the f-4 etc. I want to do mine with a center line tank and bombs on the outboard pylons or maybe a snake and nap set up. Is this the right center line tank for a vietnam era jet (gunfighter out of DaNang in 1969)? Thanks again, Jack

From most everything that I have read/seen the USAF seldom used the 600 gal. center tanks on the F-4E's. They did use them on the RF-4C to some extent. The Navy was the primary user of the centerline tanks and employed them almost all the time.

While some people don't like them, asymmetrical loadouts were often the norm and there are a great many photo's showing F-4D's (and E's) loaded with one outboard tank and an MER or TER on the opposite wing. It looks odd but works. Most of the time the loadout used the wing tanks and the centerline station was reserved for weapons, as were the inboard pylons.

Keep in mind that if you are going for that "ready for a mission" look you will have to choose the loadout carefully. Often what we think looks cool would have never made it off the ground because of the overall loadout weight.

With the introduction of the later F-15/F-4(high speed) centerline tank we started seeing the center station being put to use much more frequently, often by the F-4G's. Be aware that during the period that these tanks were used was POST Vietnam and the color scheme's were either SEA wraparound(no light gray undersides) or Euro 1 (very dark gray and green combo) camouflage. These tanks are seen being used very frequently by the ANG units that were flying the birds in the twilight of their service while painted in the multi-toned hill gray schemes.

Scott S.

Scott...you're giving me an urge to open my wallet...shame on you...

hehe...

You gotta love a Rhino, and I know you want one!

Scott

wraparound(no

I plan to transplant the Revell centerline tank on my F-4D. The Air Force used the centerline tank quite a bit in Vietnam -- pictures of the first F-4Es flying in-country strikes in 1968 show up with the centerline tank and MERs and TERS on the other stations. F-4Ds carrying laser-guided and TV HOBOS bombs used the centerline tank. Your best sources are the Revel F-4E and RF-4C kits. Just make sure you pick the more tapered tank for a Vietnam-era Phantom.

Frank

It would be ok if would stop with ONE...I've got two Tamyia F4J's, one Tamiya F4C/D, one Revell RF4C, and two Revell F4E's (and a G conversion kit)...

I wasn't planning to build the hard wing kit from Tamiya...but all this talk about asymmetric stores loads has got me thinking...I'm planing to do one on my Trumpeter F-105G (which I should have in a week or so) and now I'm thinking I need to do one on a Phantom.

Hey all you Phantom Phreaks - what is the real answer to the question "where can I get some 1/32 scale WHITE Phantom data?"...

Re: 1/32 scale white stencils. So far as I know, you're out of luck... Did you ever notice, by the way, that on the "snowflake" stenciled jets, the stencilings on the tan areas are in black, with white being used on the greens only? With the old 1/48 Microscale sheets, you had to use a combination of both the white stencil sheet and the normal black and dark gray (for the aircraft belly) sheet for one jet. Had you realized the stencils for the belly on the black stencil sheet were actually dark gray? I didn't until I tried to use them on a wraparound SEA model... I haven't seen any shots of asymetric loaded F-4s with the exception of an F-4D carrying PAVE KNIFE and an LGB. Anyone know where I can find some examples? The only asymetric loads they carried when I worked on them in the 1980s were when they carried a dart target under one wing and a 370 wing tank under the other. I'd like to see some of those loadouts that were mentioned. Scott Wilson