Re: phantom painting

How did the kit come out ? I am just really getting into the

1/32 F 15C, and am adding a Black Box cockpit to it. I actually lost the original inst panel (how can one lose 1/32 parts?) and got the BB cockpit to finish the kit. I have since found the original inst panel. (onward Christian soldiers )

Meanwhile.... I am planning on the 1/32 F 4 C/D at some point soon, and was wondering your thoughts on it. (as I fight to finish a pair of 1/32 109, and 190 kit's)

I'm suspecting that the F-4 is much easier to assemble than the F-15. It's quite well though out. I found no major fit problems. You get an one-piece upper and lower fuselage, so it eliminates most of the seam sanding work. The only "problem" was that the lower fuselage is about .5mm shorter thant the upper, and I made the mistake of adjusting it starting at the rear. This resulted in a visible gap just behind the bottom of the nose piece that had to be filled with styrene card.

I assembled it almost OOB, with only some PE from Eduard in the cockpit, mainly on the canopy parts, and the odd lead wire here and there on the landing gear. I originally planned to replace the seats with a pair of Verlinden's Martin-Bakers (set 1115), but their stuff is even cruder than the original parts, so I just slapped the belts from the Eduard PE on the kit parts and I replaced the ejection handles with thinner bits of wire. The kit comes with vinyl tires - nice, but a real PITA to weather. If I had to assemble one today, I'd probably get some decent resin wheels (a Phantom jockey can confirm that the Army used low pressure tires ?)...

I'd be hard-pressed to comment on the accuracy of the kit. Size appears ok, though, the only thing that puzzles me is that Tamiya slapped a dozen of raised panels on the fuselage and I don't see these on my reference photos, so I just sanded them to half their original thickness. The longitudinal panel lines on the stabilator should be slightly converging, not parallel, and if I wanted to be picky, I'd say that Tamiya failed to capture correctly the slight bulge of the wingtip light fairings. But then, I'd rather enjoy building a kit than argue over the placement of some rivet heads. This one was much fun to assemble and hey, it even looks like a Phantom...

Thanx for the heads up.

And yeah, I have the Verlindin full cockpit set, with full radar antenna and bay...... (for the F4 C/D kit)

But it is going to be interesting to see how well I'm going to be able to pull off filling and sanding the intake trunk inside seams ! Been working on them, should be able to make them seamless with a few more hours of effort :)

Some seamless resin ones are available from Cutting Edge for the F-15C/E (CE32141) if you'd rather go that route. And I thought they made some for F4s too but I can only find them in 1/48.

Here's a handy list for the resin and etch addicted:

Can someone steer this Gentleman to a source for "seamless suckers"?

Bill Shuey

Ahhh....there's the 1/32 F4 ones I was thinking of...

I've also heard tell you can get them from CRM Hobbies in St. Louis:

Yup - there they are...$20 for either Tamiya or Revell.

IIRC, the gossip at the time was that Tamiya had measured an old instructional airframe for the kit, and the raised panels were 'damage repair' practice applied by trainee 'framies'. So, for the airframe actually used as a prototype, the raised bits are correct... (c:

RobG

1/2" thick repair panels ? Must have been a "How To Repair An Aircraft With A Sledgehammer" training...

BTW, can someone confirm if their other kits (F-4J, F-4E) still have these raised panels or not ? Thx.

Thanx for the heads up !!!

Although I dont know how thankfull my wallett will be later......

Rob, I suspect the BDR theory was invented by a wanna be helpful but clueless reviewer at the time the kit was released. Clueless in the sense that he's never seen a BDR airframe in his life, and also the realities of sheet metal airframe patching. Having said that I've only seen RAF ones - maybe the US have bespoke re-panelling workshops, and they make'em an inch thick to be hardwearing ;) I think it's just one of those mysteries, like the thick raised armour plate on the Tamiya F-14 cockpit sides. From what I can recall of reviews of the later F-4E, it still has the raised patches so I guess the same is true for the 'J' too. Why do they do it?

Chek

Change' boos' to 'bos' in address to email directly

RobG

All of the Tamiya F-4 kits use the same fuselage and intakes, so the raised panels are there in every one of them.

Dave