F-4EJ-KAI

[Navy Bird]

Hi mates,

 

Here's my plan for the F-4 Phantom II Group Build. I'm quite late in getting started due to working on a trio of 1:72 WWII fighters. They will have to be set aside so I can finish this new project in time. So here goes.

 

I've always loved the anniversary scheme that Japan applied to one of their F-4EJ-KAI Phantoms - here is the only photo I have of the actual bird:

 

 

After burrowing through my stash, I came up with the Revell of Germany F-4F kit in 1:72 scale, which just happens to be one of the best Phantom kits around, and one of the few in 1:72 that has a semblance of intake trunking. But, it's an F-4F, not an F-4EJ, so I had to do some research. As it turns out, the biggest difference is in the wing, F-4F's being slatted, and F-4EJ having the early "hard wing." Looking at the Revell kit, I see they include both wings, so that shouldn't be a problem. The stabs are the non-slotted variety, which is also correct for the F-4EJ. There are some other lumps and bumps that I'll need to attend to, but I think this kit will work.

 

I found an aftermarket decal sheet from Platz, and although it's designed for a Hasegawa kit, I'll give it a try.

 

I also have an Aires resin and photoetch cockpit set for the Revell kit. I'm thinking there may be some instrument panel differences between the F-4F and the F-4EJ, but nothing major. So here is where we will start:

 

 

If anyone has any additional advice on the differences between an F-4F and an F-4EJ, please feel free to send me a PM. Thanks!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[arnobiz]

Should be a beautiful scheme, I have the same (in original Hasegawa boxing though). Will look with interest how you handle these decals

Good luck!

Arnaud

[Rhino]

The stabs on the F-4EJ should be slotted, as are the F-4E. The only gun nose Phantoms without slots are the F-4F.

Also, that is the F-4EJ Kai, which has differences in the outer wing panels, antenna fit and the fin top cap has two bullet fairings.

I'll have a search round to see if I have a spare Hasegawa Kai sprue, which will include the differences you need, except the stab, though I don't know how it will fit the Revell kit. If I do have a spare, I will post tonight.

Ted

Edited September 12, 2011 by Rhino

[Navy Bird]

Rhino said:

The stabs on the F-4EJ should be slotted, as are the F-4E. The only gun nose Phantoms without slots are the F-4F.

Also, that is the F-4EJ Kai, which has differences in the outer wing panels, antenna fit and the fin top cap has two bullet fairings.

I'll have a search round to see if I have a spare Hasegawa Kai sprue, which will include the differences you need, except the stab, though I don't know how it will fit the Revell kit. If I do have a spare, I will post tonight.

Ted

 

Thanks, Ted. I just found what looks like a good reference for converting the Revell F-4F (albeit in 1/32 scale) into an F-4EJ KAI. It can be found here. This should help a lot, assuming that it's all correct. I had previously read on-line that the EJ KAI used unslotted stabilisers, but as Ted points out that is incorrect. Note to self: Don't believe everything you read on-line! (I really should know better!) Double check your references.

 

I am very interested to know the differences in the outer wing panels, other than the slats. Revell includes both slatted and un-slatted outer wing panels, and hopefully that is all I need. I have the reasonably nice ESCI F-4C kit in my stash, which has the original hard wing - that could be used in a pinch.

 

Edit: My stash yielded two sets of slotted stabilisers which will work fine. I don't have any non-slatted outer wings with the RWR bumps though...but it looks like the slats can be sanded off the Revell parts. Maybe I'll get up the nerve to do that - or maybe I'll just use the non-slatted wing and instruct everyone not to notice.

arnobiz said:

Should be a beautiful scheme, I have the same (in original Hasegawa boxing though). Will look with interest how you handle these decals

Good luck!

Arnaud

 

Thanks - the decals do look challenging. I've studied the decal sheet closely, and I have a plan for creative "trimming." I think this will help - I really don't want to apply one decal to the entire side of the fuselage!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Rhino]

I am very interested to know the differences in the outer wing panels, other than the slats. Revell includes both slatted and un-slatted outer wing panels, and hopefully that is all I need. I have the reasonably nice ESCI F-4C kit in my stash, which has the original hard wing - that could be used in a pinch.

I would imagine it would be fairly easy. The best way to describe the difference is take the slatted outer panel, remove the slats, but keep the part with the pods (some form of RWR I believe) and that should be it. Other differences are a large dorsal antenna, the previously mentioned double podded fin cap, and a larger antenna on the brake chute cap at the rear.

Unfortunately, I don't appear to have an extra sprue as per my earlier post. Sorry about that.

Good luck with the build, I did that one years ago, and it's still one of my favourites.

Ted

[Navy Bird]

Rhino said:

I would imagine it would be fairly easy. The best way to describe the difference is take the slatted outer panel, remove the slats, but keep the part with the pods (some form of RWR I believe) and that should be it. Other differences are a large dorsal antenna, the previously mentioned double podded fin cap, and a larger antenna on the brake chute cap at the rear.

Unfortunately, I don't appear to have an extra sprue as per my earlier post. Sorry about that.

Good luck with the build, I did that one years ago, and it's still one of my favourites.

Ted

 

Thanks again. I appreciate you taking the time to look for the extra sprue. I also have the Hasegawa RF-4E with JASDF markings - wonder if the outer wings from that are slat-less yet podded? It might even have the slatted (slotted?) stabilisers. I'll take a look tonight.

 

I think the extra antennae and bulges on the vertical fin cap are not too much of a problem. My biggest problem will most likely be the first one I tackle - making the Aires resin cockpit fit inside the Revell fuselage. Even though that is what it is designed for, I've read several articles that would indicate I'm in for a bit of sanding!

 

Update: Yes, indeed! The resin cockpit fits perfect without the sidewalls! Somehow I need to sand away enough of the side wall and enough of the fuselage itself to make this bugger fit. Arghhh.

 

Ted, when you made the kit years ago, I assume you mean the Hasegawa kit complete with these markings. How were the decals? My recent experiences with Hasegawa decals remind me of how thick they are, and difficult to get settled down into the panel lines. If that was the case for you, they must have been a bear. The Platz decal sheet looks very thin - printed by Cartograf, I believe. Hopefully, they'll behave right proper.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[arnobiz]

If you mess up the decals let me know, I think I will build mine as an IAF Kurnass so I will probably not use the Kai anniversary sheet.

Good luck until then,

Arnaud

[Navy Bird]

arnobiz said:

If you mess up the decals let me know, I think I will build mine as an IAF Kurnass so I will probably not use the Kai anniversary sheet.

Good luck until then,

Arnaud

Thank you for the generous offer! I hope I don't have to accept it, but just in case disaster strikes it's good to have a backup!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Rhino]

Ted, when you made the kit years ago, I assume you mean the Hasegawa kit complete with these markings. How were the decals? My recent experiences with Hasegawa decals remind me of how thick they are, and difficult to get settled down into the panel lines. If that was the case for you, they must have been a bear. The Platz decal sheet looks very thin - printed by Cartograf, I believe. Hopefully, they'll behave right proper.

Cheers,

Bill

Bill

It was the Hasegawa kit I used. The decals were a bit thick, but looked OK once on. I didn't have any problems getting them on, but I did what you are considering and cut them into smaller pieces. That is a gorgeous scheme and well worth persevering with.

Ted

[Jay Banbury]

I'm in the process of getting these decals custom made in 1/48 scale. It's an amazing scheme and I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on.

Cheers

Jay

[arnobiz]

The Hasegawa decals are printed by Cartograf too

[Navy Bird]

arnobiz said:

The Hasegawa decals are printed by Cartograf too

 

Interesting. My most recent Hasegawa kit was the F-16I Sufa, and the decals were very thick and took a lot of solvent to conform. The Platz F-4EJ Kai sheet looks very thin - it reminds me of a Superscale or Microscale sheet. But I haven't used any of them yet, so the jury is still out!

 

On a side note, I ordered the 1:72 Wolfpack F-4EJ Kai resin set which includes the correct outer wings, and dropped flaps to boot. Designed for the Hasegawa kits, but my comparison of Hasegawa and Revell F-4 kits tells me they are virtually identical in size, so these accessories should work just fine. The only other differences to take care of are the double blisters on top of the vertical fin, and a bunch of antennae. Not too worried about those.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

OK, let's get going on this beast.

 

First, my experience with resin accessories is dry fit, dry fit, dry fit! I knew I was going to have to "thin" either the side walls of the resin cockpit, the sidewalls of the plastic fuselage, or both. Most likely both. The other thing to study carefully is how the resin cockpit would fit into the kit parts. After comparing both the kit cockpit and the resin replacement, it became obvious that the resin one was longer than the kit cockpit. This meant we would need to do some trimming of the styrene to make things fit.

 

Also, the resin set includes a new front instrument panel and coaming, so the plastic coaming would need to be removed. Based on my measurements and a bit of modeller's knack (i.e. dumb freaking luck) I trimmed away. This picture shows the resin cockpit pieces taped together, along with the front fuselage. I've only trimmed the starboard side here in this shot, so you can see what needed to be removed:

 

 

Next it's time to commence sanding. Let me tell you, I sanded the resin sidewalls until they were nearly paper thin, plus I sanded down the inside of the fuselage halves over the course of two evenings. After this effort, yeah, the new pit kinda sorta fit. But it still bulged the fuselage sides out too much. I used the center clear part of the Phantom canopy (that the front canopy hinges to) as my gauge. This part had to line up to both sides of the fuselage. No luck, I was still a millimetre or so off. I quickly realized that I don't have enough plastic left to do this. So what's next?

 

Don't put the sidewalls on! OK, but I still want all that nice resin detail. What to do? I decided to trim away all of the sidewall EXCEPT the detail I wanted. My goal was to be able to apply these small pieces directly to the inside of the fuselage, thereby eliminating the extra thickness of the resin sidewalls. This means the resin "detail" will protrude a bit more into the pit, but after test fitting it, I really don't think it makes a big difference. So here is where I am now, with all of the parts nicely laid out:

 

 

Next up, I'll be painting the pit and getting the forward fuselage together. By the way, dry-fitting the forward fuselage indicates a near perfect fit. Nice job, Revell. I hope the rest fits this well.

 

That's all for now.

 

Cheers,

Bill (who probably should be using a respirator when sanding all that resin)

 

PS. Found another shot of the real thing!

 

 

[Rhino]

Nice work Bill. At the end you're going to have fun with those stencils. Trust me, I know.

Ted

[Navy Bird]

Rhino said:

Nice work Bill. At the end you're going to have fun with those stencils. Trust me, I know.

Ted

I love stencils! Really, I do. I once built a 1/32 F-15E and did the complete stencil job - including the little numbers that are on each panel. Several hundred stencils I'm sure. But it came out looking great and won me a first place at an IPMS Regional Convention (and a trip to the nut house).

 

Cheers,

Bill

[bexwh773]

Hi Bill,

Welcome aboard and a great colourful choice Youre a brave man using a resin cockpit, yes the detail is out of this world but the amount of sanding required is just totally crazy Id rather just chuck a few bits of wire in a kit office now

Bexy

[Navy Bird]

Hi mates,

 

I've made some progress on the pit, in-between fall festivals and weekend honey-do lists. The Aires resin cockpit has incredible detail for 1:72 scale, but certainly presents some painting challenges. But we paid the big bucks so we must use see it through! After I was satsified with my approach to making it fit in the fuselage, without bulging it out too much, and without sanding all the way through the resin or plastic, I painted the pieces of the pit with Gunze H317 Dark Gull Gray (FS36231). Aires also includes resin bang seats, but I'll save those for later. Here is the pit after painting, and a little test fitting:

 

 

I added the Euro coin for scale - this is a small little bugger. I decided to hand paint all of the raised details in the pit (no decals) and on the instruments panels, which I did with a 10 zero brush. Man, the cables from the back of the rear instrument panel were hard to even see, let alone paint! The only part of the pit that is not hand painted are two portions of the instrument panels where I used the film supplied by Aires. To make the dials more visible, I painted the back of the film white.

 

When I was happy with the painting (which took about four hours over two nights) I applied a wash to highlight the raised details and to add shadow effects. Here is the result along with the kit cockpit for comparison:

 

 

 

That's it for now. Cheers!

 

Bill

[Parabat]

That cockpit looks amazing! Can't believe it's in Braille Scale! Outstanding stuff, this should be a great bird.

[stoohoo]

I'll second Parabat on that one Bill, that is one seriously amazing cockpit especially considering the scale, you must have the fingers of a surgeon

Edited September 18, 2011 by stoohoo

[Navy Bird]

Hi Mates, just back from my whirlwind tour of the continent (EMO Fair in Hannover). Time for a quick update: I've had a chance to glue the resin cockpit to the port fuselage half and then try my trick of adding the sidewall details that I cut out of the larger resin pieces. Here are two quick shots that show the results. Personally, I like it! It seems to duplicate the "crowded Spook cockpit" effect pretty well. Remember this is a 1:72 scale kit, so these photos are larger than life.

 

 

 

Next up, we'll close the fuselage halves and add the details to the starboard sidewalls. Then we'll get set to assemble the airframe proper.

 

Cheers for now,

Bill

[periklis_sale]

nice work so far mate!

[Navy Bird]

Time for another update! Things would be progressing faster, but somehow work keeps getting in the way!

I left off right about the time I was getting ready to start assembling the fuselage halves. Well, let me tell you, this model fit together like a dream! Cheers to Revell for engineering such a pleasant kit-building experience. As you can see from the following picture, the only places where I had to resort to any filler was just a wee bit in front of the front windscreen, a half-a-smidge round the radome, and a full smidge where the fuselage sides meet the lower fuselage aft of the wings. One application of putty, and about two minutes of sanding and that was it! Was this a fluke, or are all copies of this kit so nice?

 

Next, we had to deal with the outer wings. The kit includes two sets: the original non-slatted "hard wing," and the slatted wings with the RWR lumps and bumps. But for an accurate F-4EJ KAI, we need a hard wing and the RWR fairings. I ordered and received the Wolfpack resin kit which included the correct outer wings, but one was damaged in transit, and quite frankly I thought the RWR fairings were pretty lame. So what's to do? Why, hack the RWR lumps and bumps off of the Revell wings, and graft them onto the other Revell wings! What the heck, I've got some cool new razor saws - let's start slicing and dicing.

This shot shows the two different wings included with the Revell kit, the hard wing above the slatted wing. The RWR fairings are on the tip of the wing:

 

After careful measurement (i.e. by eyeball) I cut off the tips of both wings off, so that I could add the RWR fairings to the non-slatted hard wing like so:

 

It was a simple job to glue the RWR fairings onto the hard wings. Here is the result, and I think I lucked out, as the seam left from gluing the two together did not require any filler!

 

Once the outer wings were mounted onto the plane proper, I added the landing gear and masked off the cockpit for painting. (At this point, I noticed I needed a wee bit of filler at the bottom of the fuselage just in front of the intake splitters. But not much...)

 

The overall color of this JASDF special anniversary scheme is white, and boy do I hate painting white. I guess I need some of that rattle-can appliance white you guys like so much, but I'm afraid we don't have that brand over here. Looking through my paint supply, I find only two bottles of white: Good old flat white, and a bottle of RLM21 semi-gloss white. I chose the latter since I knew we were going to need to gloss this puppy completely anyway, since 90% of the airframe is covered with decals! (No idea why I had the RLM21, I can't remember the last time I built a WWII Luftwaffe kit.)

So that's where we are now, in-between coats of white (which is going on VERY glossy). I suspect that I'll let the white dry for several days to make sure it is completely cured. See you soon!

Cheers,
Bill

[Navy Bird]

Oops, I almost forgot, I added the two extra bumps on the vertical tail, too. I made these from the fairings that go on the underside of the slatted wing. This picture was before I sanded them into a better shape!

 

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

Hi mates,

 

Things are moving along more quickly now. The white paint that I chose (ModelMaster RML21 Semi-gloss white) went on nicely and I let it cure for a few days. Then I masked the radome and vertical fin and painted them gloss black, leaving the fin cap white as a base for the red decal. I had some bleed through the masking tape at the bottom of the vertical fin, but since that's covered by a decal I didn't bother to fix it. It probably was more a case of the tape not being securely down rather than an actual bleed through.

 

Next, I masked the bare metal area around the exhaust (always fun on a Phantom) and sprayed Gunze Mr. Metal Color Stainless Steel through Mr. Airbrush fed by Mr. Compressor. Anyway, here she is after the initial paint work:

 

 

Special livery like the one that I'm modelling are usually applied for a short period of time and generally don't get real dirty. However, I still felt it would look good if I did a panel line wash, but with a light gray color which would work well with the white paint. So out came the sludge wash and on it went:

 

 

After the sludge dried, the extra surface residue was removed, leaving just the panel lines and rivets behind:

 

 

 

At this point, I was ready to start applying square yards of Cartegraf decals. The decal sheet from Platz was designed for the Hasegawa kit, and I suspect there will be some issues since I'm using the Revell kit. Since so much of the fuselage is covered with the JASDF 301 Squadron 30th Anniversary scheme, and since the design continues from the fuselage onto the wing, I had to pick somewhere to start. I decided to use the fuselage spine as my benchmark. Much to my surprise, the spine decal fit almost perfect from the rear of the canopy to the vertical fin. The problem is that the red portion of the design doesn't come far enough down on the side of the fuselage where it will need to meet the rising sun. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

 

 

Next I added the decals for the front of the fuselage, and was again quite surprised at how well things fit. Sure, I'll need to do a bit of fiddly paint work to tidy things up, but that happens all the time when applying 2-D decals to 3-D surfaces. Next up was the one I dreaded most - the side fuselage design with the rising sun on the intake, and the 30th Anniversary script down the side. I knew this would be especially tricky as it had to line up at the front (the rays of the sun) and at the back in order to fit around the bare metal exhaust area. The spine decal was the perfect length, surely the side would be too! Just to be sure, I measured. Oops, the decal is short by 3mm. I decided to cut the decal into two pieces along a convenient line in the exhaust area and apply. I knew this would leave a gap, but it would be a gap that I can manage. Application went well, so I followed with the rising sun ray that goes across the wing. Here is the result:

 

 

As you can see, there is a gap right above "30th" and at the back end by the exhaust. The decal sheet includes some small rectangles of red that I think are just for this kind of issue. But there's not enough, so I'll sacrifice the red decals for the fin cap (which I can paint to match) and use them to help fill in the gaps.

 

I was expecting worse! All in all, the decals have been almost pleasant. I'm glad I filled the panel lines, as believe it or not, the red and blue portions of the decals are translucent enough that you can see the panel lines. I really like the effect - serendipity is a wonderful thing. I'll try to get a close-up picture of that for next time.

 

Cheers for now,

Bill

[stoohoo]

Hi Bill, can i be the first to say WOW, looking great Really colourful scheme and looks like youve got it coming together really well,

Stu