1/32 Tamiya F-4J Phantom

Gallery Article by Luc Janssen on Apr 20 2011

 

Building
Although this Tamiya kit is a famous one, it is rather difficult to build and some experience is needed, particularly when assembling the intakes and the exhaust section correctly.

I wanted to build a simple diorama with an F-4 without armament or other ordnance and parked on a simple piece of tarmac. 

I used two after market sets, namely the Aires exhaust nozzles and the cockpit equipment. I reworked several details of the kit as the pylons, the TER bomb racks, the refueling probe, the nose and main landing gear and the wing folding mechanisms with their locks. As the flaps in the kit are not correct, I made new ones, both inboard and outboard.

Danny Coremans superb US NAVY F -4 B/J/N/S publication is a fantastic guide when building a Phantom !

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Painting
Painting was based on several photographs of Marine F -4’s with the green clovers on the tail and central fuel tank. These machines were often well-worn and with lot of paint patches, giving the planes an aggressive and impressive appearance.

I started to spray the model with an overall coat of Light Gull Gray, where after I accentuated the joints with pastel powder of a slightly Darker Gray using a fine brush. Once this finished, I cleaned the model and gave it an overall spray of Light Gull Gray diluted with thinner on a base of 1 to 4. All the underside items were painted afterwards with White, but not threatened with pastels.

The next step was to give the model two overall coats of gloss varnish and to put the decals in place. I used a part of the decals from the kit together with a decal sheet of Yellowhammer Models . It took me a lot of time to get all the decals on the right place, in particular the stencils!

After the decals, again two diluted coats of a mixture of gloss and dull varnish (proportion 4 gloss and 5 dull) was given and the weathering job could start.

Weathering
First I began with some patches of ‘field maintenance’ Light Gull Gray that I applied with a brush, cut short. Checking the photographs of the real thing, I accentuated some of the panel lines with a very sharp color pencil, Dark and Medium Gray for the upper sides and Light and Medium Gray for the under sides. Then I gave the model the necessary dirt marks and airflow strains, always checking photographs of the real planes, using a Dark Brown and Black color pencil and pastels.

The last thing to create was the base. I made it from a simple piece of sheet styrene which was threatened with plastic cement and a sponge to get a rough appearance, glued on a glass plate and painted Dark Gray, completed with some markings.

After market update sets

  • Aires Cockpit Set F –4/J

  • Aires Exhaust Nozzles

Paints

  • Alclad II Lacquer – Model Master 

References

  • Danny Coremans US Navy F -4 B/J/N/S Phantom

  • Famous Airplanes of the World no 114 F -4 J/K Phantom

  • Squadron/Signal Publications Air War over Southeast Asia Vol 2 + 3

  • Squadron/Signal Publications Phantom II

  • Sqaudron/Signal Publications . . . And kill Migs 

  • F -4 Phantom II in Detail & Scale

  • Mig Killers of Yankee Station

Luc Janssen

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Photos and text © by Luc Janssen