1/48 Hasegawa F-4E Phantom

Hellenic Air Force

by Periklis Salessiotis

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  Greece National Day 2007 

 

This is my first attempt after 15 years to build an aircraft and what better to start with than an F-4E of the Hellenic Air Force, painted in the all dirty and weathered Aegean Blue camouflage.

From the beginning I decided to open a few panels to show some of the internal detail of the aircraft.  I also decided against aftermarket products and to do all the detail from scratch.  The only aftermarket product that I used was the decals from Icarus Decals for the F-4E.  As the project was moving on I opened more and more panels…..until I finally said enough is enough. 

The panels I opened are: Radar, Gun, Fuel pipe lines, Right hand side A/C unit, Engine bays, Parachute, Hydraulics.  Also detail was added on both sides of the cockpit as Hasegawa’s was poorly.  The kit has an excellent fit, which made my life easier.  I used Lifecolor and Tamiya acrylics for the camouflage and oils for washes and weathering.  The decals came from Icarus Decals and took me about 3 nights to put them on using Micro Set and Sol.

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Hasegawa gives an excellent starting point for someone that needs to build an OOB model, but also gives the opportunity to someone to build things from scratch. 

For all the detailing work Evergreen plastic sheets and rods as well as brass sheets and wires of different thick nesses were used.  For all the sub assemblies several acrylic colors were used mainly from the Tamiya range.

 

As it was my first aircraft after 15 years I thought why not use an airbrush… that’s what I did.  I bought and airbrush and borrowed a compressor.  Armed with the airbrush, I used the pre-shading technique to show the different panel colors.  After the paint was dry, lighter shades of the basic colour were used to indicate highlights and wear of the paint.

Periklis 

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Photos and text © by Periklis Salessiotis