with Eduard resin seats and wheels, Hypersonic resin stabilators and AC intakes and Kits World decals
VF-121 ‘Pacemakers’, USA 1966
For 29 years I have been single-mindedly modelling within a specific genre: 1/48 post-WWII military aircraft. Not only that, but I’ve been following a number of self-imposed, arbitrary rules, one of which is that no duplicates of aircraft sub-type are allowed. This has been hugely helpful in limiting the growth of my stash, but means I have to get creative now and then to build the kits I want to make.
Until 2012, the F-4B/N versions of the Phantom II were very poorly served in 1/48, choice being essentially limited to the old Hasegawa tooling with raised panel lines. Academy raised the bar significantly when they released their initial F-4B, which turned out to be a very early F-4N and plugged that particular gap in my collection in 2018. With a B-shaped hole remaining in my stash, I acquired a later F-B/N boxing second hand to fill that gap. This left me in somewhat of a quandary in 2021, when Tamiya tooled their version of this Phantom and I really wanted to build it: either sell my Academy kit or find some other use for it.
Fortunately, the earliest operational Phantom saw service in a number of sub-variants. I could have gone for an EF-4B, a QF-4B or a QF-4N, but it was the little-known US Navy F-4G that piqued my interest. No, not *that* F-4G, but a short-lived experiment lasting from 1963 to 1966 which saw 12 F-4Bs converted by means of a retractable radar reflector fitted ahead of the nose wheel in an early development of automated carrier landings. What made this version more appealing was that several were finished in an experimental green finish for carrier operations over Vietnam, a unique look for a US Navy Phantom.
The conversion was made more attractive by how easy it was (simply scribing a door under the nose) and by some decals being made by Kits-World featuring the same airframe in two different schemes. These were duly purchased and found to be disappointing: they were so thick and fuzzy, they could be considered 3D. A quick email to Kits-World sorted the problem and they dispatched a correctly printed set forthwith.
I was particularly attracted to NJ-111, which after returning from the USS Kitty Hawk with VF-213 in 1966, appears to have been briefly on the roster of the west coast RAG squadron, VF-121 ‘Pacemakers’ at NAS Miramar (contrary to the info on the Kits-World sheet) before reverting to an F-4B. This featured a particularly worn medium green scheme with plenty of dark green patches and bright white tail markings. Lovely.
A few necessary accessories (in my view) were purchased: Hypersonic resin air conditioning intakes, to replace the misshapen kit parts, and Eduard Brassin resin seats, to model the early H5 version. I also had an old set of slotted Hypersonic resin tail stabilators lying around which I had messed up for my earlier N kit. The Academy parts have metallic sections which are way too small, and for a slotted stabilator have incorrect detail on the leading edge. I simply hacked off the slotted parts and used these for this project – it means the leading edge is not quite right, but I think it looks much better than what comes in the kit. Aftermarket was rounded off with some Eduard wheels.
Academy’s tooling was quite advanced ten years ago, and the main fuselage is a single-piece moulding which does away with a centreline seam. On the downside the surface is quite rough and there are plenty of artefacts where the multi-part moulds meet. I spent quite a long time polishing the surface and getting rid of the parting lines. While I was at it, I also deepened all the panel lines and re-embossed the rivets. There are a lot of them; this was tedious.
The Eduard seats I’d acquired were designed for the Tamiya kit, and painful past experience had taught me to check they actually fitted this kit. They are a bit too wide but can be squeezed in if the Academy risers are cut away from the cockpit floor.
Before the fuselage top can be attached to the wing, plenty needs to be done. Fitting the cockpit necessitates dealing with the nosewheel well at the same time. The detail is nicely moulded and paints up well and aside from the seats everything in this area is from the box. Unlike the venerable Hasegawa kit, Academy provide full length trunking. Well, sort of. I believe it’s a bit short, but the main problem is the trunking is not smooth, but has a huge lip you cannot get rid of halfway down. The OCD side of me still meant I spent ages using superglue and VMS filler powder to eliminate the longitudinal seams from the inner intakes, but I did nothing about the lip. Why I bother is a mystery, even to me.
It’s now that we come to the primary complaint I have with this kit; the reason I consider it a very unpleasant kit to build: the main landing gear. Academy insist you fit it before the wing halves are joined. When I made this kit the first time round, five years ago, I thumbed my nose at the instructions and attempted to add them at the end, like a normal kit. But you can’t do this without hacking large pieces away, and this time I was resigned to doing as I was told. It’s an insane engineering choice and made the model horrible to handle from the moment the wings were joined right until the end. The landing gear are beautifully detailed, but it’s irrelevant since I’d snapped all the little protruding bits off the legs by the time I was done. Oh dear, Academy, oh dear.
For the landing gear oleos I decided to use Anyz chrome decal strip. I’ve had no luck with this in the past, finding it extremely stiff, but have discovered that leaving it to soak in hot water for quite a long time is the secret. It will then bend and, with a little pressure, stick surprisingly well. I even managed to use it for the nose leg actuating arm.
Since the F-4B saw lots of modifications during its lifetime, care is needed to choose from the multiple options in the kit. This was an early airframe, so the ECM fairings under the wings could all be omitted, the wing bulges are not required, the simple nose and tail cones can be used along with the tail fin, and only a single blade antenna is needed on the spine.
In addition to spending ages in the intakes, the underside of the flaps also needed attention. Superglue and VMS powder was once again to the rescue, but it still required an inordinate amount of time to fix something that hardly anyone will ever appreciate. Other areas needing the filler were the fuselage spine insert, the bay which includes the in-flight refuelling door, and the join between the lower wing and lower front fuselage. The latter is a complex panel line thus requiring deepening of recessed detail, very judicious use of the filler, and precision sanding.
As with my previous Hasegawa Phantom, I needed to scratchbuild the struts between the inner side of the intakes and the forward fuselage. These were cut from strips of Evergreen strip and glued into recesses made using a chisel. Once in place, I cut them down to size. They are quite hard to see on the finished model, but worth adding in my opinion.
In general, I found the fit of the major components to be fairly nasty. This was definitely the case for the intakes, where I resorted to my super-clamp to get everything together. Once joined, more Ammo of Mig black CA and VMS filler powder kicked off multiple rounds of filling and sanding. Key to success was pre-deepening all the panel lines and rivets so they wouldn’t be obliterated; I find it easier to try and preserve what’s already there rather than trying to add it in later, but sometimes the latter is unavoidable. Priming and using a pin wash are a good way of checking progress at this stage.
With seemingly endless bodywork out of the way, the last major part of construction were the clear parts. These fitted well enough, but I wanted something better, so it was out with more super glue and sanding sticks (I almost exclusively use those made by Infini these days) to try and eliminate all the joints. Sanding clear parts is something the modeller should not fear, as they can always be polished back to clarity – the only damage that cannot be reversed is a crack. Since there was a moulding line down the centre of the canopies everything was sanded down and then polished with Tamiya polishing compounds using a cotton buffing wheel chucked in a power tool. The difficult bit then followed: rescribing all the shut lines and hinges. I find it very hard to see because of the visual confusion caused by clear plastic, grey plastic and black super glue, and so I map out the pattern with strips of Tamiya tape. I can then use clear scribing tape to guide the scriber accurately and prevent overruns. The windscreen is best blended in with multiple applications of very thin Mr Surfacer 500.
For the first time I used masks made by New Ware and the fit was really very good. To get a nice drab finish for the greens to follow, I elected to prime with varying mixtures of Mr Mahogany Surface 1000 and Mr White Finishing Surfacer 1500.
We now arrive at the thorny issue of paint. When deployed aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, F-4Gs were painted a medium green, which I assume was FS34102, over white. Photos reward close attention by revealing little details, such as a Light Gull Grey fillet just forward of the metallic areas on the rear flanks and green paint covering more of said metallic areas than was typical for the regular scheme. As far as I can tell, the particular airframe I was modelling was only photographed from the starboard side and showed the medium green was extremely worn, that large patches of a very dark green had been applied to the aircraft, and that this had been extensively abraded from the nose cone. Other details were the Light Gull Grey forward canopy frame, mismatched ejection seat triangles, a lack of national insignia on the underside of the wing, and freshly applied main markings. All this meant the port side and upper wings would be complete guesswork and who knows if the national insignia was applied to the upper wing? A YouTube video of VF-213 F-4Gs returning to the USA showed stars and bars on the upper wing, but I don’t know if they remained on this aircraft.
Figuring out the right shade of green to use was a nightmare. Mr Color 303 Green was too bright and saturated to my eye; the Hataka shade was better. I mixed about ten different shades, mixing these with various Olive Drabs, yellows and buffs. I never really arrived at a satisfactory destination, but ended up something paler and fairly desaturated that I was happy to live with. The dark patches, applied freehand, were a mix of Mr Color 309 Green FS34079 and 18 RLM Black Green. I had undercoated the nose in a mixture of Mr Color 69 Off White and 318 Radome Tan so that I could scratch the green away to approximate the wear pattern shown in the photos.
Once the basic colours were on, I needed to plan my next steps carefully. I planned on painting all of the white markings and I did not want them sullied by the weathering. I therefore first embarked upon some oil paint rendering, using a variety of ABT502 paints on the underside (Raw Umber, Sienna, Starship Filth, Engine Oil, Dark Mud, Smoke and Black) and over the greens (mainly Field Gray, Faded Green and Raw Umber). I usually rush this stage because I don’t enjoy it and I don’t know what I’m doing, but this time I decided to linger on it for about a week. Keeping the oils in a freezer between sessions extended their working period massively (much to the amusement of the rest of the family), and I thinned them with ABT502 Matt Effects Thinners. After brushing some of this neat on the model’s surface, I just slapped oil paints on in varying quantities and pushed them around until I arrived at something I was happy enough with. Streaks are harder work, and something I obsess over as I try and get them straight enough and smooth enough. The final result on the underside was a little bit too uniform and not quite as smooth as I would like, but this was the most fun I’ve had with oils for a while.
Oils were followed by decals. In the end, I only used the ‘F-4G NAVY’ legends and red warning stripes from the Kits-World sheet, and they went down over the matt paint fine. I have an unusual decal application method, which is simply to leave a decal floating in a puddle of Mr Mark Setter (not Neo). When I walk away it looks like a tarp floating in a pool; when I come back later it’s sucked down into the surface detail. Well, most of the time it is; decals are nothing if inconsistent. I thought the Kits-World national insignia were too small and so used some 15 inch examples from a generic Furball sheet, and a 20 inch one for the upper wing. I probably should have used a 25 inch example for the latter, but given I don’t know if it was there at all, it doesn’t really matter.
This F-4G seemed to have few stencils, so I limited them to the rescue markings and rear ejection seat triangles from the Academy sheet (the latter overpainted with green) and larger triangles from a Hasegawa sheet for the forward seats. The decals were all sealed with a coat of VMS Satin Varnish to protect the oils from the masking to come.
Where possible I like to mask and spray markings, and there were plenty ripe for this treatment. I traced the Kits-World artwork but noticed the ‘NJ’ stroke width was way too wide. I corrected this, but neglected to notice the two letters are much too close together. The black serial number was intentionally masked and sprayed black over the white NJ tail flash as per the original. The ‘111’ and ’11’ markings were added were required, as was the ‘VF-121’, which is probably a bit too small.
And that was pretty much it. The frustration of the undercarriage continued to the very end and adding it and the various doors was very unpleasant as there’s not really enough room for everything to fit as designed. I don’t know what colour the main wheel hubs were, but went with black as per most early Phantoms.
This was a fairly frustrating model to build, although that’s mainly coloured by how annoying the landing gear was. Painting was far more enjoyable and allowed me to experiment with a more weathered finish than I usually apply. It’s a great looking colour scheme and I’m very glad Tamiya afforded me the opportunity to make it by releasing their kit. Speaking of which, that’s what I’ll be making next!
Year bought: 2019 (Second Hand, Hornchurch, UK)
Year built: 2023 (New Addington, Croydon)
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