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ZM 1/48 F4J Phantom: 7/19/17: WONDERS NEVER CEASE


Guest Peterpools

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Guest Peterpools

UPDATE: 7/16/17: INTAKES AND J79 ENGINES

Middle Ducting Assembly: The middle ducting assembly runs from the rear of the front intakes to the J79 engines. Injector pin marks needed to be removed, as well as filling and removing the wall seams. When done, all was ready for Mig Fine Gray primer and followed up with numerous light coats of Tamiya Gloss White; some nice progress.

The J79 Engines: Well detailed, not removable and any time spent on them is useless unless they were going to be displayed externally, was simply a wast of time. There is nothing provided in the kit if the J79 are not installed and then looking into the exhaust, nothing but a hollow interior is to be seen: sure seems like a very bad decision on ZM's part. Maybe they should have included with the detailed engines a blank set of spacers to prevent seeing the hollow interior.

The exhaust portion of the engines from the rear compressor blade reward was painted, weathered and treated with both Sennelier Noir Black and Burst Umber Pigments for effect. Much more in the way of weathering isn't necessary as so little will be seen. The rear compressor fan was first primed with Tamiya Gloss Black and then a combination of various treatments of both Alcad and AK Metallics were used.

I followed the instructions assembly sequence with the middle intake ducting being glued to the J79's and then the entire assembly was glued in place in the four slots as shown.

Care needs to be exercised in reading and following the instructions as loads of holes need to be drilled for the pylons, drop tanks and stores, plus some parts are NOT to be installed, so the four Sparrows can be added. Has to be a better way of pointing this out in the instructions. Just seems a bit backwards.

Once the fuselage has been buttoned up, the front intake assembly can be added. I spent some time removing injector pin marks and working at creating a nice seamless intake. The only problem is when the intake is added, there is no way to make any adjustment where the rear of the intake meets the middle intake ducting. Just seems a poor design as it was impossible for me to eliminate the butt seam at the back of the front intake assembly, without loosing all the work I had already done: RATS! See the attached instruction photos for the actual assembly instructions. I tried and failed miserably and now I have no choice but to modify a set of FOD covers as the seam is as ugly as ugly gets. Again, a let down and a ton of wasted time and effort. To add salt to the wound, no one makes a dedicated set of FOD covers for the ZM kit. I bought sets for the Hasegawa F4 and the Academy F4 and both were too small. I finally settled on a beautiful resin set from DEF Model and then had to enlarge them to fit correctly. You would think with ZM always looking to push AM sets, they would have offered a set of FOD covers for their kit.

Next Up:

Cleaning up the seams, adding the nose cone and moving forward.

Thanks for checking in

Peter

 

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Edited by Peterpools
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She's looking good, your moving along on this one. Sorry to hear of the issues with the trunking. Some of these kits get so detailed, the engineers forget to tell the instruction writers how to assemble them.....  :doh:

 

I wonder why there is so much difference in the FOD covers between manufacturers? :hmmm:

 

Dan

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Guest Peterpools

Thank Dan

Very much appreciated.

I'm willing to bet the engineers and designers never actually tried to build the kit and when the display models were done, they just used extra engines to show the details, which are not included in the kit.

Either Hasegawa and Academy intakes are too small or ZM's are too large .. beats me. These issues might have been discussed in the notes, which again is a separate AM purchase. I have the notes for the other two ZM kits I have and while a nice addition to building the kits, they shouldn't be needed to see how to deal with issues. I haven't beuilt many 48th scale kits so I can't speak what other manufactures do or don't do.

Peter

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Great description of the challenges you faced at this stage, Peter. From the pictures of the assembled fuselage and radome, I can see little putty or surfacer applied to the seams, and joints. How is the fit of the fuselage, air intakes and wings?

 

Super work as usual. 

 

Cheers  :piliot:

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Bro,

  Outstanding progress on you re-entry into 1/48 scale jets.

 

  I lived through the intake issues, so I knew what all the ZM issues were. The sub assembly with the engines and intakes pre glued on seem to be slightly short in design, not in your build, as it rests correctly on the front bottom tab, and squared perfectly to the bottom lip of the fuselage. The issue seems to be that at the intake air diverter or whatever it's proper name is, doesn't have a long enough reach into the intake. But I'm willing to bet that the outside meets nicely with the fuselage. Your decision to go with FOD covers is the best solution, and adds some color and interest as well. 

 

  At this point I'm really looking forward to seeing the F4J with it's primer coat on. I still can't believe that Eduard or Montex hasn't made a mask set for the ZM kit as yet. Not going to be a fun job masking for sure. 

 

Joel

Edited by Joel_W
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Weathering of the engines looks just terrific Peter ... a shame about the seam, I have constant fights with intake seams on my projects. Took about 4 weeks to get right on my Tomcat as I didn't have the option of FOD covers! Still, looks great all together, really shows off how crisp the cockpit is.

 

Jim

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Guest Peterpools

Maurice

The actual fuselage to wing fit is very good with a bit of filler needed. The intakes needed a bit of persuasion and then there was zero play for aligning them with the middle intake ducting. The time I spent making everything seamless was down the drain and it would be impossible at this stage even if I was able to spend weeks removing the butt seam of actually re-painting the intakes gloss white to how it was. FOD covers are the only reasonable course of action at this point. I have a frwe more 48th scale Phantoms in the stash all Academy kits with AM seamless intakes to ward off such problems.

Peter

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Guest Peterpools

JA

Right on the money. The answer to the whole mess would have been to have the front compressor fan attached to the middle intake ducting and not to the J79 at all and even better, make the front intake assembly one long part extending back to where the front of the J79's would have been. Then have the J79's exhaust compressor attached to the exhaust assembly and leave the dam engines out all together as you can't see a thing anyway. Then they could have been a separate exterior display and the exhaust. How hard would this have been? ZM just keep re-inventing the wheel and on every one of the three kits I have of theirs this is a common problem. I now they want to show how things work and how everything goes together but this is as far from the mark as you can get and does nothing but create problems. If you think about it, why would they even have the engines at all since as per the instructions, they will never be seen. Just another case over over engineering and a waste of money their money and ours. :(

Bro

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Guest Peterpools

Thanks Jim - so very much appreciated.

If I had any idea this was going to be a problem, I would have done a lot of slicing and dicing, remove the J79 and figure out the work around I just explained to my brother. When I came across it, it was way to late.

You surely have patience of a saint to spend four weeks making the Big Cats intakes seamless and I tip my cap to you.

Peter

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Guest Peterpools

Incaroad

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Knowing now what to look for makes it a whole new ballgame. I suffered though months of ZM's He219 which sits behind me in the model room and have their Skyraider in the stash for years as well. It hasn't anything to do with the intake diameter, it's just trying to get things to fit as and line up as per the instructions.

May I ask if you are building the kit?

Peter

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 Bro,

  The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it's more of a way to make them stand out as manufacture taking a different approach to plastic scale aircraft modeling, that will allow the modeler to detail in ways not previously offered as OOB options. Nothing else really makes much sense as you've pointed on numerous occasions on your Owl build that so much of what they have under the skin isn't accurate by a long shot.

 

Joel

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Incaroad

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Knowing now what to look for makes it a whole new ballgame. I suffered though months of ZM's He219 which sits behind me in the model room and have their Skyraider in the stash for years as well. It hasn't anything to do with the intake diameter, it's just trying to get things to fit as and line up as per the instructions.

May I ask if you are building the kit?

Peter

The disparity between the Academy and ZM J-79 intake diameter is what I'm referring to. I just received some intakes from XMM that are really huge compared to the Academy parts that I'm curious about. Should tell me what I'm looking for and maybe others if they care.

 

In other news though: I'm surprised nobody has commented about the rear fuselage contours being represented so wrong.

Edited by Incaroad
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Peter,

 

Fantastic subject!  I'm looking to pick up a Tamiya 1/32 F-4E and some AM at Nationals this month - and have a 1/48 F-4 in the stash as well, so definitely will be peeking in!

Great start!

 

Chris

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