Scott R Wilson

You guys are waaaay overthinking this. It's simply a mistake by whoever painted the airplane. They copied the sample data block right out of the Tech Order. Unfortunately I can't post a screenshot of the TO page, but it's identical to what is stenciled on this airplane. You can see it here in Peter Greengrass' post on this Facebook group: https://m.facebook.com/groups/QF4FSAT/permalink/4090911207631663/

Deleted, saw this was already addressed after I posted (got to remember to read the whole thread before firing off a reply...)

Okay, now they've let me in, so there's no problem. Thanks for your advice guys, Scott W.

I registered and attempted to post the following photos on the Britmodeler site, but it says I do not have permission to post a reply to the topic. Anyone know what else one needs to do to participate in that forum? Here's some shots I took of a 57th F-4E when it visited Ramstein on August 2nd and 3rd, 1984:

Matt, sorry I'm late, but I have one item I wanted to ask about, and another item you could still add to this beautiful model. The one I wanted to ask about is whether you got the formation lights on the rear of the wingtips? They are red on the left and dark blue-green on the right, just like the nav lights on the front wingtip corners. I couldn't see them in your photos. Many Phantom models don't have those. To my knowledge every Phantom has them, but for sure all the USAF versions do. Here'a a photo I took a few years ago: And the item I wanted to suggest was more scuffs on the sides of the fuselage. Barry was right about us maintenance guys climbing from the wing onto the intake trunks and sliding down off the trunks on to the wing during the course of maintenance. To get up on the plane we'd use either the retractable boarding ladder or the removeable maintenance ladder. But when we needed to change out a black box, we'd slide it up on the wing just inboard of the inboard pylon, then climb up the boarding ladder, walk across the top of the left vari-ramp onto the left intake trunk, then slide down onto the left wing, pick up the avionics box and put it up on the trunk, hop back up on the trunk and then take the box either to the cockpit or Door 19 aft of the rear cockpit. So any Phantom that wasn't factory fresh accumulated a number of scuffmarks on the sides of the trunks from our combat boots as we slid down off the trunk on to the wing. The right trunk side had far less marks as the only time anyone went down that side was when some maintenance or check had to be done on that side. Here's a photo I took of an ACMI pod on a Ramstein 526 TFS Phantom I used to work on that also shows the scuff marks on the right side very well, again there would be even more on the left: And a photo I took of F-4E 68-0372 of the 512 TFS that shows some wear and scuff marks (wish I'd photographed the left side of this jet!): Finally, some shots of 68-0372's wings showing the general weathering of the SEA paint: