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With all the recent talk of new 1/32nd British Phantoms on the horizon from HK Models, it got me thinking... 1/32nd scale is too small! So... here's a 1/24th scale rendition for you... I've gone for the Combat Models vacform, which I ordered in from the good old USA. The kit is somewhat basic (as with all Combat kits) but claims to provide the parts for every variant of F-4 built. The base kit looks like you can either build an F-4B or a F-4E, but I've decided to make life even more difficult for myself and being a patriotic Englishman, decided it'd be criminal not to have a go at a Rolls-Royce Spey powered variant. With the kit being not a lot more than basic shapes, converting it to a British version shouldn't be too challenging; after all about 75% of this build will have to be made from scratch anyway. So here's what you get: A large box crammed full of vacformed parts, and some comprehensive plans for the F-4B and F-4E variants: DSC_0005 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr Here's the fuselage, moulded in reasonably smooth but rather thin white plastic. The tape measure is set at 3ft - she's going to be a big girl: DSC_0011 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr Here's one fuselage half alongside the 1/48th Hasegawa kit that I'll be using as a guide throughout the build: DSC_0038 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr The quality of the mouldings isn't too bad at all, although it's devoid of all surface detail. This isn't a bad thing however, as I like to add my own anyway: DSC_0013 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr Here's the wings, tanks, fins, stabilisers, pylons etc: DSC_0016 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr Jet pipes, although these won't be used for a Spey version: DSC_0018 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr Intakes, splitter plates, gun pack two different nose cones, etc: DSC_0024 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr The cockpit tub is somewhat... basic: DSC_0020 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr Two beautifully clear canopies are provided, which is very handy in case of the dreaded knife-slip: DSC_0027 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr The kit also comes with a resin 'detail set' which provided some basics for the cockpits, landing gear, ejector seats, missiles etc... how useful these will be remains to be seen: DSC_0035 by Thomas Probert, on Flickr