Tamiya 1/32 F-4J 'Silverkite 211'... with working features

[Mark Jackson]

There's a few bank robbers and international art thieves looking for a man with your expertise.  

Edited November 27, 2017 by Mark Jackson

[Thud_Ally]

Stunned by all this, some of the most impressive mechanical scratch building I've ever seen.

[brahman104]

Wow this is sweet! I need to go back and trudy what you've done here. You're not a clock maker by any chance? 

 

Excellent work

 

Craig

[Biscuit Tin]

Once again, thanks for all the encouraging comments - and the helpful tips on what to do with flikr. Have stated using smugsmug which seems slightly easier to use.

 

As for being a watchmaker, well, I'd have much enjoyed that but am - dissapointingly no doubt - just a 'suit', in business. But was always fascinated by flight and have a couple of hundred hours or so as P1 in a variety of small, buzzy planes. What I would have done to have got behind the controls of an F4... (drifts off into daydream, again).

 

Am almost out of build pics. Here is an image of the the flap actuators. The main L.E flaps have rotating rod actuators which are OK but there just wasn't the 'head room' for these in the thin outer wings - so used small bell cranks. I realise - now of course - that I should have used push rods and bell cranks for all of them. That way I might have got the full range of motion of the real flaps. Live and learn, I suppose. The aluminium tube is to stiffen the push rods for the outer flaps

 

 

 

Next the Sidewinders. The kit supplied ones are the wrong model, as many have pointed put. It may not seem that big a deal but aircrew at the time would have been more than alert to the difference as D model was a big improvement on the B. The kit ones are Air Force missiles and would never have been fitted on the F4J.

 

You can get rather good aftermarket 'Ds' but I decided to re-model the kit ones. So shortened the noses and replaced the bodies with the correct length of aluminium tube to create these 'franken-rockets'. They may not be exactly right but are certainly 'righter'.

 

 

As I mentioned I needed to have opening canopies otherwise you can't get at the controls, which is kind of the point of the project. This choice, however, created fit problems because they are not designed to be used this way.

 

If you show them opened up the fit issue is not apparent and if you have them down you can tease them into the right place and 'trap' them with glue. But have them openable and they never look quite right!  So I'm not thrilled with the result - but luckily the paint scheme goes some way to mask the fit issues.

 

Look carefully and you can see the hinge attachments and just about make out the canopy actuator piston which is chromed brass. I used the Eduard set for the mirrors and insides of the canopy sills.

 

Next up was the issue of how to power the model. The most popular and obvious method is to have a base with batteries. But that isn't much good for showing off the model's various features - you need to be able to handle it. Also, I don't like the mysterious wires coming up from the 'ground'.

 

I read, somewhere, that the large 600 gallon tanks could be disassembled and re-built so the idea occured to me to use this to house the batteries. This has the added benefit of concealing the connectors into the model. I also fitted four very small switches, just visible as small white blobs in the pylon: two for the engines - and one each for nav lights and cockpit lights.

 

The tank end, like the aircraft's nose cone, is held on with locating lugs and magnets. I bought a batch of about 50, tiny 2mm neodymium magnets and have used at least half in this kit!

 

 

 

Once again apologies for rubbish pics.

 

That is pretty much the end of my photos of the build. The next batch will be of the finished article.

[Guest]

        ...........Harv

[Guest Maxim]

Great work! I have put away my models after seeing your work and stole the wife's cookbook.

[Shawn M]

WOW

 

How can I help with you're flickr Issues? I use it all the time.

[Youngtiger1]

Nice work you are doing here sir. Love the mechanical parts as I too have a crazy project in mind to tackle someday that will require bit mech-tech-click thinking

[Biscuit Tin]

Hello again,

Am waiting for the sun to come out to take some proper pictures  - so I may be a while, this is England - but in the meanwhile here are some night shots for fun... a rainy night at Miramar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trailing edge formation lights blink... and I missed them. But I caught the big red flashing one on the tail. There are also lights under the intakes, you can just make tem out in the middle pic, and a dorsal one.

 

The model puts the dorsal light where the Air Force had it, not the Navy, so I moved it. There is interestingly a sort of molding of a small circle on the model where the light should go, so is not too hard to locate and I just blanked out the incorrect one.

[DonH]

Brilliant!

[Shawn M]

ho-ly cow

 

thats awesome

[dodgem37]

You are bustin' chops on this one!  Great stuff.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[Fancherello]

Wow, wow, wow.

Amazing !

[Biscuit Tin]

Hello again,

 

Was coming near the end of the build, or so I thought. A few, final tweaks to the wiring and job done.

 

Here you can see where all the optic fibres and LED connections arrive at the nose - which is removable. I learned a while ago that anything electrical or mechanical - that cannot be reached when the model is 'closed up' - will, quite inevitably, fail. So the removable nose is the kind of penalty to be paid for this sort of project. The fit is not perfect... but then everything is a compromise.

 

 

Then I had one of those 'how-the-hell-did-I-miss-that?' moments. You can see on the intake above that I have fitted the faired ECM antennas which I had thought were found on late-war Vietnam aircraft. Well, perhaps they were, but not the one I was doing. Which looked like this at the time: (source: wikimedia)

So they had to come off. Which left these patches either side.

 

I figured if I was really careful with masking I might, just be able to spray the patches and save the decals. Which I did on one side, but on the other the briefest overspray error with the primer got behind both masks and destroyed the star and bar and some of the non-slip walkway which was the kit supplied decal. Thus I had the classic modeller nightmare. An almost-finshed model needing serious spray repair, with all the harm that could do.

 

Well, here we are, a day or so later, and the repairs have been done and replacement stars and bars have been found for both sides. But the damage to the non-slip will have to stay because you can't sand decals and any attempt to do so would probably end up with me having to take the whole thing off - which essentially means starting the paint from scratch.

 

And, as a result of all this, I missed the fleeting, momentary patch of sun we've had these last several days so final pics will have to wait.

 

Next appearance will be in 'ready for inspection'.