Wolfpack Phantom - 8th TFW F-4C

[Anthony in NZ]

That's looking really nice John!  Those GT intakes look well worth the money and most of importantly close that ugly gap up...nice!

[Uncarina]

Nice progress on the engines! I know you’ll get that fit issue to work without leaving anything to chance.

 

Cheers,  Tom

[aircommando130]

12 minutes ago, MARU5137 said:

Excellent  work  John.

Looking  very professional. 

        

 

So why is there  a slight color difference in the engines as shown on your photo posted?

One works harder than the other?

 

Thank you  for your lovely updates and photos. 

 

Maybe the one on the right has been in there for awhile and the left one was recently changed??

[John1]

Just a quick update - really don't have anything picture worthy of my progress.   I'm still doing some scribing and riveting, also plugging away on the exhausts.   Waiting on a shipment of some AK Extreme Metal paints (love this stuff, sprays very easy and once dry, is incredibly durable) before I start the area aft of the exhaust nozzles.    On the subject of the exhaust nozzles, these seem to come in a variety of colors.   Some are just a grayish metallic color, while others are nearly black.   For whatever reason, the nozzles on Vietnam based, early war F-4's mostly seem to be of the darker variety.    Here is a great picture that illustrates this:

That's the effect I'm going after. 

 

Also, I'm starting to putter around with the cockpit.   Most of my cockpit work is on hold until Quinta finally gets around to releasing the cockpit set I posted a few weeks ago.   In the meantime, I've started to research what the finished product will look like.    The best reference I've found for a "real" (by that I mean unrestored) cockpit is the one on the F-4C on display at the USAF Museum.  The exterior of this jet was given a pretty inaccurate paint job but the folks at the museum opted to leave the interior untouched.   I've yet to see any pictures that shows what a heavily used Phantom cockpit looks like that are better than these.   Looks like the crew just shut down the jet and walked off for a cold beer.

 

Front pit:

Note that the footwell walls are cut off immediately past the instrument panel and the quilted fabric present on either side.   Am currently working on these features.

 

Wizzo's pit:

Note the fabric covers on either side of the foot wells, I'll be adding these as well.    A few bits on the IP weren't present on the early jets but all in all, this is a great reference. 

 

Lastly, a good number of the pictures I posted in previous posts (primarily of the ejection seats), came from Chris Mayer.    I neglected to give him credit in those posts.   He graciously provided a great deal of info for this build.  It's much appreciated. 

 

So anyway, that's all I've got.  Hope to have some pictures of the actual model to share within the next few days.    Stay tuned and thanks for looking! 

Edited December 30, 2021 by John1

[easixpedro]

21 minutes ago, John1 said:

Just a quick update - really don't have anything picture worthy of my progress.   I'm still doing some scribing and riveting, also plugging away on the exhausts.   Waiting on a shipment of some AK Extreme Metal paints (love this stuff, sprays very easy and once dry, is incredibly durable) before I start the area aft of the exhaust nozzles.    On the subject of the exhaust nozzles, these seem to come in a variety of colors.   Some are just a grayish metallic color, while others are nearly black.   For whatever reason, the nozzles on Vietnam based, early war F-4's mostly seem to be of the darker variety.    Here is a great picture that illustrates this:

That's the effect I'm going after. 

 

Those early J79 motors were serious smokers. Didn’t matter how well camouflaged the planes were, the smoke trail was a dead giveaway. Towards the end of the war (Linebacker), crews had learned to fly in AB once over hostile territory, just to get rid of the smoke. I’m guessing the black you’re seeing is the tons of soot produced by the motors.

[John1]

13 hours ago, easixpedro said:

Those early J79 motors were serious smokers. Didn’t matter how well camouflaged the planes were, the smoke trail was a dead giveaway. Towards the end of the war (Linebacker), crews had learned to fly in AB once over hostile territory, just to get rid of the smoke. I’m guessing the black you’re seeing is the tons of soot produced by the motors.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well.  I recall reading the same thing, lots of soot coming out of those beasts.   Forgot when the "smokeless" J-79's made it into service, I seem to recall that they were on jets towards the end of the war.  Regardless, compared to some builds of later F-4's here on LSP,  I think my jet is going to have a pretty dark aft section.

 

On this subject - I never knew how bad these things really smoked until I watched the video I posted earlier in the thread showing jets returning from Operation Bolo.   What a horrible disadvantage these guys were at:

 

 

Edited December 30, 2021 by John1

[easixpedro]

That's a great shot and illustrates it well! Pretty easy for any gunner to track and aim, or any spotter guiding interceptors...

[alain11]

" smoke trail " was her nickname ..wasn't it 

[Uncarina]

Those are great reference photos!

 

Cheers,  Tom

[John1]

So....  just to prove that I've done something on this build over the last week or so:

 

Aft exhaust section with Eduard PE used for the tail hook lock and aft of the two vents on either side.   This is just a base layer of paint.   AK Extreme Metal Titanium lightly applied over a flat black base coat.   Not looking for any shiny metal in this area because it appears there wasn't any.    Paint work is rough but again, this is just the base.  Hopefully she'll clean up nicely. 

 

Cockpit tub.   As mentioned above, I cut away the pilot's footwell side walls (I'll add some wiring, etc in this area further in the process) and added the quilted soundproofing fabric below.   This was made from lead foil from a wine bottle, using the back side of an X-acto knife to score the diagonal lines present on the real thing.   The WSO's cockpit just has plain fabric on the sidewalls.   Again, just lead foil; to replicate the snaps, I used a pointed scribing tool to indent the backside of the foil. 

  

Just realized how truly awful these pictures are.   I think I'm going to invest in a decent lighting system so I can hopefully take better shots.   Regardless, I'm hoping you can at least get a feel for what I did here.

 

Upper horizontal stabs.  Again, this is just a basecoat.  I'll be adding additional shades per the real thing.

 

Lastly, a few aftermarket purchases made when Sprue Brothers had a sale going on.  The kit missiles are very basic and I can't imagine using vinyl tires either.

 

Thanks for looking! 

[John1]

Small update, I'm still working on the aft section of the jet.   Using very thin strips of Tamiya Tape, I masked over the base coat to replicate the vertical "stripes" of discoloration in the exhaust area.   I then sprayed a darker coat of MM Burnt Metal over this area.   After which, I removed the tape and started gradually applying darker shades.   As mentioned above, these early J-79 engines produced a lot of smoke and soot.  So unlike later F-4 variants that have multiple metallic shades in this area, my subject is going to be much darker.   I did spray on some diluted clear blue towards the very end of this section and then overcoated with some darker color to blend it in.   Lastly, I applied a dark wash to side panels to replicate the darkened fasteners and panel lines that are present in the reference picture above.    I still need to do some final paintwork in this area, I'd say I'm about 80% done.

 

I'll further tone down some of the blue and lighter metallic stripes in this area.

 

Note the dark wash applied to highlight the upper section of this assembly.  The tail hook is still a work in progress. 

 

 

This shows some of the Eduard PE on the tailhook receptacle and the opened vents on either side.

 

Painting the nice looking GT resin exhaust nozzles.   Again, these nozzles were much more "sootier" than later versions, I'm shooting for the same look as the real ones in the picture above. 

 

Haven't done much on the interiors, I'll try to get that done today. 

 

And lastly, the upper elevators.   More blending here as well tone down the lighter sections.  I also used a Flory wash in this area to highlight some of the details. 

 

That's it for now.  Thanks for checking in!

 

 

 

[spartacus2000]

Hi John,

be careful not to make the mistake we all make in painting the exhausts, in the operational vehicles they were very smoky and not green as you can see in the photos of the planes that have been stopped for years, that is the oxidation of the metal of a non-operational vehicle.

For the rest, great job.

[John1]

Just a very quick update.   Not much progress, just tweaking some of the paintwork.   I think the nozzles are pretty much done, with the exception of a black Flory wash to add some additional oily grunge to them.

 

 

Toned down the "rib effect" on the forward section horizontal stabs. On some jets, these ribs were very prominent, on others, not very much at all.  I'm going the latter effect.  Last step will be to do the same to the middle, darker panel. 

 

Aft faces of the might J-79's are completed.  How much of this will be visible on the finished model?  Probably not much at all!  I tried to recreate the chalky burned appearance of these parts. 

 

 

Horrible lighting, so the colors are off but it shows the really nice detail of the GT exhausts.   Just wish these guys did a better job on the ease of assembly.   The actual colors are much more blended and darker. 

 

The undersides of the horizontal stabs.   This area is very much a work in progress.   The few pics of seen of early vintage F-4's show this area to be heavily sooted up. 

 

 

So that's it for now.  No idea what I'll work on next.  To be honest, I thought I'd have had the Quinta cockpit set by now but according to Quinta, this set now will not be released until late this month or early Feb.   Hopefully sooner, rather than later, I really want to dive into the cockpit area. 

 

Thanks for checking in, all comments / suggestions / critiques are much appreciated. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[John1]

I've finally made a bit of progress worth sharing.   While waiting for the Quinta cockpit set, I decided to start painting.  As I mentioned, I've always been a bit intimidated by hard edge paint schemes.   This time around, I decided to take some advice from a few folks on LSP and instead or masking the edges, I went with using Blue Tack putty.    Just made a narrow "worm" of this stuff, placed it on the model as required and masked the rest with paper towels.  It's actually much easier than I thought and depending on the angle you spray your paint at, you can get a very nice slightly feathered look to your edges.    Given the size of this beast, I figured I could get a few sections painted prior to final assembly.   

 

First off, a few notes.   My subject has a very heavily weathered paint job.   Apparently, the Wolfpack maintenance folks didn't worry about matching colors when they over painted older markings, squadron codes, etc and did corrosion touchups.  They used whatever they had.  Also, the early paints used on these first SEA aircraft faded quite easily, especially the dark tan.   Here's a shot of my subject, note the various shades of tan and off-spec green / brown used for touchups. 

 

And the side views from the Fundekals instructions:

 

Bottom line is that none of the colors in this scheme are going to be uniform.  I've been mixing some custom blends of paint to get as close as possible to the shades above. Here is my test sheet:

From left to right, we have Model Master Medium Green, Dark Green, Dark Tan, SAC Tan, SAC Green and Mr Paint Dark Green and Dark Tan.  To these base shades, I've added some other colors for some of the smaller areas.     Still very much a work in progress.   I'd also like to take a second and say THANK YOU to LSP's "Dragon" for sending me the SAC Tan and SAC Green paints.    These are next to impossible to find anymore.  Greatly appreciate it Mike! 

 

 

I'm pretty happy with results so far.    No pictures have been found of 589's upper wings / fuselage so I'm on my own as far as the amount of weathering to apply.   This is still very much a work in progress, got some touchups and more weathering to add once all the bits are assembled.   

 

Also started on the fuselage.   I've added some underlying black / tan mottling.   The tan on mid/aft fuselage is that weird shade you can see in the pictures.   I added some white and MM Sand to the Dark Tan until I got to a shade I felt was close.    

 

 

Here are some of the painted bits in direct sunlight.   Like I said, I still need to do some touchup work.  I'll be toning down some of the splotches, while adding others.   All paintwork is very much still in progress:

 

Lastly, much to my surprise, 2 weeks after placing the order, this arrived via the Russian postal service yesterday:

I had expected this order to take 1-2 months, didn't want to pay big money for DHL expedited shipping from Russia.  Very happy with the service from Quintas.

 

Anyway, that's it for now.   I'm going to put the painting on hold for a bit and dive into the cockpit next.

 

Thanks for looking! 

Edited February 6, 2022 by John1

[blackbetty]

nice effort in getting all the shades right!