Wolfpack Phantom - 8th TFW F-4C

[John1]

Thanks very much guys.   I'm still on the fence about whether my approach made sense or not.  To be sure, there are a few sections (primarily the intakes) that need to be painted prior to assembly but I supposed the rest could have waited.   Regardless, it took me about 30 minutes to do the touch up work.   Still have a few small glitches that I'll need to fix but I'm moving in the right direction.

 

 

Ignore the rain drops, it just started drizzling when I took these pictures.   One of the drawbacks of using natural light. 

 

 

Ignore the overspray in the AIM-7 well, just a result of a poor masking job.   I'll get it cleaned up the next time I'm shooting some gloss white. 

 

Quick update, thanks for checking in! 

 

[John1]

So I'm finally back.   Disney, followed by covid, followed by getting sent on the road for business for close to 4 weeks put a big dent in my modeling time.   Just got a few free  hours today so I decided to proceed with adding the upper wing sections.   As far as I can see, this was the last major "make it or break it" part of the build.   Surprisingly enough, the upper wings pretty much snapped into place.   I used super glue on the mating surfaces closest to the fuselage and also to get the gear bay walls to snug down to the upper wing.   After that, Tamiya extra thin for the outer sections and I'm in good shape.   I still have cleanups to do on the leading edges and a few spots on the upper wing / fuselage joint but nothing major.   She's finally starting to look like a Phantom!   I also started adding details to the main landing gear bays.   A few decals, some PE and varying diameters of copper and lead wire.   Still have a lot to do in this area.    I also have some touchups to do on the upper surface weathering and camo patterns but I'll get to that in good time.   It's pretty hard trying to replicate the horribly beaten up look of these early jets. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of work and weathering to do in this area. 

 

 

 

 

That's it for now, thanks for checking in! 

[John1]

Quick update - plumbing of the wheel wells continues.   Weathering is still a work in progress as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More to do in this area.   Thanks for looking guys. 

[GreyGhost]

Nice work John ...

You matched up the camo pattern on the wing/fuselage join areas really well ..! 

 

-Gregg

[John1]

8 hours ago, GreyGhost said:

Nice work John ...

You matched up the camo pattern on the wing/fuselage join areas really well ..! 

 

-Gregg

Thanks Greg.   Got a long list of touchups that I need to do but all in all, I'm pretty content with the way things have turned out so far.    This is typically the stage where I start to rush the build and cause bad things to happen.   Need to keep myself in check here! 

[Alex]

Looks great so far!  Gear well detail is nice.

[John1]

Starting to think about weapons loadouts.    Here's my subject with an interesting load:

 

Nice mix of A2A and A2G weapons.   Just so I'm clear - there is only 1 M117 on the port TER and (I'm guessing) 4 on the centerline?   A bit hard to tell from the picture.   

 

Also, I recall posting about the accuracy of the kit TER/MER's but can't find the post.   Does anyone know how accurate these are (also, same question about the Eduard MER/TER).

 

Thank you! 

[blackbetty]

are you sure the centerline bombs are M117s? they look smaller and a little different shapewise...

[John1]

3 hours ago, blackbetty said:

are you sure the centerline bombs are M117s? they look smaller and a little different shapewise...

Hard to tell.  They don’t look like MK 82’s, I’m still thinking they are M117’s.   I find the port TER with just a single 117 interesting.    Why not just mount that bomb on the MER and free up the pylon for Sidewinders?   

[easixpedro]

6 minutes ago, John1 said:

Hard to tell.  They don’t look like MK 82’s, I’m still thinking they are M117’s.   I find the port TER with just a single 117 interesting.    Why not just mount that bomb on the MER and free up the pylon for Sidewinders?   

I have the 8th TFW history at home, I'll take a look tonight and see if it says anything.  Bottom line though, Lord only knows. August-October of 1967 was really the high point of Rolling Thunder. Lots of missions being flown and not enough bombs to go around--easier to meet sortie requirements by just throwing some ordnance on vice downloading and swapping racks. Sounds crazy, but sometimes if it's not broke maintenance folks are hesitant to swap the configuration and possibly induce glitches into otherwise 'up' systems.  Just my opinion of course.

 

I'm guessing they're M117s as well--that was the air force's preferred weapon. A little bit more bang than a MK 82.

[Finn]

I think there are 5 M-117s on the c/l, the bottom forward station of the MER was empty, here is a F-4E with a load of 5 bombs:

 

 

Jari

[Finn]

Here is a load chart for the M-117 on the F-4 showing where they could be loaded:

 

 

Jari

 

 

[Cheetah11]

20 hours ago, John1 said:

Hard to tell.  They don’t look like MK 82’s, I’m still thinking they are M117’s.   

 

Not perhaps a SUU-30?

[Finn]

Here is another F-4 with a single M-117 on the TER:

 

https://static.thisdayinaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/tdia/2013/05/McDonnell-F-4C-21-MC-Phantom-II-63-7668.jpg

 

Most likely to make up for the fact they couldn't have 6 on the c/l MER.

 

Jari 

 

 

[themongoose]

Hey Jari I’m getting an error. Any ideas

anyone else getting this…

What happened?

The owner of this website (static.thisdayinaviation.com) does not allow hotlinking to that resource