Revell 1/32 F-4E (from F-4G kit) 32nd TFS - The paint is on!

[Grunticus]

On 10/19/2023 at 6:42 AM, Bruce said:

easy fix for the rear cockpit is to separate the two , take a 1/8 inch off the top of the rear wall (following the existing shape) a take a 1/8 off the front wall where you separated the two halves and glue them back together.  this will raise the rear cockpit and fix the location of the seat because the floor will be higher.  From measurements of a real F-4, the Revell front cockpit from rail to console and console to floor is correct, the rear from rail to console is to low, but, console to floor is correct.  If you just raise the seat, it throws off the relation of the seat to consoles and leaves a gap under the seat.  Its no too late to make the cut of the cockpit.

 

Bruce

 

Thanks Bruce. I am thankful for all the tips and advice, but I'm going to stick to just raising the rear seat 3mm. When I look at how that looks I think it's a good enough fix for n optical problem.

 

Which brings me to an issue I was surprised I haven't read about it in any of the build review I looked at: The front wheel bay will not go in deep enough to meet and close the gap between the nose and the ventral fuselage piece. At first I was baffled, as it all fit perfectly before installing the cockpit tub. I double checked the tub, but all connections are perfectly in the intended slots and tabs in the fuselage'; in other words the tub is exactly where it's supposed to be.

 

Upon further investigating I noticed that the deepest part of the wheel well interfered with the back of the front tub. It was impossible to push it far enough in the direction of the nose to make the front end meet the lower fuselage (wish I had taken a pic). The solution was to grind away both the touching edges as far as I dared. After that, the wheel well part fit as intended.

 

 

I also filled some ejector pin markings in the fuselage halves and intake covers with punched 6mm en 4mm disks respectively. I will leave that to dry for a day and then sand it smooth.

 

 

Gluing this all together cannot be done in one go. They do not fit naturally, and some seams have to be forcefully joined. I glued it in sections, clamped, left to dry, and continued with the next section.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by Grunticus
spelling, edited image

[MikeMaben]

[Grunticus]

Some more work got done today. The engine faces were installed in the fuselage. The height of the face-plate is about 1mm short leaving a gap in the top or bottom. I left it, it will be a dark hole so I won't bother. Closing it up with the other fuselage half posed no problems other than a bit of warping.

 

 

The nosewheel-bay insert doesn't quite fit well, but is fixable. I filed and sanded the contours and then puttied the seams left an right (Tamiya). More sanding ahead for tomorrow. The engravings on this kit are delicate and quite soft and easily destroyed when sanding. I am not very good at rescribing unfortunately so I try to preserve as much as possible.

 

 

Time for a little tape-it-up to see how things fit. The radome shape really isn't that awful in my opinion (which is all it is - an opinion).

 

 

Large gaps show in the wingroots, but an easy fix by gluing spreaders made from stretched sprue into the lower fuselage assembly, at the widest points. I think then fit will be quite good.

 

 

I am still debating what to do with the back face of the rear instrument panel. Does anyone have a good photo of how this area looks on the real one?

 

 

Cheers!

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by Grunticus
spelling

[alain11]

Hi

maybe, you could some plastic rods to represent the rear faces of the gauges, and use lead wires for the plugging ..this area is rather messy .

Alain

maybe this way ?????????there is always a way to do it better 

 

[Grunticus]

Alain, many thanks for this, that looks stunning! Pity they had to eject Is it the Tamiya kit? This gives me enough to go on, I will spruce up the area accordingly but no way it will live up to that standard!

 

Cheers!

[Grunticus]

After some sanding and polishing with pads it already looks a lot better. After Mr. Revealer 1500 some imperfections, well.. surfaced, so a second go with putty in small areas.

 

 

And the spine of the fuselage receives it's treatment. I will attempt to rescribe what will be lost as best I can.

 

 

The throttles which do look quite nice, and a side stick, and the small intake scoops for the nose. To drill open or not to drill open.....that's the question. They are delicate parts and my eyes are not the best anymore.  I am also finishing up the ALQ-119, just for fun. I am taking a small break from this one now. More later.

 

 

Cheers!

[Alain Gadbois]

Excellent progress!

I like the choices you made regarding perfect accuracy vs build time.

Also thanks to all members for their great help with the particulars of the Revell kit and photos of the 1:1 subject!

 

Alain

[ulvdemon]

This is an awesome build.  Looking forward to how this will finish up.

[Grunticus]

I am going to be the laughingstock of this forum for some time to come, but here goes...

 

The curvatures of the lower- and upper fuselage in the aft area do not line up naturally on the right side (much less bad at the left). Not only that, but significant force is needed to make them align. So much force even, that gluing and then holding them together did not work, nor did rubber bands, and simple clamping was not possible. My original plan to use sprue as spreaders did not work either because. a) there is so much force that b) the sprues would bend and most important c) the bottom plates are in the way of using this method effectively. This had me head scratching for a while and playing with the parts to see what happened.

 

When I applied force from the inside at one certain point with my fingertip and push the engine bay wall all the way up against the wingroot while holding down the right wing everything lined up, from the leading edge all the way to the exhaust! Virtually no seam!

 

I figured if pushing from the inside would work, pulling from the outside would too.

 

So, I drilled a hole at that certain spot, held a pre-drilled wooden block against the engine bay wall from the inside, and screwed in the eye-screw as shown below. Pulling the wire proved my theory: all lined up

 

Now I had do rig it up somewhere to apply the glue and leave to dry.

 

 

This is the first - and hopefully the last - time I have used my DIY bench to beat a kit into submission.

 

 

I tightened the wire to the desired result showed and then screwed it into the bench, applied glue to seam and wingroot, and put weight on the fuselage to press the seams firmly onto each other. Tomorrow morning I will see if it was really successful, but my hopes are high and this saves me from a lot of puttying and sanding. You may laugh now

 

 

I also dressed up the backplate of the rear instrument panel. Just fictitious so it looks busy and not barren, and resembles the real thing.

 

 

And after some RLM66. I will add a red placard or two and maybe give one wire a color.

 

 

Cheers!

 

 

Edited October 23, 2023 by Grunticus
spelling

[Grunticus]

34 minutes ago, ulvdemon said:

This is an awesome build.  Looking forward to how this will finish up.

 

Thank you! So far this one has been good fun, problems yes, but in a challenging way and solvable. Unlike the Trumpeter F4F I abandoned which is just a mindlessly designed styrene blob. Hat off to those who finished it.

[Landrotten Highlander]

Inventive use of a technique.  Panel beaters use something similar to get certain dents out of panels - different application of the same technique, i.e. pulling from the outside instead of tryin to push from the inside.

 

And filling the hole left by the screw will be much easier than trying to putty the gap between wing and fuselage (and less damaging to finer detail, so another win there).

Edited October 23, 2023 by Landrotten Highlander

[MikeMaben]

Remember ... they laughed at the Wright Brothers Leon.

[Grunticus]

11 hours ago, Landrotten Highlander said:

Inventive use of a technique.  Panel beaters use something similar to get certain dents out of panels - different application of the same technique, i.e. pulling from the outside instead of tryin to push from the inside.

 

And filling the hole left by the screw will be much easier than trying to putty the gap between wing and fuselage (and less damaging to finer detail, so another win there).

 

Thank you. Yes, I thought of that too, how they use this method to repair cars that were deformed in an accident. Anyway, it worked really well, see result below! I will still fill the seam, but it will be s much easier to do so cleanly this way.

 

3 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

Remember ... they laughed at the Wright Brothers Leon.

 

Yes I know Mike, comforting

 

The most offending half:

 

 

The less offending half. I managed to beat this one by resting the opposite wing a bit higher and putting weight on the fuselage. The wings are still level.

 

 

It's so nice to be able to quickly make masks for just abut anything. I will finish up the ALQ-119 later this afternoon.

 

 

Cheers!

[Grunticus]

The ALQ-119 is done. I really commend Revell for supplying the full contingent of stencils for this part, they make it look busy and realistic. IMHO no aftermarket is needed here. One thing I haven't checked is whether or not the ALQ-119 could be carried in conjunction with the 610 gallon fuel tank. If I have to choose, it will be the ALQ-119. It looks cute and interesting.

 

Edit: if the IDF could carry both as seen in this shot, then the USAF could carry both, no?

 

 

 

The seams between bottom and top fuselage came out pretty good. This is after one round of a sanding stick. To get them completely smooth a round of putty and sanding is needed, but it's not going to be much work to get it smooth. No putty in the images yet.

 

First the intakes-end:

 

 

And the can-side:

 

 

I use Mr. White Putty. I like it for this kind of work. It's this, polymerizes right after application, and sands and polishes easily to look just like styrene.

 

 

I am pretty pleased with myself I got this to work so well (hear me patting my back). I also got a note from the postal services to pay customs tax for a package from Ukraine. This means it's in the country and I will get it shortly. Work will now continue on these seams, and joining the front part after that. Dry fitting promises a very good fit with minimal cleanup required. I am still liking this kit very much...Would Revell's F-14A be comparable? Ever since dumping the old Tamiya kit which was a handful I still can't forget how cool an IIAF 1977 Tomcat would look on the shelf.

 

Cheers!

 

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Grunticus

[Phil88]

Bonjour, bonne avancée sur ce montage. C'est drôle parce que je n'ai pas eu autant de difficultés à adhérer lorsque j'ai fermé le mien. C'est juste dommage que je ne puisse pas télécharger de photos de mes retouches avec mon téléphone. Sinon, je vous les aurais montrés. Je vais réessayer depuis chez moi. All the armament looks really good with the decals put by Revell in the model

Edited October 25, 2023 by Phil88
Erreur