1/72 Hasegawa MDD F-4D 

Phantom

by Peter Kormos

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My main interest is WWII warbirds, but I dreamt to build a Vietnam war plane for a very long time.  This time, I settled down with an F-4 Phantom, and started to build this kit in August, 2007 (and finished in late February, 2008). I didn't want to over-detail the model, so I decided not to use any aftermarket detail sets - but you'll see that I still had to do quite some of scratch building in order to have the plane during its take-off procedure. 

I added only a minimal amount of detail to the cockpit area since the canopies are closed on the model. One important thing about the cockpit is that the fuselage sides are not flat from the inside, and this would result in a gap between the fuselage side and the cockpit tub. This was easily cured with gluing some flattened sprue in place, and then filled and sanded of course.

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The gear bays received the most prominent pipes and cables, and the oleos on the struts were extended to represent them in a "weightless" state.

I also repositioned the flaps and flaperons as well for a better take-off configution. I know that it's not 100% correct, because I should have deployed the slats as well, but that would have required a lot more work and as I said I didn't want to have a difficult build now.

The pilot and WSO figures came from a friend, Zsolt Kiss. I also received help on the AIM-9 and AIM-7 missiles. For them, I have to thank Tamas Molnar the help.

Most of the intake air channel is missing on this kit, but I still wanted to represent the GE J79 turbines somehow.  I went with a lazy and simple solution, and I designed the turbine faces on my PC and printed the design to paper. The paper was then glued in place and end of story. :-)

The model received full rivet detail based on drawings found somewhere on the Net. Then the model was painted with Gunze acrilycs.  Weathering was kept at a moderate level with a fine wash of Tamiya black enamel, and black pencils for the fluid leaks. The design for the decals were home made and then printed by my friend, Peter Toth.

The blurry runway was also designed on PC and printed at Office Depot.  The model's base has LEDs as well that illuminate the plexi rods that I bent with a help of a hot air blower.

I hope you like my model.

Peter

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Photos and text © by Peter Kormos