CANicoll

Thank you, Martin. Much appreciated. Started on the stencils for the wings and put the Sparrows in place for the moment.

Usually this time of the year I'm outside doing things, but 95 yesterday, 99 today with an expected heat index of 110 so not going a lot outside. Instead - making progress. Attached the Reskit pylons to the main wings, which are now attached to the fuselage. Used toothpicks to position the pylons in the original kit holes, and a bit of CA Gel for the attachment. Thanks again to Carl for the idea on how to sand the pylons to match to contour of the wing.

1:144 scale and it has 75 pieces???

Peter, thank you! Your work is always terrific - I just try and keep up. I also have a ZM F-4C in 1/48 scale in the stash so may watch to see when you start your build. 🙂 The Tamiya bird is a big beast, however. WOW. The F-4 is heavier than I would have thought and that is without the resin missiles. I imagine it is those huge resin intakes and exhaust. Can't image if I had done the resin radar equipment and cockpit sets as well. The kit came with metal landing gear, and I opted to use resin tires, so it won't have the problem an old 1/32 Mustang I built has with the vinyl tires - they are flat-spotting. Once I finish the last of the Sparrow missiles, I'm going to focus on the canopy and landing gear so the plane can be mostly complete. The canopy is going to take some work. I'm sure...

That is a really nice start to the cockpit. I did pick up the Gundam markers but have not used them yet.. I do like the Eagle... one day!

Peter, Sorry to hear about the 3D printed seat, what happened? I'm finding the 3D stuff easy to sand, but otherwise kind of brittle. Can't torque the pieces at all.

Post it Carl!!! Martin, definitely can't be worse than me bothering Carl for the past two months!! Thanks for your comments. I appreciate it!

Test Fit #2. Wanted to see how everything was working together, and to show myself some actual progress towards a completed plane. This this is so large and has so many pieces that even right now I can disassemble the plane into 21 pieces. And four screws. The fit looks to be pretty good so that is helpful. Check me on that later... Nothing is glued on, even the seats are just placed at the moment. Nice to see it coming together and where I missed a spot with the masks on the top of the fuselage!. This will be an easy fix... The outer wing tanks are pressed into place while the pylons are taped on. Still doubtful about making the Jul 3 deadline, but will keep on it till I'm done none the less. The clear resin canopy pieces are a real pain to separate from their pour blocks. I'm sure they will look AMAZING once done, however... Have TWO sparrows done but have not started on the sidewinders or the ECM yet so still a lot to do on the build-out. Landing gear is basically ready but have to work on the resin tires.

Due to a highly likely possibility of me screwing one up, I was planning on doing all four - just in case!! Am already seeing where I could have done a better job attaching the fins so will pick out the best three. Also, figured out an easier way to attach the pylons. Taped them to the wing in the right spot, used a fine black liner pen to circle down through the original wing mounting holes and draw a circle on the top of the pylon. Helps that I have not put the top and bottom wings together yet. Drilled that out. Amazingly, a toothpick is JUST about the right size and that gives me a tiny bit of wiggle room to make sure everything is straight. Easier than cutting the mounting lugs off the kit pylons. I had to order some more MRP Clear but used some Alclad clear for the bottom. Not completely pleased with the result. When it full dries will see how it looks before doing those stencils.

Thanks Martin and Rob. Learning a lot about jets and stencils - wow. It's a LOT of work! Rob - I think the main issue with the Top Notch masks is they do not differentiate between the various Phantom II models and I didn't catch the difference for quite a while. I ran into a similar problem with EagleCal decals for the Tamiya 1/32 Mustang. They had scaled up their 1/48 decals for Big Beautiful Doll - the nose checkers - however Tamiya changed the contours of the nose for their 1/32 kit. Eagle sent me a second set after the first set didn't fit, and when that one didn't either (after sending LOTS of photographs and emails back and forth) they finally admitted they had not actually tried applying the decals to the 1/32 Tamiya plane and had only scaled up their 1/48 sheet. I ended up having to use Zotz nose checkers which were not 100% accurate for BBD, but it got the job done. I don't think anybody can really tell the difference. Kind of the same for my F-4. The Top Notch masks are not 100% accurate in size but I'm not that much of a stickler. It LOOKS very much like the camo pattern used in Vietnam and that's good enough for me. 😉 I'd have gone mad if I had tried to do the camo pattern out of tape... It was pretty easy to use the left-over mask material or just a bit of tape to extend the masks where needed. I'm rethinking how I'm going to attach the pylons to the wings, however. I was going to use screws, but if I do I think it will shatter the pylon. Thinking now of cutting the mounting lugs off of the kit pylons, drilling the Reskit pylons to accept the lugs and then gluing the entire mess to the wing. That is the plan for now! A big factor is how well I can get the pylon to contour to the wing... Stay tuned!

Now that the camo is basically laid down and most of the touch-up done, time to start on the stencils. Taking a cautious approach with the Speed Hunter F-4 stencils as I've never used them before, and also the Reskit missile decals. First the missile - the Reskit decals performed just as well as the stencils for the pylons, but with a bit more carrier film. The black band stencils do not go all the way around, which seems strange so hope I put them on correctly. Bonus how the Sparrows are attached to the aircraft so I can strategically place the gap in the band. One down, three more Sparrows to go. FOUR Sidewinders, and the ALQ to go. The Speed Hunter decals/stencils go down very easily - and seem fairly strong. There. are. a. lot. of them... I wanted to start small (and if I had half a brain, i would have started on the BOTTOM of the aircraft. doh...) so worked on these flaps. One of the hard parts is the use of white stencils on the green backgrounds. White decals are HARD to see on the sheet. However, looked at from a slightly different angle.... These decals are seriously glossy and I think they are kind of prone to silvering. I used MicroSet but will see tomorrow how they look under a gloss coat. Took a swing at the nose cone and the two tones of black. The nose tip is Vallejo black which is a matte finish. I have a bit of touch up but I like the effect. AND, added the missile side rails to the pylons. THAT was an adventure as the 3D Printed Pylons needed to be drilled to accept the narrowed kit launch rail's mounting lugs. Since each rail will have a resin missile attached, I wanted to make sure the attachment point was pretty sturdy. The 3D Plastic is a bit brittle when drilled - have to go kind of slow. But in the end, I think it worked out pretty well. The detail on the BOTTOM of the pylon is really impressive, too. Down to the plumbing. LOTS more to come - and the clear resin canopies are going to be a whole another thing. Started working on removing them from their pour blocks. I should have started this a month sooner!

I'm currently in stencil-hell so just trying to share the pain... 👍

Wait!!! Where are the stencils!!

Peter, I'd swear you had the exact building to model from when you did this amazing work. I am blown away at how excellent this is! Just awesome. Definitely agree with your views on changing up the venues to keep things fresh - you have mastered that. Every time I go back and look at your pictures, I see something else that is amazing. Great job!!

Excellent! Thanks for posting. Will definitely be a nice resource for the WWI builders.

Carl, They definitely did a nice job and were pretty easy to use. More forgiving than Kabuki masks. They look to be reusable as well.

The camo masks worked very well, but seem sized for a different aircraft than the Tamiya 1/32 F-4 EJ. Most obvious is the mask sheet shows a short-nosed F-4, not the long-nosed F-4E however several other masks also seem short. This is not meant to be a complaint or a criticism of the Top Notch Masks - more a heads up for others. The masks worked extremely well with no bleed anywhere I used them. First example are masks 4 and 5. 4 is on the tail and 5 on the fuselage as shown in the second photo below. Mask 4 on the tail should reach almost to the front. Mask 5 on the fuselage should be nearly to the front of the tail. (I smoothed out the masks after these pictures...) Same with Masks 11 and 12. Mask 11 should have reached nearly to the front of the tail as well (test fitted here) while mask 12 should have matched up to mask 11. I cut some addl mask material from the sheet, taking advantage of the curves left from other mask cutouts to extend mask 11 to fit the tail. (Sorry, hard to see below). The purple tape is my go-to for large masking jobs - 3M painters tape. Works great and is economical. Similar issues are up front. This was a test fit of the front mask which did not want to sit down on the fuselage when it was positioned as expected. Eventually this is the masking for the dark green using lots of the pink tape to fill in as well as some pieces from the remaining mask sheet. Those curves are very handy to extend the masks. Prior to the masking, this was the first spray of the light green. This is a better view of the early paint mottling. So again, the masks worked great, just that they seemed to be for a different aircraft model. They adhered beautifully and I had no seepage under the mask anywhere despite the curves. I was careful to keep pressing down the masks over anything protruding so that helped. They were easy to apply and easy to remove and reposition as needed. They seemed to stretch a bit but then went back to the original shape. Just wish they fit the aircraft better. Now on to the stencils...attaching the wing extensions to the correct angle....and the canopy....and the missiles... and the ALQ-87..... Praying for an extension to the GB end date!

A guy I know put the sound deadening in his car, another Subaru but a Forrester - a big square metal box. Even just on the doors it made a HUGE difference. Then the floor pan. I may have to do mine now...

I bet that feels A LOT better shifting...

Camo mostly complete. There is a story there but I will have to post that later. The masks were good, but the fit was definitely off in many places. I will detail that in a separate post after dinner. The masks did work admirably well with NO bleed under at all so that led to having a very minimal amount of touch-up, all caused by me missing masking somewhere, Small pieces to fix so I'm very happy with the result. The brown in the pictures does not appear as mottled as it is, and some of the dark green is darker than I would like but it had to cover the brown underneath. The light green came out lighter in the pictures than on the aircraft. I'll have to work on the photography, or maybe take a second look to make sure the depth is where I want it on the plane. This looks too light to me. The MRP Paints were amazing. Masked after two hours, NO lift-off at all and coverage was very good. I really like my Grex for this kind of painting. Here is the masking sheet. WHEW. I MIGHT actually make the GB deadline. I was thinking if it was July 2025 I'd have a real shot at it...

Wait till we get to the aircraft! As you know...

Jeff, I'm late jumping in but to add my 5 cents worth, go for it. Peter just posted his work on a HO scale building with Hydrocast walls which I have never seen before - his work there is very interesting and for me, awe inspiring. BTW - 'Not good enough to be displayed here'? Please. Build what you like, please share what you've done so we can appreciate what you've worked on. And I agree with the others, this is a modeling site, not an aviation site. Post what you build. I'm very interested in how people build, detail, paint, weather and display their work. I usually pick up tips along the way so please do share. Cheers!!

Got the pylons (mostly) successfully stenciled (one minor hiccup). These decals are (as you would hope) super thin but I did not tear a single one (of the 46!) applied. I did accidentally fold one and thought I got it un-folded, then didn't. In the end I ended up just taking it off since it will be under the missile rail anyway. Have not applied the clear topcoat yet, but VERY hard to see any carrier film. These Reskit decals are terrific. And I didn't break a single stabilizer in the process. I did break one when I initially removed all the 3D Printing stuff, and need to do a bit of a trim on a few of the pads, but otherwise the strategy of keeping the pylons on a Post-It note pad while working paid off. Now it's time to dive into the camo scheme. Wish me luck! Back later with updates...

Just arrived! Nice shirt, thanks Tim!

Peter, that looks absolutely amazing!!! the detail work on the bricks is just perfect - looks JUST like the real thing! I keep going back and looking at those photos. Wow, super impressive - you are a man of MANY talents!