Written by 7:53 pm On the Bench

WIP : Hasegawa 1/72 F-4J Phantom II Pt.1 – Construction

One of my oldest Shelf Queens, I started this kit in 2008 and had never finished it beyond the start of painting. I figured I should finally finish it up.

My initial cockpit work from 2008. Belts were done with masking tape.

The F-4J doesn’t have the arrowhead reinforcement plates on the stabilizers. These were removed with a chisel.

My rescribing skills left a lot to be desired but oh well.

For some reason, Hasegawa includes open photoflash cartridge launchers even though it’s only a feature on RF-4 variants.

The fit of the launcher doors aren’t great and will need to be fixed.

Going over what I had done so far I noticed that I didn’t attach the small vents on each side of the nose and I’d since thrown away the box. 

I looked at reference pictures online and decided to see if I can scratchbuild the vents instead of sacrificing another kit for them.

So it’s out with my stash of plastic plates.

In the end, the right thickness was a stack of 1mm and 0.25mm plates.

Then it’s carefully sanding the pieces into shape.

Weapons-wise, as I’m building VF-96’s Showtime 100 on the day of its 5th aerial victory, the F-4 will be armed with 4x AIM-9G, 4x Cluster Bombs and 2x AIM-7Es. These were prepped a long time ago so I only cleaned them up further and also added some details to the tailfins on the AIM-9s with masking tape.

No box means I’m also missing all the antenna parts. Nothing that a reference photo and 0.25mm plastic plate can’t fix though.

I also replaced the pitot tubes on the tailfin with stretched sprue.

There are also antenna blades under the nose.

With all that done, it’s time to re-prep the kit for painting. There were still gaps and seamlines that I chose not to address then which I will this time. There’s also the shoddy paintwork I did back then which I believe was sprayed at around 30 psi and was done from too far away resulting in a pebbly finish. I’ll need to sand the whole kit down and buff everything smooth before painting can begin.

Build Log
Part 1 – Construction | Part 2 – Painting | Part 3 – Finishing

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