![]() The view of the painted intakes shows the masks lying next to the intakes. In the above images, the view before painting the intakes shows the ducts already masked. I also needed to do the assembly and painting of the intakes. There was some minor adjusting needed to make sure the fuselage edges were thin enough to work with the new intakes. The intakes are pretty much just "drop-in" pieces. I promise, one of my next Phantom projects is going to use a Black Box cockpit, but not this one. These two updates can greatly improve the cockpit without needing to go all the way with a full resin cockpit. The seats are simplistic, but this can be fixed with some resin after-market seats. The cockpit sills are too narrow, but this can be fixed with some simple etchings. The kit cockpit really is not that bad right out of the box. I bit my lip to keep from getting out a Black Box cockpit set. I started the project by painting the cockpit. These were outclassed by the Aires exhausts (IMHO), but they are still quite nice and a big improvement over the kit's engine exhausts. I had some Eagle Designs engine exhausts on hand. Since I upgraded the engine intakes, I thought I better upgrade the engine exhausts. I designed the masters for these to be simple "drop-in" replacements of kit pieces. In a fit of insanity, I cut out the fuselage areas and installed Cutting Edge seamless engine intakes. I like the ejection seats from TrueDetails better, but I had these Verlinden seats on hand, and it was good to be able to use them on something. I added some Verlinden ejection seats to the project. Adding these definitely helped the look of the cockpit sills. While I do not really care for them, I decided they would work well on this project. I had some old KMC F-4 Phantom cockpit etchings lying around. I chose to incorporate a few other updates as the project progressed. My friend opened the door when he said he wanted the ejection seats upgraded to some resin seats and would pay for any other reasonable upgrades I wished to make. I can't build a Phantom under that restiction unless it is an actual requirement of the project. The intention was to build it right out of the box with no extras - yeah, right. The kit was provided to me - Hasegawa's 1/48th scale F-4G Phantom (stock #07104 / P004) - the first release of the kit with the lizard camouflaged aircraft on the cover. When a member of my model club started looking for volunteers to build some models for the museum he worked in, I decided to help out and build this F-4G Phantom for him. I have built enough Hasegawa F-4 kits that I no longer consult the instruction sheets as I progress through the projects. ![]() * These were not the exact words supplied by the Author but, hey, this is a family show! The artwork on the left engine intake splitter plate of this aircraft draws back to those original words stated by that anonomous pilot, showing an obviously frazzled weasel with the acronymn "YGBSM" written underneath. Nose art had started to show up on the Weasel Phantoms in their final year of service. The model in this posting is of one of those Desert Storm veterans showing the way it looked when it retired at the end of its career. Many strike aircraft made it in and out of enemy airspace simply because the "weasels" either destroyed or forced the shut-down of the enemy air defence systems. ![]() While the "wild weasel" Phantoms were too late to see action in Vietnam, they did a stellar job in the first Desert Storm conflict in 1991. The last dedicated "weasel" aircraft was based on the F-4E, upgraded to the F-4G. While great at the mission, it too was getting long in the tooth. Then was the F-105F, upgraded to the F-105G. The first aircraft chosen was the F-100F, but its age and limited performance made it a poor choice. The mission description (paraphrased) was "Go out and purposely try to get shot at so that you can shoot back." I think I would have had a similar reaction.īut the SAM suppression mission proved to be a huge sucess, so much so that the USAF started modifying aircraft to specifically fly the "wild weasel" mission. "You gotta be kiddin' me!"* This was the first reaction of one of the original pilots when they were initially presented with what the "wild weasel" SAM suppression mission would be. ![]()
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