Japanese Phantom F-4EJ Kai

Nothing spectacular at the cockpit. Fine details whitch I considered sufficient with the canopies closed. Decals did the job at the panels. 

Quite a smart layout of the intakes. They were detailed with scratched pitot tubes (not yet done when the pic was taken) and painted on the inside before assembly. 

Everything fit like a glove - sometimes a bit on the tight side. I only bit my knuckles when I discovered that the left intake wasn't in perfect alignment with the fuselage after the glue had set. That made some avoidable sanding and rescribing in this area necessary. My fault. The kit was innocent.  

And suddenly I had a plane. And - I admit - you can get used to the shapes of the Phantom. 🙂 

The armoured glass at the front of the windshield was tinted clear blue. 

The canopy received its internal color (black) after masking and the cockpit was closed for good. I forgot to take a picture with the office complete. That will follow. 

I replaced the kits exhausts by aftermarket ones. Unfortunately I only realised that i would have had to swop the kits internal support structure against the aftermarket one before closing the fuselage. Now to tweak the resin exhausts in, some cnc was needed (cutting n cursing). But after maiming those parts accordingly I could finally start coloring them. 

For whatever reason I decided to start the paintjob with the heatstained metal part at the aft of the fuselage. 1st layer was gloss black... 

...shiny steel was next,... 

...followed by gun meal in some areas. 

I strived to reproduce the characteristic linear heat stains on that part. So some more masking,... 

...and steel again. 

Everything was then treated by a multitude of filters, washes, pigments, drybrushing and so on, until I decided: enough. Same with the nozzles.  

The area under the rudder had received the missing rivets and I replicated the polishing marks along the rivet lines with chrome pigments 

Actually I am quite happy with the result.  

So, let's protect it before the main paint job.
(Today I would do it the other way round and tackle the metal parts after the main paint job. 

The wheel wells were covered with masking fluid. A decision I was to regret and for which I payed with two hours of lifetime. So, here's my advise: don't! 

Realised too late. Translated too late. Got it too late. My advise: follow their advise. Don't prime. More on that later. 

Well. I did prime.
Hm. Black does suit this plane too, doesn't it? 

I always wanted to give marbelling for preshading a try. It was pretty frustrating to see that I still haven't mastered airbrushing such fine patterns. Either my airbrush cloggs despite the use of highly diluted paint and paint retarder or - with higher pressure - I failed to avoid spidering. Well, in the end I fought my way through and from a distance it actually looks quite ok. 

Quite a time consuming endeavour.  

 

I am a great fan of color modulation to avoid monotony and a toy like look particular at monochromatic models. Let's see how much of this will shine through the top layer. 

 

The picture doesn't really show it, but I managed to preserve quite a bit of the preshading. 

Tried floating masks to achieve soft edges. 

That didn't work as intended. I sought to save it with lokal touch ups, but then decided to redo it all around. 

So, hard edges it will be. 

Better. But should have lighted the top color significantly. I didn't want to add another coat with lighter color for I was afraid to loose all the preshading effect. Let's gloss coat and hope that successive filters will do the trick. 

I started with oil dot filtering. 

The glossy surface didn't show much desire to attract the offered oils, so I renamed it a wash. 

Using stippling motions with the brush I finally achieved a result I liked. 

The light color emphasised the panels beautifully 

For the first time I became confident that this might finally turn out into something I really like. Another gloss coat with Real Color Gloss protected the work. 

Next step: decals. Dozens of them. Ah, what am I saying?! Hundreds! Literally.  

I read that the kits decals were on the thicker side and might pose problems. A look at the sheet made that information even more plausible. So I got a decal sheet from DXM Decals for all the stencils. 

The individual markings and the formation light decals were taken from Finemold, as I liked the motives and the lighter yellow of the formation lights better.
Done after four days. 

The very shiny decals were successfully blended in with another coat of gloss varnish.
My hope that the still visible edges would become invisible with that coat was disappointed. So the whole plane was sanded with grit 2000 sanding paper and polished with Tamiya polish fine. This enhanced the appearance significantly although not successfully everywhere and at a loss of a stencil here and there. 

Individual panals were highlighted with white, buff, light blue and dark grey filters. Panellines at the light areas were highlighted with dark colors, as were hinges, vents, flaps and so on.  

Quite a few panellines didn't want to take the wash color. Here I resorted to a sharpened pencil to bring them out. 

 

Oils were used to create wear at areas of more intense handling.
Tamiyas decal softener did a good job at snugging the decals into the panellines. Another wash blended them further in and enhanced the panellines. 

Silly me didn't cover the radon nose before all the washings. So I will have to repaint it. 

Landing gear and wheel well doors ready for installation. Beautiful resin wheels replace the kits ons.  

Immaculate fit and smart part layout made installation a charm. Only the socket for the axles of the resin wheels had to be drilled open to accept the axles.  

Same with the main landing gear. I only mistakenly clipped off mounting struts of two gear bay doors. So now they only hold by the thinnest contact line, minuscule amounts of superglue and a prayer. 

I was already sorting out my setup for the final pictures when I remembered some last chores still to be done.
But two premature motivation shots were necessary nevertheless.  

After I mounted the exhausts I considered them too shiny. So, a satin varnish coat followed. Now I like it better 

Some of the masks could be reused for the masking of the canopy seals. To foster paint adhesion to the polished canopy I will use a matt varnish as a base layer and paint the seals on top of this. 

Advanced masking. Anxious about how that will come out. 

No, that doesn't look the way I wanted.
So I washed everything off again. 

Next attempt. Coloring thin decal strips.
Unfortunately that didn't work either as I didn't put into consideration that the carrier film gets colored too - widening the decal too much. I will try my luck now with printable decal sheet of which I cut thin strips after I painted it. And if that doesn't work I will print the desired color onto it.
Never give up! ? 

I just wanted to write that the decalling worked much better only to realise that the jyst applied setting solution dissolves the paint on the decals. Ok let's wait till it dries and see if I can rescue that with some touch ups.
Note to self: cut the thin stripes first and paint them separately. When painting first and cut second the paint crackles, when only the carrier film is cut and the decals are painted then the decals are difficult to separate from the backing and from one another with the paint tearing - leaving uneven edges. 

Last decals applied after freshly painting the radon nose. It's new appearance contrasts with the faded look of the rest of the paint at the big Phantoms too.
I suppose that the japanese Phantoms received a new radon nose with their new radars of the last upgrade.