Shaun's Ghostly Gunfighter *DNF*

[ShaunW]

You're getting some great results from all this remodelling work Shaun. It's kind of like Grand Designs in 1/72nd scale

Into paint soon?

Cheers Dazzled. It's like Grand Designs without the usual £500k budget, more like Economy Designs, the poor man's option Hopefully into paint before too long now. I need to sort out the other inner pylon, the tail planes and the wing tanks, which will take a couple of evenings I suppose. It largely depends on work intrusions during the week It's pretty safe to say though that I will be resurrecting my Workbench Window thread for this one!

[ShaunW]

Like the tail plane. Great idea.

Thanks Ian. Basically some tidying up work is needed and then I should be able to copy the idea onto the second tail plane and finish that a little quicker.

[TimJ]

Great job so far.

[ShaunW]

Cheers Tim. Alas, this is not going to be finished within the the GB timeframe (by my standards, I have managed a reasonable GB finish rate this year) and I will have to dig out my WW thread - it's probably on page 5 by now as I don't think I've accessed it for about 6 months

[splash]

Nice work on the tail plane the slats will look great.

I recall in my youth when I was an NAM (Naval Aircraft Mechanic) working on F4k on 767 Navel Air Squadron, as part of the Before Flight Inspection we had to climb up the wing then up onto the a/c spine and along to the tail to check the drag shute was fitted correctly, from there we would slide down the tail plane and jump off at the bottom trying not to get your overhauls caught on the slats.

The Phantom F4k was the last fixed wing a/c I worked on before changing over to become Aircrew and a life in the rotary wing world.

Regards Splash

[ShaunW]

Many thanks Splash and that's a great tale (no pun intended ) from your RN days. I'm reasonably sure that in this day and age a Health and Safety inspector would not be best pleased about aircraft mechanics sliding down steeply inclined tail planes in order to dismount an aircraft and I can take a guess that the practice would have to cease forthwith Did you fly in helos as a pilot or observer?

[splash]

Many thanks Splash and that's a great tale (no pun intended ) from your RN days. I'm reasonably sure that in this day and age a Health and Safety inspector would not be best pleased about aircraft mechanics sliding down steeply inclined tail planes in order to dismount an aircraft and I can take a guess that the practice would have to cease forthwith Did you fly in helos as a pilot or observer?

I flew as an Aircrewman first as an AS12 missile aimer flying in Wasp's then as a SAR crew in Wessex 1 & 5's followed as a Commando Crewman again in Wessex 5 and Seaking mk4 I also had to do a tour as ASW operating the active and passive sonar in the back of a Seaking Mk 5. In the good old day you just flew one pilot and one Aircrewman or on the SAR you had a SAR Diver, the pingers (ASW) always had two pilot, one Observer and the Aircrewman.

I flew for 22 years and finished up with just over 2000 flying hours.

Happy days

Regards Splash

[Ian]

My boss used to be an NAM working on Wessex on the Ark.

[ShaunW]

That sounds like a very interesting career Splash. I won't bore you with the details of mine, you'd be asleep after the first sentence

[ShaunW]

I have managed a little bench time and have now managed to complete the most of the main assemblies ready for paint.

The slotted tail planes are now basically complete although they require final dressing with fine sandpaper and micromesh cloths.



I have also added basic detail to the wing tanks in the form of strakes made from 0.5mm plastruct rod



So here are the basic assemblies together



Prior to painting at the weekend, I need to decide whether or not to assemble and fit the belly fuel tank. If I don't fit the tank I will be left with a slot hole for the attachment of the tank, very similar in size to a stand slot, in the rear of the under fuselage that I will have to fill (the centreline pylon is moulded integrally with the belly tank as the outer wing pylons are to the wing tanks) or, alternatively, I will have to make a centreline pylon. The other issue is whether or not to fit weapons. Usually I don't but I do have a nice Hasegawa U.S. aircraft weapons set, which also contains some nicely detailed triple ejector racks that I could fit empty to the inner wing pylons. The recessed Sparrow missiles will be fitted however, as it is quite rare to see a U.S. Phantom not equipped with at least two (one or both of the forward Sparrow bays sometimes carry electronic counter-measures pods instead of the missiles). Decisions...decisions

Thanks for looking.

[Ian]

Hang as much from the wings as you can, Shaun. You know you want to!

[ShaunW]

Hang as much from the wings as you can, Shaun. You know you want to!

Mmmmm, I'll keep having a think as there are some nice, big, bombs in the Hase set

[splash]

I'm not a lover of fitting bombs on kits as I like to leave them clean, BUT and its a big BUT a Phantom needs to be loaded for Bear it just looks right, you know you want to, just get the lot on and make us all happy

Regards Splash

[AndrewR]

More bombs and missiles please Shaun

[ShaunW]

I'll give the weapons load some thought then as, perish the thought, I don't want to disappoint any Phantom Phollowers and big bombs may well be a feature