Revell 1/72 F-4F Phantom II

REVELL 1:72 F-4F PHANTOM II
'INBOX Review'

Reviewer: Reimo Soosar (rec.models.scale)

History

The Phantom has a long and renowned history, so I will not harp on it for too long. The F version was purely for the Luftwaffe and was used for strike, and is now currently in AA role. The depicted model is ICE upgrade with new radar and mainly/uniquely with ability to use AMRAAM effectively. The F will be replaced by the Eurofighter Typhoon, but more probably augmented, as the Typhoon is quite an expensive bird to buy.

What is in the box?

On first look you will see five sprues, 3 in light grey and 2 clear, separately bagged, of course; instructions and decal sheet. There are a bit over 100 parts, six of them are marked not for use (these are older F-4E outer wings and clear parts of recce-nose, used in RF-4E kit). So three (2 grey and 1 clear) sprues are identical in both kits, F-4F and RF-4E, with the fourth one being unique. This kit has a new nose section with new dashboards, outer wings and missiles. Instructions is typical Revell with sprue diagrams, 38 steps (two for marking and painting) and with 16 called-out colours (Revell’s of course). Decal sheet is a colourful one, considering the versions and roughly A5 size.

Parts and first look

As mentioned, the mold is in light grey plastic, being finely engraved with some places finely raised (like the exhaust section). Otherwise it looks crisp enough and looks to be an easy fitting kit (as I have made RF-4E earlier there’s hardly any putty needed). Basic model seems to be several years old, if you look at Revell’s mark inside the model, with main fuselage being ’97 vintage and nose 2000’s. So it looks like a nice model after all, and it isn’t even expensive.

How is the model to be built up?

As usual, it all starts in the office, with seats. One seat is made up of 5 parts, two sides, headrest, seating place and presumably rocketing device, seat looks nice, and there’s two of them, of course.
Bathtub is a single unit, with raised side panels and separate dashboards (all raised, dashboards look nice), all can be decaled or painted, sticks look like sticks, what more can I say.
Nose section is made of office, two fuselage sides, nose gear bay and bottom section with missile slots (it’s separate as it is also in the RF-4E kit, in that case without missile slots), all fits well, at least on a dry run it does, everything looking nice and sharp.
Main fuselage is made of two fuselage sides (with fin), engine faces (it fits in very well, if you like you could model some kind of intake trunk inside, but it’s hard to see that far when it’s all put together), lower wing panel (single unit, running from nose to exhaust) to where you have some holes to drill for parts pertinent to the F-version. Upper wing panels are separate and thicker in main gear bay area, as E/F has wider wheels and thus thicker wings. Nose and main fuselage goes together well, there should be no gaps, it even may be a bit too precise as far as fit is concerned. Happily intakes are made of two parts, outer panel/fuselage part and inner lip/splitter plate that is approx. two inches long thus looking realistic enough when viewed from the front. Tailplanes are also nice and crisp, Revell also provides front view and right angles for outer wing panels and tailplanes.
Exhausts are single piece and there’s also separate fin tip (it makes you wonder, that with a new sprue you could make an accurate F-4G out of it, new sprue being new nose and antennae fit, so we should lobby Revell a proposition for that).
Canopy is made of five parts: windscreen, two positionable canopies, one piece that goes between aforementioned two and not-a-glass-one piece that completes this.
Arrestor hook is separate alongside with tailcone.
Landing gear. Nose gear is made of five parts: leg, suspension strut, two weighted wheels and actuating strut. Nose door is made of three parts, nose section that lowers to front, and main has to be glued together from two pieces opening sideways, it also has separate part with actuating strut attached to it. Main gear is made of three parts each leg (leg, wheel and actuator), alongside with three doors, one having separate actuating strut. Main gear door is provided as single unit, so when depicting wheels-down then it must be cut up.
Cannon has separate muzzle part made of two sides, also nosecone is separate and there’s also 2 ram intakes provided for nose one on each side.
Stores:
1. 1xALQ-119 ECM pod (decals provided) with extra part for carrying it in missile slot,
2. 1xF-15 style fuel tank for centerline (that F-4E has been cleared for as it can stand 5g instead of 3g on customary tank) made of 2 sides,
3. 2x fuel tanks, made of 2 halves, each half is already attached to half of outer wing hard point. When will the Phantom model be with separate hard points and fuel tanks?
4. For main wing hard point there is 2 twin-racks for Sidewinder (4xAIM-9L in this case, but one might want to replace those with better replicas or even leave these off).
5. And what’s an ICE bird without AMRAAMs? There’s four of them, but if you use the ECM pod you have only 3 slots left for those.
Main wing hard point is made of 4 parts, 2 rails (for Sidewinders), hard point itself and countermeasure dispenser on one side (other side is already attached).

If you don’t like the German birds you may make any other version out of it (with necessary decals), as it is quite an accurate F-4F with even a possibility to make an E out of it. So you can raid your spare boxes, if you want to make a mud-mover! The Phantom can carry quite a lot and virtually everything that is in the weapons inventory. I had to raid my boxes to get Mavericks and LGBs (with designator on Sparrow slot).

Options, versions

Options from the model are mainly wheels up-down, canopies open-closed and optional ordnance, as you may fit everything on or perhaps nothing, it’s up to you. Also it is possible to spice the model up yourself (as a part of some diorama etc).

The depicted model can be made in two colour schemes:

An F-4F Jubiläumaschine 40 Jahre JG 71 Richthofen, it’s coloured red and black (boxart) and is colourful jubilee version celebrating JG 71 being operational for 40 years.
The other is a typical machine in air-superiority scheme of light and med grey, being in JG 73 Mölders.

Impressions and recommendations

As mentioned, it looks a crispy mold, with less than minimum flash. Only downside is, that Revell hasn’t used this good model for producing more members in the Phantom family (My main complaint is a lack of G model in 72nd scale – Hasegawa’s model isn’t available anymore - and this E model can be converted to it if they were to mold a new sprue with some necessary parts). I haven’t measured the accuracy of this model, but it looks like a convincing Phantom. By the way, given measurements in the box are L:27.1cm and W:16.2 cm. Basically it looks like that Revell has continued their practise with Tornados, as this model also looks like it’s rather a scaled down model of their 1:32 F-4F. Still this model doesn’t seem to be very hard to build, there are some minor gripes, but these can be handled.

So this model is recommended to all modellers other than the most extreme novices.

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Hasegawa 1/72 F-4G Phantom II "Wild Weasel"

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