Zoukei-Mura F-4C Phantom II Wild Weasel IV

It’s good to be back on the ZM F-4C Wild Weasel and I plan to crack on to the finish line uninterrupted this time!

The burner cans are well moulded in the kit and a couple of options are included so just make sure you choose the correct ones as per the instruction book. A base coat of Tamiya XF-85 Rubber Black gives a very nice base colour to work with. The forward section that slots into the rear fuselage is a lighter metallic colour in most pics that I have seen of F-4Cs with the actual cans much darker, hence the Rubber Black base.

The forward section is masked out and sprayed AK Xtreme Metal Dark Aluminium and this dries in an hour or so.

Weathering is very straightforward and simply involves using a cotton bud to apply some ordinary pencil graphite to the metallic areas, working it in until you get a nice grubby metal effect. The pic doesn’t do the actual look justice, it looks better than that in reality. A very light dry-brush around the edged with the AMMO silver Drybrushing Compound brings out some of the subtle details – see the finished pics here…

Time to shine

As the airframe is already painted we need to gloss everything up ahead of decaling and, as you know, that’s always ‘fun’ when building an F-4 LOL. Actually I don’t really mind the hundreds of stencils because the final effect should look very good, all being well.

First up mask off the cockpit using small bits of Tamiya masking tape…

One further task at this stage is to rub the surface back a bit using the light blue side of one of my Ultimate buffers or you can use a bit of clean tissue. This really smoothes the surface and creates some light wearing of the surface that is all part of the weathering prep for most F-4s in my world.

Then my mix of Tamiya X-22 Clear gloss varnish and a small amount of Mr Color Levelling thinner. As I may have mentioned before, I just take a new jar of gloss varnish and add some Levelling Thinner to the jar to take the level about half way up the neck and mix thoroughly. The mix is good for all my gloss varnish spraying with that mix. When you run out, do it again and you always have a nice mix good to go for any gloss varnishing task.

The result is a nice smooth glossy surface for decaling and that’s up next.

Having finally decided to definitely go with a Spangdahlem Weasel you need to add the yellow fin tip and yo have options. Either use the two part decal for each side supplied by ZM, or, spray the areas as I have done here, I think that you get a better result with a bit of careful masking and spraying, rather than faffing round with decals over curved surfaces. Just for the record, and I’m sure many of you will know what a Wild Weasel is? If not… Wild Weasel is a code name given by the United States Air Force (USAF) to any aircraft equipped with anti-radiation missiles and used to suppress enemy air defenses by destroying their radar and surface-to-air missile (SAM) installations.

As you can see I have used Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow which is a decent match for the shade of yellow required. If you spray it on evenly and slowly you don’t need a base of white or pink, just slowly build up the density and it can be done in one hit.

Read on…