The whole concept of aircraft is new to me, as i've stated in a post in the novice forum. I'm an experienced modeler looking to build a F-4 Phantom in South East Asia camouflage (Vietnam use variants please!). I have what seems to be an old Revell 1/48 F-4C/D but it's quite dated. I'm sure there's newer/better kits out there but I don't even know where to begin. Could anyone steer me in the right path?

1/48 scale is preferred, but 1/72 is cool too. 1/32 is way too big!

Hasegawa make a whole range of 1/48 scale phantoms and they have been upgrading the kits. Check out www.spruebrothers.com. They carry most if not all the kits and they are reasonably priced. Have Fun!!!

Academy has recently released a fantastic F-4B in 1/48 which has rendered all other Phantoms pretty much obsolete. Out of the box, you could do one of the 10 USAF F-110s right away, or you can wait until Academy releases their promised F4-C version later on this year.

The Hasegawa kits are perfectly adequate, but they're starting to show their age. Revellogram kits are a bit of a step down from Hasegawa (unless you've got a reboxed Hasegawa kit). They're good, but needing improvement. At the very least, each could do with an aftermarket cockpit.

Hi Jon,
If you are new to aircraft building, build the REVELL/MONOGRAM or ITALERI kit. Next I would recommend ESCI/AMT, then the HASEWAGA. When you get better, the best F-4 is the ACADEMY.

Me and a fellow Dutch builder are currently building the 1/72 Hasegawa F-4B (or N). The kit goes very well together. I am not sure if they come with Vietnam markings (I will use different decals, for the Jolly Rogers), but these can also be found by various decal specialists.



Jelger

In 1/48, pretty the best and only choice is the Hasegawa kit, until Academy get round to releasing other variants. Despite being 25+ years old, its still a very good kit and goes together very easily (unlike the 1/72 Hasegawa which is very complicated and fiddly)

Jon,

I agree with everyone above, especially with regards to the new academy F-4B in 1/48, although I almost always stick to 1/72 kits I recently purchased both the hasegawa 1/48 F-4J 'Showtime 100' cunnigham/driscoll boxing, and also the new 1/48 F-4B by academy as they are both brilliant kits.

Personally if I were you, as you're looking to do a vietnam era F-4, I would probably pick up an F-4B for an earlier vietnam war phantom and once you've done that I would then get the academy F-4C when they release it, as Jessie suggests above, as this would give you more colour scheme options etc.

Either way you can't go too wrong if you buy hasegawa or academy.

Now if you went into my preferred scale of 1/72 I would personally try to pick up either the fujimi or hasegawa versions of the F-4C/D, yes the hasegawa kit is quite complicated with seperate forward fuselage, but with some care and patience you will get a very good end product that you can do in SEA camo.

I hope that's useful,

Rich

In 1/72 Revell R/F-4E/F is also a good alternative, despite being claimed as being closer to 1/76 (I read something like that for the Fujimi one also).
If you're not about to build every single version, wait for the new Academy F-4C in SEA. It's due for Q2 this year.

Good luck!

I think an experienced modeller is an experienced modeller. Buy the best kit regardless of complexity. The only real trick from afv to aircraft is you're sanding a lot more smooth surfaces with compound curves.

But you've got a Spike Speigel avatar so maybe you're coming to us from modelgeek not tractorama?