I'm thinking about doing a 1/48 F-4 Phantom. I'm building a 1/72 Hasegawa kit for the Phantoms campaign and it has both made me more excited about Phantoms but left me wanting from the kit itself. So, the interest in 1/48. I was thinking about trying to do an E in Iranian service (I have acquired some strange interest in the Iran-Iraq war). It looks like Zoukei Mura have no released what they are calling an early E. So here are a few questions that have me stuck:

- Presumably ZM will also offer a late E. Does anyone know whether the Iranian Es would have been early or late?
- It looks like the ZM kits come armed with sparrows and sidewinders only. Is that correct? (One of the things that frustrated me about the Hasegawa kit is I had to buy extra plastic for arming it - and it ended up costing about what a 1/48 Academy kit would have cost me)

If I don't do that, I'm thinking about an Academy F-4 in Vietnam. I like the marking offerings that came with the Eduard Good Morning/Evening Da Nang but it doesn't look like those decal sets are available separately? Or am I not searching correctly?

Phil,

I've seen a thread on another site that talks some about this. They're saying Z-M has committed to the full family, including late Es with slats (the major difference between early and late). There's a discussion about Iranian bird and a post that said that Iranian aircraft came from blocks 47, 51-59. and 63. I believe the slats were fitted at the factory from block 48, so at least some of the Iranian aircraft wouldn't have had them at first (though this guy says they were retrofitted).

I ordered mine yesterday, the US release date, from Sprue Brothers and it's already on it's way. It's destined to become an IDF/AF bird, they had a couple of squadrons worth of early E's and didn't get them all retrofitted until after the '73 war, so I have some good choices.

HTH!

Michael