It should be noted that Rick wins the longest distance traveled while building award. This kit was started in Calgary, headed south to Tucson, Arizona via Las Vegas, north to Boise, Idaho before returning to Calgary!

Hasegawa's F-4G is no doubt "THE" 1/48 Wild Weasel Phantom. The kit is quite straight forward to build out of box. One of the few down sides of the kit is that you have to file down the bulges above the wheel wells on the top of both wings. These bulges are only for the Naval versions.

The 2 antennas under the intakes have to be filed down; and moved back a bit if you're very serious about accuracy, which I ignored. Remove the camera bulges under the wings as well. Next came the two halves of the fuselages, I always have to (putty is sometimes required) file and sand the top joint on the "spine", this problem is on all of Hasegawa's Phantom kits, no matter how you try to sand and fit it.

I used the Black Box resin cockpit set for this model as I was supposed to do a write up for Mike Kirchoff of Black box. It went in place with quite a bit of filing and sanding. You have to make sure to either sand down the rear instrument panel on the bottom before gluing to the floor or file the top down afterwards. I also replaced the rear throttle with an old KMC one. It is a shame that I didn't stock up on the KMC photo-etch sets. I added only the mirrors from the old Technic set.

I cleaned and then sprayed the landing gears and doors interior white, then temporarily glued the doors closed. The clear canopies were masked with Gunze Mr. Mask and temporary glued in place. The model was sprayed with Model Master enamels of Gunship and Neutral greys (in a Tucson AR hotel room). Antennas were added and painted (You have to add one antenna on each side of the vertical fin). I then gloss coat the entire model and readied for decals.

I used the Leading Edge Idaho Phantom Pharewell decals which were researched by a very nice guy whom I do not know very well (myself). Once applied, I did the usual gloss and dull coat. All landing gear doors were removed and along with the landing gear permanently glued into position. I brush painted the trademark metal parts around the engine and the inboard part of the horizontal stabilizers with various shades of metalizers. This area's tones vary from aircraft to aircraft. Thinned down black/rust paint was dipped onto the panel lines around the control surfaces and access panels to highlight them.

The horizontal stabilizers were glued on last with Super-glue to avoid having them breaking off during handling. The last step was to unmask the canopies, and to check for and remove any fingerprints on the paint job.