I'm uploading this for a friend, more to follow.

Well, after a year in the making this F4 is finally going to get a chance to fly. We just pulled it off the paint stand last week and now the task of gearing her up begins. I would like to know if anyone has any pics of their install to give me a better idea of what works for them. Its going to be powered by a Titan and we are still up in the air about batteries. As far as recievers go we were thinking about putting a whip antenna versus running it inside the fuse-(any thoughts on that?). Any other thoughts, ideas, or pics would be appreciated. Jason

SSWWWEEEEETTTTTTTT!!!!!!

Another....

The last two for tonight.... we should have some up close shot available in the next few days for those of you who like that sort of thing.

I forgot to mention that this phantom was paint by master painter "Shogun" himself. If you need a plane painted he's your man.

Oh lord....

that thing is tight!

Great work Scott. Now I know who to call for painting advice. hehe

Jason,

Here are a few pics of my F-4 install with a Netherlands Pegasus. The internal antenna works fine if you run it down the carbon fiber shaft in the engine compartment inside a nyrod. Notice that I am using some 3/8" or so balsa pieces to stand-off the yellow nyrod/antenna from the carbon fiber rod.

Craig

Craig
What type of batteries are you using and how hard was it to get it balanced. Jason

Jason,

I personally like to run my REGULAR rx antenna on the outside of the Jet ( I feel much safer ). I have 2 F-4's and one of them is powered by a Titan and the other by AMT. I also run 2 heavy duty JR switches with the charge jack for convenience. I run a pair of 6V. 2000mah Nicads and charge every three flights. Each battery and switch is plugged into a separate channel of the rx just in case one of the two fails. I try to keep everything in the nose of the bird also for convenience like fuel filler, propane filler,switches, air, air valves and ECU.

Here are some shots, the first picture shows you how I run my antenna.

Jason,

It's not hard to balance at all. Just put your batteries in the nose area (forward of the nose gear) and be sure you use the updated cg location, which is 12 3/4" along the leading edge of the wing (not straight back along the fuselage). Surprisingly, this airplane flys better with the cg a little aft.

I am using nicads for both the rx and ecu. You could go with lighter batteries (like Duralites) but you would probably end up needing some lead in the tail.

Craig

PS: Nice looking airplane. You will love the way it flys!

Johnny,

What happened with the big F-4? Did you fly it?

Craig

I took it out to do the first flight and forgot to unplug my fuel vent and while I was fueling you know what happened after that ( Big mess )

I was so nervous, I couldn't think straight so this coming thursday I'm scheduled to go out there and do this. I have to test fly it and make sure that everything's A-OK before I head up to MI jets. I'll post the end result once I get this over with, I just hate first flights like you have no idea

She's ready........

Be cool man! You are a good stick! Good luck!

Craig

Can anyone advise about how to contact the painter of this F-4 ? I'll need somone for similar projects.

thx !

The pegasus is an option we have also since we have one sitting idle at the moment. Im not sure if it will fit in the bypass we have so we will have to check. As far as fuel tanks go are you guys running with just the two main tanks and UAT or do you have the third tank in use also?

There are three tanks plus the UAT. BVM sells the appropiate bypass and tailpipe for the AMT. Make sure you tell them that AMT is what you're powering that rhino with otherwise you will have problems with the pipe diameter being too small. I had that problem with my Cammo F-4.

Can you be a little more specific about what you need?
Most of the planes are painted by the builder, some have it painted at local automotive painters. Decals are usually are available through the manufacturer, mayor decals, promark or others.
Some decals are custom jobs specifically made to scale for a certain plane. I've done decals for a few versions of the F-4 (2 of them from below for example) as well as some other jets and props. Basically all you need are some photos of the plane you want, the rest can be drawn up and printed on a dry ink thermal transfer machine :-).
Hope this helps

PS: Phantoms Phorever!

Building and painting are quite different skills so that is why not all pro builders are qualified or agree for a paint job when asked to do so. At least that is what happened to me.
I have a perfectly build Liebetrau F-5F and must find a good painter now. Looking at this magnificient F-4 (the one of the thread title) I was wondering if the painter might be intereted in this F-5 project. I'm also looking for a decal supplier and a cockpit builder.

Cheers

Baron, the starter of this thread is located in the US, and from your profile i take you are located in switzerland. Shipping one way for an entire plane is in the 500 euros and up region. That makes over a thousand euros just for shipping it back and forth...

Ask at a local car and body shop if they will do it at a reasonable price. My guess is it will run quite a bit cheaper than shipping it back and forth, plus there is no danger to damage it on the transportation way. Another option is to paint the basic colors yourself, apply the decals, and then have it finished at the automotive painter (clear only).
Also you could ask Franz Walti of switzerland. His finishes are always superb...

There are several cockpits available for the Liebetrau F-5. Try a forum search here on RCU. They were running about $450 and up, and all looked pretty good. Killer cockpits is one of the names that flashes my mind....

I might be able to help you out with decals. What scheme are you planning on putting on your F-5?

Best regards
Hank

@ Miniffyer thanx for your advices but I don't want to pollute this F-4 thread with a F-5 story basically I agree with your comments but I don't want to miss any good opportunity to find a qualified painter (=artist would be almost more accurate). Given the RC market size there are vastly more qualified people in the US than over here, cost is not really an issue if I get the right person so at the time beeing I don't want to reject any option.

Regards

Jason's Phantom took about a month to paint and there are still a few small items thatn are not complete and will wait until after the maiden flight to be put on the model. Paint is PPG concept basecoat/clearcoat with PPG 2060 Flexed N' Flat used for the clear overcoat. The grey wasa real trick to get right because the olor supplied by our paint store was far too dark for our use. I mixed in white at a 1 to 1 ratio and the resulting color was still a little off but useable. The real color the US NAVY used on these planes was gloss gull grey and actually has a slightly tan hue to it, we came close but it's not exact if you compare a true sample next to the model.

The metallic areas on the rear of the Phantom are Alclad II laquers over Tamiya black laquer from a spray can which turned out tobe a perfect combination, 6 different shades were used to simulate this area of the airplane.

All of the large markings are vinyl and were custom printed by Pro-Sign design here in Omaha. Perhaps the most tedious part of the project involved having the decal sheet from a Tamiya 1/32nd scale plastic kit scanned and enlarged to fit on the BVM kit. This process took a lot of test fitting to get the markings close to that of the actual real aircraft we were modelling. I only had 2 photo's of phantoms in this scheme and that made getting everything accurate a fairly time consuming task. In the end we think the results of the work speak for themselves.

To round it all off Pro-Mark's F-4 nomenclature set of dry transfers was used for all of the specific small markings that all real Phantoms carried. Pro-Mark rivets and screw were applied to represent all of the removeable maintenenence panels and in the bare metal areas on the rear o the model. Panel lines were acented with a mechanical pencil on the basecoat which gave great results.

As I mentioned before that actual painting took about a month of work but the complete project stretched out over roughly 8-10 weeks. Painting a scale jet is a LOT of work that eats up an enormous amount of time.

To add to the time involved the in finishing the model I did a lot of scratch building. The pitot probes and antennea on the vertical fin were scratch built. All of the other antennea's are also scratch built and have yet to be added. Perhaps the biggest and most nerve wracking part of the project was fixing the nose. This model started out as an F-4E and has been converted into an F-4J which involved cutting off the long noseand fitting the short radome. The worst part of the project involved the air conditioner scoops that are on both sides of the fuse mounted low and to the rear of the radome. The E model Phantom has these scoops but they are contoured into the sides of the nose, the J model Phantom has scoops that have a more protruding appearance. To fix this huge gaff I cut the old ones off and plugged the holes with balsa, puttied it up and sanded the contours to the correct shape. The scoops themselves are scratch built from balsa blocks and are attatched to the nose in the appropriate position. Once all of that was finally completed we finally had a decent representation of the Navy version of the Phantom and could proceed with paint and markings.

I have no idea how many acuall hours went into thi project and really have no desire to know, all I can say is it was much bigger undertaking than we originally had assumed it would be. In the end we're happy with the results so it was all worth it.

Yup. A work of art. That's what it is.