Capital Guardian- F-4D, 113th wing, DC Air National Guard

I've done the Tamiya B, the Meng -G, so I'll round this out with the Zoukei-Mura -D.

This Guard Phantom is a MiG killer, just not with the DC Air National Guard. 66-7661 bagged a MiG-17 and MiG-21 in Vietnam, and it belonged to the 555th TFS, the 435th TFS, the 49th TFW, the 36th TFW, the 35th TFS, and finally the 121st TFW in 1983. After a stint as a battle damage repair trainer, it was mounted on a pole outside the Air National Guard readiness center at Joint Base Andrews, where it remains to this day.

I've lived here in DC my whole life, so this subject is a natural choice for me. I have the foggiest memories of being a young lad racing outside to catch a glimpse of what I soon found out were DC ANG F-4s screaming out of (what was then) Andrews AFB.

7661 never carried the Towel Rack LORAN antenna, so apart from that it's a standard D model, with the addition of the RHAW antenna below the nose-mounted IRST fairing. Despite all of the other extras provided in this kit, Zoukei-Mura has never offered the cringe-inducing "herpes mod antenna" in any of the D kits, even though this antenna was commonly featured on many D model Phantoms. Go figure. The Academy kit came to the rescue, because their -C kit comes with all sorts of RHAW assemblies to fit under the nose. A little careful whittling here and there, and the Z-M -D now sports the correct (and embarassingly named) AN/ALR-69 "Herpes Mod" nose. Adding the "slime lights" as optional parts sliced off from the sprue itself is a clever trick, but I wonder why they were added like this at all. Given that the kit has you scrape and sand off locating ridges for other lumps and bumps, providing parts that normally presented in decal or photoetch but with no locating assistance on the kit parts seems counter-intuitive. I could have just as easily scraped these off the parts. In any event, there were technical orders written up that mandated the installation of these lights on nearly all F-4s by the end of the late 70s, so you need them if your bird is from that point onward in the space-time continuum.

The Z-M kit is good. Very good. So good, in fact, that I have to seriously wonder why the Meng kit was made, but then again, making a competent kit of the Phantom is a guaranteed income source.

The Speed Hunter Graphics decals are very thin and intolerant of setting solutions. The decal sheet also lacks the large walkway markings and suggests you use the ones provided in the kit, but the Z-M F-4D kit doesn't actually have them. I have yet to find a decal sheet that only provides the walkway markings, so it will go unadorned until then.

7 additional images. Click to enlarge.