Academy F-4J 1/72

Started by George R Blair Jr · 66 · 5 years ago · Academy, F-4J, Ferris, Greg Kittenger, Phantom, World of Phantoms
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    Robert Royes said 5 years, 3 months ago:

    Looks great ,George! If there wasn't a leak some where, then there was something wrong with the bird.

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    Sebastijan Videc said 5 years, 3 months ago:

    Stunning build! I see I'll have to ge me Ed's Zoom set for mine as well!

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    George R Blair Jr said 5 years, 3 months ago:

    That's true for a lot of planes, Robert. I had a friend who flew F-106s and he said if you walked up to a 106 without a pool of oil under it then it was out of oil. The C-141s I flew weren't supposed to leak. You would occasionally find a smear of oil or hydraulics on a panel, but you would wipe it off and then check it to be sure nothing was leaking. In a plane that used hydraulics for flight control you didn't want to spring a hydraulic leak.

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    George R Blair Jr said 5 years, 3 months ago:

    The Zoom sets are great, Sebastian. In a small scale jet, I figure the most visible thing through a closed canopy will be the seat. I will always add seatbelts, if the kit seat doesn't have them. Sometimes I just use painted masking tape for the belts, and sometimes a Zoom set. If the kit seat is a big lump of plastic, I will usually replace it with a resin seat. For the F-4, the rear instrument panel sticks up into the canopy, so I figured the panels in the Zoom set would be useful. For this Academy kit, it turned out the canopy was so clear that you can see most of the interior through the closed canopy, so the Zoom kit was a good investment.

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    Robert Royes said 5 years, 3 months ago:

    A common spot for leaks were on the bottom engine bay doors. On the line crew we use to wipe the landing gear struts 'piston', down with a spritzer bottle filled with hydraulic fluid, occasionally we would mess with a pilot , usually a new one,by spraying the surrounding strut with the fluid, when the air crew would find the 'leak', we'd wipe it off and tell him that it was just a static leak and was good to go.

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    George R Blair Jr said 5 years, 3 months ago:

    Our flight engineers really had a handle on leaks of all sorts. They could usually look at a fluid leak and tell you if it was worrisome or not.