Hasegawa 1/72 F-4EJ 'MiG Silhouette'
| KIT #: | 00752 |
| PRICE: | $34.00 MSRP (¥2800) |
| DECALS: | One Option |
| REVIEWER: | Scott Van Aken |
| NOTES: | 2005 Limited Reissue |
| HISTORY |
To most knowledgeable and intelligent people, one of the finest jets of the Cold War is the F-4 Phantom II. Those lacking proper perception willundoubtedly differ in this matter, however, it isn't too late to come to yoursenses! :o)
Other than perhaps the Mig-17 or Mig-21, no other post-Koreanwar jet has been built in greater numbers. Certainly no other non-Sovietdesigned aircraft. There must have been a reason for it. It certainly isn'tsimplicity or ease of maintenance. The Phantom was one of the last Westernfighters where the airframe was designed first and then room was found for otherequipment. Nowadays, ease of maintenance is as important as any other factor. Itcertainly wasn't designed to be stealthy. Nothing like two smoke trailsfollowing several tons of hurtling metal to make yourself visible! It alsowasn't designed to be quiet. If you have ever been around the beast withoutproper hearing protection, your ears will definitely be ringing.
What made it such a success is that it was able to perform avariety of missions and perform them all well. Probably your first decentmulti-mission aircraft. It was an interceptor, a (unwilling) dogfighter, asuperb ground attack aircraft, a night fighter, a level bomber, a SAMsuppression aircraft, and a blast to fly. Before that, aircraft were generallyspecialized. After the Phantom, there were still purposefully built aircraft,but it lead the way to today's multi-mission aircraft.
Though mostly gone from the inventories of the world's air forces, The F-4 is still being flown by the Greeks, Turks and the Japanese amongst the few. The Japanese planes, aside from the first two EJs and the RF-4EJs, were all built under license by Mitsubishi. Though the numbers have dwindled down over the years, the F-4EJ kai is still being flown as are some that have been converted with recce pods.
| THE KIT |
However all these options comes with a price and that is that the kit is quite fiddly with many small parts. What it means to you as a builder is that you have to take your time and carefully fit all of these pieces in place. Just to give a brief rundown, you get finely engraved panel lines, a full cockpit though the instruments are decals (typical of many 1/72 kits and almost all of the Hasegawa ones), and no weapons. For weapons you'll need to spend the bucks on the required Hasegawa weapons set or scrounge them from your spares box.
Instructions are the usual superb Hasegawa ones giving Gunze paint references as well as FS numbers where they are required. All of the various bits needed to do a proper EJ variant are clearly shown. The decal sheet is huge and has the usual plethora of data markings that one finds on modern jets. Fortunately, many of these are all tied together with a single clear carrier. That does make them less time consuming to install. For the Special MiG-21 markings, you are given a few of the more difficult to mask areas as decals. The rest will need to be painted. As you can see, on the real plane the extant markings were masked over. Looking at the sheet, it does not appear as if the data markings include the grey background. Markings are well done and I recommend hot water when using these.
| CONCLUSIONS |
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