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F-4 Phantom.

The F-4 Phantom. One of the least manouvreable jet fighters ever. It was so useless at dogfighting in Vietnam that it wasn't even fitted with a gun. It was only good for missile type weaponary. Anyway, that was the story of the full-size Phantom. The Howard Metcalfe Phantom however, is so manouvreable that it wouldn't need a gun because nothing would even try to have a go at it. With a very small wingspan (about 36") the ideal power plant is described as an Irvine 20. I on the other hand wanted it to be quick. So especially for the plane, I bought a brand new Leo 37. Despite a few small criticisms about being over-powered and stuff like that, it seems to be pretty good.

I don't know if you are familiar with the new ARTF Weston UK Magnum (fast and yellow) with a tuned Magnum 46 but if you are then you may be surprised to hear that my Phantom could quite easily give a Magnum a run for its money. (I should know, I've got a Magnum as well!!! (Piccys of that one soon)).

My Phantom is not actually modelled on a US Phantom (do the big red circles give it away?) nor is it a McDonnell Douglas Phantom. It is actually based on a F-4 Phantom codenamed KAI built in Japan under license by Mitsubishi. It was flown as part of the Japan Air Self Defense Force (JASDF, since re-equipped with F-15 Strike Eagles) for a few years. The colour scheme may not look scale but I assure it is pretty close to a scale scheme (it is only a small plane after all). One particualr unit of the JASDF equipped with the KAI celebrated their 10th anniversary by painting one of their aircraft in this special livery. As the models' fuselage is made of moulded white ABS, I was looking for a scheme with a white fuz and that looked different, so here it is. Hope you like it.