Work commenced a few days ago on the Phantom.
Starting, with of course, the cockpit and nose section. I assembled most of the components and sprayed them cockpit grey.
The ejection seats come with a basic seat and two halves for the seat surround. A nice touch is Hasegawa provides pull handles for the top of the seat and has moulded nice seat handles on the side. I obtained colour and parts references from this site
http://www.ejectionsite.com/f4seat.htm. Recommend it for all of your Phantom builds, there are differences between the various versions. I glued a section of styrene to the tops of the seat to provide a better look to the top, and also to cover the horrible seam the two halves leave.
The seats were painted accordingly, and I added some crude straps furnished from metal foil and painted. Not precise or a true replica, but under the closed canopy they will at least offer something.
The cockpit was glossed and
decals applied. I quite like these
decals, they were easy to apply.
The next stage was to build up the tub and nose section and insert the seats.