F-4EJ Digital camo

The pit is done bar the seats and it looks very convincing OOB (decals over molded details with some paint).

I am not having a good time trying to line up all the fuselage pieces that mate on panel lines. Possibly my fault for some of the misalignments, but the tolerances are really tight and some pieces are just molded wrong. The whole top of the plane, antiglare panel, cockpit dorsal part and spine have mismolded flat sides which result in breaking up the curves and wider panel lines. Quite a few pieces have some parting lines which just end up throwing everything off, and I find myself spending a lot of time scraping and grinding to try and minimize sanding. 

Some spot priming with the finish colour C124 to try and get those seams around panel lines looking right. Intakes fit rather well after some fiddling, just need to paint the yellow stripe before assembly and overall painting. 

Green and bottomside grey are on. Plastic grittiness showed up nicely through the paint, and I discovered a few sinkmarks along the way, especially this nasty one on the vertical stab. I am definitely priming the next Finemolds F-4 I'll build 😛 

After fixing sinkmarks, I masked and sprayed the yellow bands, the metal tail and the nosecone before touching up the green. Quite a bit of paint lift, I ought to clean plastic better before painting. Still need to fix some of the ghost grey underneath and it's time for the billion decals. 

Well, better check every decal before applying them for the rest of the build. Had to cut this one right on the tail as it was quite shorter than the actual length. DXM decals by Cartograf are behaving well as expected, and the colours look very decently matched. 

Every decal is an adventure, and this one went sideways. Frantic scalpel cuts and copious amounts of decal solution seem to have saved the day.
Overall, the scheme is fairly accurately reproduced by DXM. I should not have bothered painting the yellow bands, the decals are much redder than the RLM yellow I used, and they cover pretty well anyway. Using Tamiya decal adhesive w/ softener and Mark fit super strong with good results so far. 

After a few short sessions to maintain sanity, pixels are 95% done. Just like on the DXM sheet for the F-2A, a few areas are barely accurate, but the general look is decent. Now on to the actualy markings and stencils, will start on the vertical tail to find out whether I need a gloss coat for protection between decal layers. 

70% done with the stencilling. I did apply a layer of GX100 on the pixel decals and sanded it back a bit before applying the rest, maybe I should have sprayed/sanded a couple more coats because the pixels show up under the hinomarus and bigger stencils.

Also, I just managed to reactivate and move the stencil on the yellow band to its correct position after about 6h using water, decal adhesive and careful paintbrush action. Quite a few of the stencil groups need to be cut to be positioned properly according to pictures, as the instructions are quite inaccurate. 

Seats done, canopy glued on, finally ready for the last decals around this area. Exhausts and gear are painted, nearing completion at last. Did the canopy seams with an enamel wash, and I decided not to bother with the extra frames. 

And the last decal is on! Also trying out Anyz chrome decals on the oleos, those are tricky to apply. Now on to varnishing to try and hide those decal areas. 

1 coat of GX100, some sanding and 1 coat of VMS Matt later. While this hid most of the decal demarcations, this also revealed a lot of silvering which I'm in the process of touching up, either with decal solution and a scalpel or by spraying the main green over. 

Awaiting two antennas, some oil work on the tanks, underside and metal areas, and it'll be done! 

Pixel buddies. Phantom is done and will be subject to a photoshoot soon.