I am not a Phantom Phreak. Just because I have built about 4 dozen F-4s, in every scale from 1/32 to 1/700, have stopped in a drugstore parking lot and got out of the car to see one of the last Phantoms land for a Luke air show, and have driven a 150 mile round trip to see the last of Springfield IL’s Rhinos take off, does NOT make me a Phreak. A Phan, yeah, but not a Phreak, OK?

I jumped at the chance to review Master’s F-4 Short Nose set because some of my older built kits need some repair. The pitot and ram air inlet on the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer are thin, fragile, and easily damaged. Also, the ESCI Phantom, while a fine kit, does not include the angle of attack probe on the side of the nose. As a hint, the Revell/Monogram 1/72 F-4 does have one.

The set is for the B, C, D, J, K, M, N and S short-nosed F-4s. These are the ones without the pitot on the nose, but instead it’s on the tail.

The Set

You get three finely done brass parts in a plastic envelope, which is inside another plastic envelope. Good plan – lost parts of this size would be a disaster, not to mention impossible to find. I liked the instruction sheet, it was simple, to the point, and uncluttered.

This is my third Air Master pitot, the other two being simple and easy installations. Third time’s a charm. This one was technically challenging. Drilling a .6mm hole in the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer required some work, as well as use of words the nuns aren’t supposed to know. It was very difficult to get the drill to start, even though I had a spot already there where the broken pitot had been. I wound up having to put a notch in the leading edge to give the drill a flat spot to start in. I am not showing you the other side of that tail, where the drill slipped and put a scratch in the paint. But I got ‘er done.

The AOA probe was far simpler, as the spot where it goes is flat, and the drill just goes about its business with no fuss, no muss.

I prepainted the parts with Testors Model Master enamels to match the aircraft, then attached them with CA. If you do this, you will have NO problem with parts bending or detaching. When I picked up the model to repair the paint on the ram air inlet, I forgot and grabbed the nose. OW!!! That AOA probe is sharp and doesn’t move a micron.

Overall Evaluation

Highly recommended. This set saved my VMFA-333 Phantom. The parts look great, and they’re not going to get broken, bent, or drooped. While it wasn’t easy initially, I now can drill those holes much more confidently.

Thanks to Master for the part and to IPMS/USA for letting me review it. My next trick is to order a few from the LHS. This is the ultimate recommendation. If it’s good enough for a reviewer to pay cash for an item he already has, it must be darned good.