This iconic aircraft was, and is, absolutely my all-time favorite military jet. The RAF version I am building here is the FGR.2 as seen operating from RAF airbase Wildenrath in the former West Germany belonging to No.92 Squadron, who were co-located with No.19 Squadron and flew the Phantom from 1977 till 1991. I added aftermarket sets, in the shape of resin seats, an etched cockpit upgrade, and AIM9D Sidewinders from Eduard, and as the kit does not have visible jet engine inlets, I decided to install FOD covers from AMS resin. I always use metal pitot tubes from Model Master, so one of these was also added. To display my model attractively, special RAF remove-before-flight tags were also employed. Since this is an original Hasegawa re-boxing, I was quite sure I would not run into any issues building the kit. First, I started in the cockpit, and this was built straight from the box with the addition of the aforementioned Eduard etch. I then used Gunze H335 Medium Sea Grey as the base color for the cockpit. Since the vertical tailplane has rivets that are not provided on the kit, I used my favorite Rosie the Riveter single wheel 0.75mm tool for this. For the rest of the airframe, all seams and rivets are nice sharp, and beautifully detailed. The detailing on both fuselage parts and the undersides was excellent, and everything went together neatly with no visible seam lines. The inlets, on the other hand, did not close properly, so I had to fill and sand a bit here and then rescribed any lost panel lines and rivets. I then set about preparing everything that was to hang underneath my Phantom. As the UK’s F-4s didn’t have an internal gun they carried an SUU-23A 20mm gun pod under the fuselage. This version also had four AIM-7 Sparrows and provision for four AIM-9D Sidewinders and two external fuel tanks. For the Head-Up Display, I used a Hasegawa Polarized Finish sheet as this gives a nice greenish glow. With construction complete, it was time to add some paint. I began with a coat of Alclad Black Primer and Microfiller, which gave a perfect finish for the camouflage pattern to follow. To begin, I pre-shaded the panel lines in white, and once dry I applied Gunze H332 Light Aircraft Grey to the undersides. Once dry I masked this off ready for the upper surface colors. First, I airbrushed the darkest of the two camouflage colors, Gunze H330 Dark Green, and for the second shade of the RAF scheme, I used Gunze H331 Dark Sea Grey. To enhance the variety of color tones, I did some post-shading with slightly lighter shades of green and grey. To seal in the colors I added a coat of Alclad Aqua Gloss. The biggest challenge when painting a Phantom is to finish the exhaust part with a wide palette of metallic colors. So, here I used a variety of Alclad shades. For the base I used Alclad-115 Stainless Steel on a super smooth surface, pre-treated with Alclad-305 Gloss Black. To create various shadow effects on the Alclad metals, I sprayed with Gunze H-95 Smoke Gray around the various edges of the panels. To create my version of an RAF Cold War Phantom I used Xtradecal #X48199. These decals were excellent and settled well onto the airframe. I then sealed everything again with a coat of Aqua Gloss. I then added a panel line wash from using A.MIG-1612 Green Brown Panel Line Wash on the green camouflage color and A.MIG-1601 Medium Grey Panel Line Wash on the other grey areas. On the underside of the fuselage, I subtly applied oil leaks and dirt using Black and Raw Umber Abteilung 502 oil paints. Once all was dry, I added a final layer of 50% Hataka Satin and 50% Hataka Matt to seal everything in. I was very happy with the finished look, which I think accurately depicted the real colors of the aircraft along with the metallic areas and the right amount of weathering. I decided to show my model in the online contest run by the Dutch ESM (Euro Scale Modelling) in 2020, and I was lucky enough to win silver in my category