1/48 Hasegawa RAF Phantom FGR.2

by Gareth Phua

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Here are some photographs of my recently completed 1/48 Hasegawa Phantom FGR.2 from RAF 74 Squadron. The kit is rather long in the tooth and there were some fit problems, namely along the intakes as reported by many who have built Hasegawa Phantoms and in my case, the centre canopy structure did not blend in well with the fuselage.

What I did was to add in 2 strips of styrene to further blend the fuselage to the clear part, which was a lot harder than it sounds but I eventually managed it somehow. The decals went on pretty well and colours used were as per kit instructions except for the nose radome, where I custom mixed the colours to get it to match the box photograph.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

The only aftermarket items added were a pair of Quickboost resin seats. Other work included drilling out holes at the back for the Skyflash missiles & masking + spraying the white stripes on the SUU-16 centreline gun pod as I messed up the white stripe decals there.

I totally enjoyed this build despite the challenges and look forward to building the rest of my Hasegawa Phantoms.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article and to Steve Bamford for a superb resource site for us aircraft modellers!

Happy modelling in 2009 everyone!

Gareth Phua

Photos and text © by Gareth Phua