JC's Planes and Projects

Great Planes F-4 Phantom II

This project is currently in a holding pattern due to the quality of some of the supplied parts. The structure is complete and glassed, but it took me forever to get this far. This kit is now out of production and now I know why. It will look awesome when it is done, but I would not recommend this kit unless you have a lot of time on your hands. It also requires a lot of re-engineering for sanity's sake. Would you seal in your front retract behind a glued in hatch? Me neither! But that is what the plans would have you do.

The plane begs for modification at almost every turn. In addition to the front retract access panel, I built a rear radio access hatch in front of the removable tail cone to get at the retract valve, battery, and RX. The manual gives you half of the instructions for mechanical retracts and half for pneumatic but no complete instruction for either. I went with the Spring Air Units and they are cool. I ditched their small air tank and put in a medium Robart unit. The Spring Airs only use air on the retract cycle so they use half as much air as the Robarts! In addition you only have to run half the air lines (up only) and the retract valve is just a switch. I love the performance and simplicity of these units - but all my interactions with Spring Air have not been satisfactory - see P-47 section for details. BTW, the Robart medium air tank will give me close to 20 cycles on these tri-gear retracts at around 60 PSI!

I heard on the street that if you want to fly this plane off grass, you need more than a .60 engine. I upsized to a ST G90. Unfortunately, that plane is designed to hold a 12-oz fuel tank. This is barely enough to prime the ST! Well, the only tank that I could find that would give me extra capacity and still fit was a Graupner 17.5 oz unit from Hobby Lobby. It will poke up into the cockpit a little, so I will need to do some modification there. I have also up-sized the wheels for grass field operation.

12/3/00 - Attempted to complete the model several weeks ago. I had previously attempted to build the ABS radio hatch cover and ended up with an unusable part. GP sent out some new plastic, and after a weekend of struggling with it I ended up with another unusable part! I wrote GP asking for warranty consideration. OK, they would give me my money back IF I took a hacksaw to the plane and sent it back to them! I was unable to get any satisfaction from GP with regard to warranty - so I dropped the subject. When I finish the P-47 I will give the F-4 another look, but it seems that I will have to scratch build a rear hatch cover using a combination of ABS and balsa/ply. This kit is not nearly up to the quality standards of the other Great Planes kits that I have built.