Testors 1/48 Phantom conversion ideas?

[Evil Eye]

Today I was talking to a friend of mine at the museum I work at, who is really into scale models. I mentioned my undying love of McDonnell-Douglas' F-4 Phantom II, and as luck would have it, he had a 1/48 Phantom (F or G variant) in his stash that he was looking to get rid of in an effort to reduce his backlog. He donated it to me, warning that it wasn't a particularly good kit, but I didn't mind as even if it was bad I could find a use for it.

 

Unfortunately, the kit is a Testors model.

 

Now I don't mean to sound ungrateful in the slightest, as a free Phantom is an awesome thing to get and one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth so to speak. But ye gods, this thing is terrible! Very basic detail, raised panel lines for everything, thinner parts bent and warped, and oh god the flash is appalling.

 

Now if this were an obscure aircraft with no other kits available I'd be tempted to try my best to make it look presentable, but this is the Phantom we're talking about. There's plenty of really good kits out there of the old Spook, and when I build a 1/48 F-4 I want it to be a really good one.

 

However, in spite of its many, many, many shortcomings, I may have a use for this thing yet. I'm considering heavily converting the thing into a really big Chaos bomber of some description- it's roughly the right size to go with the rather loose scale of 40K. Before I can get chopping though, I need to plan out what I'm actually going to do with it and how I'm going to go about it.

 

Firstly, whilst it's going to be a Chaos thing, the question is whether to go with my Nurgle or Slaanesh forces. I'm leaning towards Nurgle as the quality of the kit is so horrendous that it'd be much easier to convert into a rusty, corroded harbinger of decay than a sleek, masterfully-crafted engine of the Dark Prince. However, I can't lie, from a thematic point of view either of the two would be good- a biotoxin bomber for Nurgle or a sort of sonic ground attack jet for Slaanesh.

 

The second is what it might count as (if anything). Obviously I won't be able to use it in a GW store, but it would be cool to have rules for it. Should I convert it to proxy as a Hell Talon, Marauder, Fire Raptor or whatever, or should I write homebrew rules? I'm not sure how big it is in comparison to any of those, but it IS pretty big.

 

The third and possibly most important question, however, is how to make sure it doesn't just look like a Phantom kit with some spikes on it. Obviously it's OK if its origins are recognizable with close inspection, but I wouldn't want the thing to look overly lazy. I'm not the greatest styrene scratchbuilder, but I am quite creative with usage of parts and putty.

 

Anyway, your advice would be much appreciated.

[Exilyth]

If https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II is the plane you're speaking off, you may be able to pass it off as a counts as renegade militia lightning (strike) fighter. Larger engine intakes, maybe turn around the wings, if the back fin is 2 parts maybe use each of the two halves + plastic sheet to make 2 back fins. And ofc. some 40k weapons.

 

The lightning has lascannons and an autocannon, so is more of a conventional fighter, but the lighning strike variant trades the autocannon for hellfire missiles or bombs. It would also be a good fit for the scale - if I guesstimate the size of the 1/48 kit right.

 

 

 

Most of the chaos flyers (e.g. hell talon/hell blade) seem to have split wings longer than the cockpit & fuselage. Recreating that look would be possible using plastic sheet, but probably harder to pull off.