Seeking: Short "turkey feathers" from Revell 1/32 Phantom F-4

[MrRobot]

1/32 Phantom kits come with one of two types of "turkey feathers" (the ring of exhaust cone petals): short or long. Some X-wings used the long variant, but I'm doing Red 2 and therefore need the short variant. 

Here's what the long ones look like:

   

Here's the short ones:

   

[Mensaboy]

1/32 Phantom kits come with one of two types of "turkey feathers" (the ring of exhaust cone petals): short or long. Some X-wings used the long variant, but I'm doing Red 2 and therefore need the short variant. 

Here's what the long ones look like:



Here's the short ones:

i may be losing my mind here, but i thought that was just the same part cut shorter

[MrRobot]

1/32 Phantom kits come with one of two types of "turkey feathers" (the ring of exhaust cone petals): short or long. Some X-wings used the long variant, but I'm doing Red 2 and therefore need the short variant. 

Here's what the long ones look like:



Here's the short ones:

i may be losing my mind here, but i thought that was just the same part cut shorter

It's possible that they sometimes just cut down longer ones to get a match. However, there were definitely two different variants of Revell's tool and some kits have long and some have short. Curiously, I have only seen the short cones in the F-4J. I did some quick-and-dirty numbers from Worthpoint records and it's about 50% of F-4J kits (in any boxing). I've never seen them in an F-4E. So, short and long variants are out there and were certainly available to the ILMers in 1976.

[MrRobot]

As it happens, I just bought a salvage F-4J kit off eBay with the short turkey feathers.

   

I also need the rest of the engine, so this was a bonus. They're all pretty rough looking and will need some further paint stripping. And I hope it won't be too tricky to de-bond the engine halves (although we are forecasting some pretty aggressive chopping anyway!). 

So I'm not totally out of the market for short turkey feathers (just in case this arrives and is not as recoverable as I had hoped!). If they ARE good enough to use, then I'll make castings available for anyone who needs/wants them.

[Mensaboy]

As it happens, I just bought a salvage F-4J kit off eBay with the short turkey feathers.



I also need the rest of the engine, so this was a bonus. They're all pretty rough looking and will need some further paint stripping. And I hope it won't be too tricky to de-bond the engine halves (although we are forecasting some pretty aggressive chopping anyway!). 

So I'm not totally out of the market for short turkey feathers (just in case this arrives and is not as recoverable as I had hoped!). If they ARE good enough to use, then I'll make castings available for anyone who needs/wants them.

i have looked over the red2 photos for a couple hours now, and for the most part i think they have flaps with straight edges more like the longer kit part cut short, and the shorter kit part has curved sides on the flaps which doesnt match the ss model - that being said i am not completely convinced yet

do you think the shorter engines are available in the white box version of the F4J? (i dont understand what worthpoint is or how that is useful lol)

[MrRobot]

As it happens, I just bought a salvage F-4J kit off eBay with the short turkey feathers.



I also need the rest of the engine, so this was a bonus. They're all pretty rough looking and will need some further paint stripping. And I hope it won't be too tricky to de-bond the engine halves (although we are forecasting some pretty aggressive chopping anyway!). 

So I'm not totally out of the market for short turkey feathers (just in case this arrives and is not as recoverable as I had hoped!). If they ARE good enough to use, then I'll make castings available for anyone who needs/wants them.

i have looked over the red2 photos for a couple hours now, and for the most part i think they have flaps with straight edges more like the longer kit part cut short, and the shorter kit part has curved sides on the flaps which doesnt match the ss model - that being said i am not completely convinced yet

do you think the shorter engines are available in the white box version of the F4J? (i dont understand what worthpoint is or how that is useful lol)

I think you might be very right about that. Good eye! I'll take a good close look when I get the parts in-hand.

Worthpoint is a website that archives eBay and other online auction adverts. It's mostly used by people trying to get valuations for their items (you have to pay for that, which I don't). However, it can be very useful for tracking down images/details about kits, especially when there aren't a lot of live adverts on eBay or scans on our favourite sites. 

So, what I did was a search on Worthpoint for Revell 1/32 Phantom F-4 and checked all the adverts that had both high-resolution images and where you could reliably see the exhaust nozzles. From what I could tell, only F-4Js ever had them. Those are the "white box" kits, parts shot in grey plastic. The F-4E (the orange/brown box kit) never seems to have them.