Among the more obvious modifications to the F-4Js flown by the Blue Angels, there were some necessary for operation into civil airports world wide. These included the addition of the anti-lock braking system (standard on USAF F-4s, not on Navy ones), a gaseous-oxygen system (not all the venues would have the capability to fill the liquid-oxygen system), a "special" drag chute*, and additional radios (VHF nav/com and ADF for example).
* Rarely seen but then unforgettable
Thanks to Peter Greengrass' Google-fu
The most obvious of these modifications from a modeling standpoint was an antenna array in the rear canopy. I'm still in need of its exact description and function but I'm pretty sure that it was associated with low frequency direction finding. Beginning in the 1920s, a pilot could determine where a known radio station was relative to his airplane with a direction-finding radio and display; that allowed him or her to navigate to a destination and make an approach for landing on the darkest night or in low visibility conditions (since needle was just as happy to point the way to the lightning in a thunderstorm as a radio station it also had some usefulness for avoiding one that predated radar).
There appears to be more than one antenna mounted in the rear canopy by means of a large translucent shield attached to two grey fittings on each side of the canopy:
Note the embedded wiring in the shield and the rectangular antenna located at its aft end. It's not obvious in the picture above but there are large openings in the shield on its top and on each side:
The color of the rectangular antenna varies in different photographs from a dull fiberglass appearance to reddish.
A view from each side to size the shield in lieu of a drawing :
Note that photographs are once again not to be relied on for determination of actual color (for my summary of the Blue Angels color scheme over the years, see https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2011/04/blue-angel-blue-and-gold-draft.html
For more on the configuration of F-4Js flown by the Blue Angels, see https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-short-tragic-operation-of-f-4.html
Thanks to Peter Greengrass for providing fairly high resolution pictures that could be cropped to show this feature.
My understanding is that the Thunderbird's F-4Es had a similar if not identical antenna farm in their rear canopies. Photos of it or better photos/illustrations of the Blue Angel's would be appreciated.
