Hey Ray, welcome aboard. Skinning isn't really simple, but not so hard once you get the hang of it. BUT there are some aircraft that are more involved than others, the F-4 Phantom being one of those. The simplist way I found was to find a simple aircraft with easy mapping like the F-31A (http://combatace.com/files/file/11260-f-31a-or-x-31a-skin/) and start from there. In the beginning, I use a very simple paint program (Diego showed me the error of my way and now I use Photoshop) to just draw the panel lines. Then I would add the skin in whatever form I thought was correct. You have to experiment ALOT. I am pretty sure there are videos somewhere in this site to get you started.
Good Luck, Pete