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F15C 1/32 (Tamiya + a few extras)


jer

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l got the Revell one l plan to do with MSIP II upgrades. Wolfpack has a MSIP II upgrade conversion that should be good. As for other upgrades l have to see what is needed and what aircraft had these upgrades

Best of luck hacker with your build, I'll keep an eye out for it.

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First off here's a picture of the drilled holes to the underside of the canopy frame. They're only a representation and probably inaccurate, but they were very fiddly to do and I'm happy with the result.

16047110887_4fa2ab0563_z.jpg

Not a huge amount of forward progress mainly due to me getting the fit of the cockpit correct. Having achieved a better fit I can progress now with painting the pit.

First off I removed the forward screw thingy that sits on top of the front wheel well to allow the pit to move. I'll have to glue the pit to the wheel well itself.

In doing this the canopy frame sits on top of the cross panel......

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In sliding the pit back I had to remove about 3mm of the step on the side panel to marry up with the fuselage.

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If the centre bulkhead and cross member are slightly behind the panel line then you'll know the canopy frame will sit on the cross member.

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However in moving the pit backwards the front coaming has a gap appear. This I'll fill up later on in the build.

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Now with the pit moved back the gap is pretty well much gone, I'll tidy that area up when the front fuselage is attached to the main body of the plane.

16070894659_190752cff8_z.jpg

Thanks for looking......

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Don't know if you had an answer to your Bay 5 question, but if it was an airframe prior to 79-0081, it would be bluey-green. It's very unlikely it would have been repainted.

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Don't know if you had an answer to your Bay 5 question, but if it was an airframe prior to 79-0081, it would be bluey-green. It's very unlikely it would have been repainted.

Cheers brokenedge for the feedback. As I'm depicting 790076 in 2011 I'm interested to know why you think it's very unlikely the bay would not have been resprayed.

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I'm going on the word of an F-15 crew chief of 20 years experience maintaining every model of F-15 who said he never came across a resprayed early Eagle. He said it was therefore very unlikely.

79-0081 is the dividing line but it is a myth that the earlier C and A models had their Bay 5's repainted, I have yet to see any proof of this happening in my 20 years as a Crew Chief, Enigine, Hydraulics, Crash Recovery on the F-15A, B, C, D, E, I, J, and S model. It would just be too much work to remove or mask all the lines, wire bundles, relay panels and C/B panels, think of the ops checks on every piece of equipment and man power needed on a jet that needs to be flyable even when it was a Cann Bird..

That isn't conclusive, I admit, but it suggests that it was indeed unlikely!

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I like how the cockpit is progressing. Also the drilled holes in the canopy frame look really good as well.

Cheers,

Tom.

Cheers Tom

Edited:- Forgot to ask how's your Tornado going?

Edited by jer
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Cheers Tom

Edited:- Forgot to ask how's your Tornado going?

Slowly. I have been filling and scribing and repeating. The main problem area has been the underside of the wings where the plastic meets the flightpath flaps assembly. Nearly there with it, so I should have some pictures soon.

Cheers,

Tom.

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Tonight I have added thin piece of plastic sheet to the inside edges of the canopy and drilled multiple holes. I have added a lever for which I presume is the locking mechanism (saw it in a reference photo) but if anyone could confirm I would be interested.

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From a screen shot of a YouTube video I managed to get a good idea of what the canopy catch looked like. So I trimmed the two pronged kit piece down a fair chunk and drill a small hole and inserted a cut sewing pin through it.

With piece of sprue I drilled a hole to represent the piece the spike thing ( sorry for the lack of technical knowledge) from the bay 5 floor goes into. Added some PE and spare sprue.

As mentioned before I couldn't find any great reference so this is a representation more than anything.

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Cheers for looking....

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Tonight I have included thanks to Jakes advice the JHMCS sensor. Built with bits and bobs found around my desk, various attempts disappeared into the carpet but in the end I'm fairly pleased with my representation.

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Also added the canopy locking hooks. Think the rear ones are a bit too far back so if I remember I'll move them.

16272415021_a9f7117780_z.jpg

Edited by jer
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Finally the weekend !! Too bushed to do much tonight, been a long week at work. Though I'll have to start painting the pit this weekend as I'm not moving very fast with this build and I have a massive amount to do!

Finally received my micro mesh polishing liquid today so all I've done tonight is spent an hour re-sanding the canopy to remove the final traces of the seam with 4000 though to 12000 grit pads then gave it the liquid buff.

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Thanks for looking I'll update again soon....

Jer

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great!can you tell us more about that "liquid"?thanksRomain

Hi Romain, I have used polishing sticks for years (2000 & 10000 grit) and normally get good results.

On this BIG canopy I was struggling to get a good finish, probably me not getting it right, or it was the fact there was a lot of plastic!

I kept finding the plastic piece in between the two different grades touched the canopy and marked it when polishing in side the canopy as it's concave shape makes it difficult.

I have small pieces I have cut off the sticks to work in more confined areas before but they were tired and needed replacing and I didn't want to cut up my last one.

So I looked on the web and have seen before the micro mesh polishing kits which are flexible foam pads and no plastic divider. It also comes with a bottle of liquid abrasive as the final gloss polish. The kit is more expensive than my usual sticks (what modelling tool isn't) but I thought I'd invest in a set, especially as you get 1500,1800,2400,3200,3600,4000,6000,8000&12000 grades.

I used 4000 - 12000 on the canopy (as I'd already worked on it) and got a slightly better finish and when I used the liquid abrasive, my first impression was its a bit of a clearer finish, but you're suppose to repeat, so I did it two more times and achieved a finish clear and shiny.

To me in the flesh it looks very clear and glossy like when you dipped in Klear, so might not do that this time as the finish is comparable.

Got the kit from Little Cars (they're on here) but you can get the liquid on its own from them too.

http://modellingtools.co.uk/micro-gloss-1oz-6805-p.asp

Sorry for waffling on........

Jer

(Also Romain, you need to get on an finish the B1 and stop distracting yourself on other peoples threads, I need to see the finished result!!)

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Started to paint finally!

Having black primed the PE I then masked off the areas that need to stay black.

There are four or five other bits of PE that are the facia rims for some of the instruments. So hoping they're sit on sweetly and tidy things up.

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Airbrushed on FS 36231 dark gull grey and then when dried removed the tape. Not too bad an effort....

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Then with a cocktail stick dipped in Matt black I popped it through each hole hoping it'll leave some black paint to tidy the instruments faces up.

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Next I need to apply the other PE to the IP.........

Edited by jer
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