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Completed for the F-15 Eagle 50th group build. USAF McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle USAF 91-0603 494th 48th FW D-Day Heritage Jet - Lakenheath 2019. This was a very good excuse to add a locally based F-15E to go with a few other East Anglian based fast jets from over the past 60 odd years. I chose this as I never managed to snap a photo of this airframe with the yellow tails, but managed to get the other two. I hope one day someone produces decals for the 493rd F-15C with the blue tails. I don't know if it's true but story goes that each of the three sqaudron jets got the wrong colour tails. If that's not true then I'd like to know why. The 494 is red, 493rd yellow & the 492nd are all well known as to be blue respectively. Academy 1/72 F-15E kit (most recent) version. Really nice & fine surface detail for a 1/72 kit with plenty of pop together style contact joints. The whole kit can't be classed as a push together toy like kit as there's plenty of parts that do need glueing, but the engineering tolerances are such that is doesn't need any filler which is heaven for me. No filling sanding & cleaning up. All the decals went on really well apart from the nose checker band which I sliced up to make sure it extended all the way round the nose. that meant I had to touch up with some red & white paint. Early on in the build I really wanted to pose the canopy up with some human element going on but discovered that anything integral to tha canopy like the central brace & the rear canopy deck are actually moulded into the top of the cockpit which meant I would have had to do some unnecessary carving & chopping to extract the canopy brace from the top of the central coaming between the two seats. I did use two Aires ejection seats & the Aires jet nozzle set for this particular Academy kit which meant a lot of plastic had to be removed to accept the resin nozzle tubes into the rear. Paints used were Ammo Mig & Vallejo Metal Color. Intake blanks were scratch made out of thick sheet plasticard & downscaled the 494th Panthers logo. Just paper stuck onto the red painted blanks with white canopy glue. Extinguisher & the maintenance steps are from the Hasegawa ground crew set. I might still attach the bombs.. just hadn't initially got round to it as the 494th don't normally send their jets up fully loaded. Many thanks for looking! Martin

Had this kit since it came out, just needed a good excuse to get it started & here it is. The only D-Day special that I didn't manage to get a photo of with these markings, got the other two so building this will make up for it. I've been told that 91-0603 with the D-Day stripes & yellow tail was slightly more elusive of the three which only makes me feel slightly better! So - Academy kit - 1/72 F-15E 494th 91-0603 of the 48th FW. Initially I would have liked to build it out of the box, but the engine nozzles look ok but not as refined as I'd like so if anyone could recommend some decent resin nozzles for it would be appreciated. I might even buy some 3d printed cockpit details, not sure yet. Just a small start to it. Removing the seam line on the canopy then a dip to help give it some clarity after a fine buffing. That's it for now. Will be minimum time available this week to go any further with it as I hopefully will try & get some pics at LN on my day off. Also does anybody know if the blue tail F-15C of the 493rd "D-Day Special" has been done in decal form? Would be great if this is out there somewhere. Martin

Hi first build update I have posted on here so here we go...….