Great Wall Hobby F-15B/D Eagle in US & Israeli Service - 1:48

[Mike]

F-15B/D Eagle in US & Israeli Service
1:48 GWH

The F-15 was designed as an Air Superiority fighter by McDonnell Douglas in the late 1960s as the eventual winner of the F-X programme, entering into service at the end of 1974. Since then it has undergone many changes, upgrades and adaptation to additional roles, and gained an envious reputation for ruggedness, as well as dishing out missiles and bombs by the thousand in service with the US Air Force and many foreign operators.

The B and D models are the two-seat variants that are designated as trainers and built between 1972 and 1985, changing from B to D in 1979. A full set of pilot controls is duplicated in the rear seat for the instructor, but the ECM package is not installed, which means that the aircraft can still be used in action, and has indeed been used by the Israelis who fielded Bs during the Lebanon war. As the B was the two-seat variant of the A model, the D is the two-seat version of the C, which incorporates the improvements in capability.

The following E and SE (Silent Eagle) made two seats the standard with the rear-seater taking on the role of weapons officer, the latter utilising fifth generation technologies to leverage the success of the basic airframe into the modern battlefield at a reduced cost over a genuine fifth generation fighter like the F-22 or Pak-Fa.

The Kit
A surprise release from Great Wall Hobby that has been available from overseas now since the New Year. It has now arrived in the UK and is available from our friends at Creative Models, from whence the sample arrived. It's a big box, and well packaged. It had to be, as I managed to sit on the review sample whilst wrangling a box I was sending out to one of the other reviewers. The parts inside were safe however, despite my bulk pressing down on them for an instant. Inside you are initially greeted by a trio of impressive clear vacform containers that each hold four missiles and a few delicate parts for the airframe. Under these are twenty sprues in mid grey styrene plus a large lower fuselage part that has been tooled using slide-moulding to provide detail on all sides. Additionally, there is one clear sprue, a small sheet of Photo-Etch (PE) brass, and four decal sheets of varying sizes. The instruction booklet is A4+ and quite thick, with a short précis of the Eagle on the front, and four pages of colour schemes on the rear. There is also a separate sheet in the bottom of the box covering some last minute amendments to the kit and corrected painting guide information for the US options.

First impressions are always good with GWH kits, and there is some serious detail on each and every sprue. The slide-moulded missiles are pretty impressive, as is the lower fuselage part, and the overall level of detail puts the kit at the top of the heap when it comes to a satisfying out of the box experience. Two ejection seat systems have been included with the kit, as the Israeli airframes sported a pair of Escapac IC-7 seats, while the US aircraft used the ACES II seats. The detail on both sets of seats is excellent, although I would have preferred PE belts rather than the moulded in kind, which seem a little short and skinny. The seats fit into a single part tub after the addition of a pair of three-part seat rails to the rear of each pilot's tub. The detail on the side consoles is excellent, and has plenty of relief that will respond well to sympathetic painting. The nose gear bay is made up from separate sides to add extra detail, and fits to the underside of the cockpit on two pegs for secure location. The Rear instrument panel is simplified when compared to the pilot's panel, but is provided with a full set of instrument decals to detail it up. For the front panel, there is a choice of parts for Israeli or American, and again they are both provided with decals. The instrument detail moulded into the front panel is superb (again), and should look impressive once painted and decaled. The rear panel's coaming is added before the cockpit side walls are installed, completing the cocoon for the absent pilots. Straight away this is trapped between the halves of the nose along with the bulkhead for the radar, and the front coaming is added to the top, with a PE and acetate film HUD glass to finish it off. I'd either add the windscreen or leave the HUD off until later in the build though, as there is still a lot to do, and it may get damaged during handling. The radar is a two-part assembly that plugs into a socket on the bulkhead, and the radome can be displayed open or closed as you wish. To close it up, just trim the hinge-points off the inside of the radome, and glue it in place. Either side of the nose is the radar compartment, with two large opening panels, and GWH have decided to portray this in some detail. The various boxes and panels are moulded into the nose halves, and it is busy enough to show off with some sympathetic painting, and maybe the odd wire added here and there. The two doors (one each side of the nose) are supplied separately, and open upwards with a ram supporting their weight when open. They are also well detailed with strengthening rib-work, but this is likely to be spoiled due to the six ejector pin marks dotted around this relatively small part. The delicate raised internal structure and fine raised rivets will likely be lost in the process, which is a shame. If you're closing up the bays to preserve the sleek lines of the Eagle's nose, it's a non-issue of course.

A pair of full-depth intakes are supplied with the kit, and it might be an idea to paint them before gluing each half together, as getting paint down the narrow trunking after the event will be tricky. If you're careful with alignment of the parts before the glue sets, you should have little clean-up, but ready your skinny sanders and wet'n'dry on a coffee stirrer just in case. Once complete they install in the lower fuselage, with a chunky socket that later accepts the nose section sat between them on large pins. Three holes need to be opened up along the centreline, which is best done before you have installed the intakes. Due to the complexity of the underside of the F-15, the "sills" at the side of each engine are separate parts, with the underside of the wing built-in, and installed on a large mating surface with four locating pins to get them aligned correctly. Here you need to drill out four more holes for the wing pylons before you add the upper wing. A pair of PE slime-lights on the side of the fuselage are added, with a scrap diagram detailing their location with measurements from convenient points and panel lines. The slide-moulding of the lower fuselage has resulted in two fine seams running along the length of it, and these seams would be best dealt with early in the build, possibly before you even start construction, if you remember.

The upper fuselage includes the wing tops, as well as the tips, which have been moulded as one to get the requisite thickness to the part. The flaps and ailerons are separate parts and are glued into the upper wing at your chosen position if you plan on modelling a more candid position of an aircraft after landing. As usual, check your references to ensure you're not posing them in an unrealistic position, as you'll get imaginary internet points deducted by those that know! The barrel to the Vulcan cannon is inserted in the shoulder of the wing root, and you have a choice of open or closed by-pass air-spill ducts on the top of intake, which are supplied as separate drop-in parts. The main intakes on the Eagle change their angle of incidence to present more or less of the opening to the airflow, and two sets of intakes are included to allow you to model them fully raised or dropped, as is sometimes seen when parked up, taxying or during flight. In fact, a quick check of some references seems to indicate they're dropped a lot more often than you would think. The engine "humps" on the rear fuselage deck are often a source of problems with F-15 kits, and in this scale both the Academy and Hasegawa kits have been criticised for the shape. Having checked over a fair number of pictures, the difference in light and shadow, foreshortening of the shapes at an angle, and the fact that the tail fins block a good side view, it's more of a gut feeling or impression of whether they're right or wrong. For my part, I feel that the length and height is about right, but looking from above, I suspect that the taper is slightly more oval than the real thing. Watching some video yesterday, I was paying careful attention to the Strike Eagles on screen, and at times from a forward aspect, the humps looked spot-on, which is confusing. This view could change once the plastic is painted though, so I'm going to leave my final decision until I've built it (which could be soon, you never know).

A pair of Pratt & Whitney F100 engines are provided in their entirety with the kit, and I'm fast running out of superlatives for the moulding quality of the parts. The engines are each made from two halves, with only two additional parts added to the outside, a fan that sits just within the tube, and a choice of stator blades with central bullet depending on whether you are using the 100 or 220 variant of the engine. The detail of the engine halves is excellent, and there is plenty of tubing moulded in to give the impression of a workable engine. Add a little extra to it and you could pose one on a trolley in front of the finished model. At the rear of the engine is an exhaust trunk with the aft fan in styrene and afterburner ring in PE. Four lugs on the trailing edge of the exhaust trunking receive each of the four exhaust petal parts, which link up and slip inside a delicate ring with fine actuator linkages moulded in. These are protected on the sprue by a surrounding ring of turrets, as they are otherwise fine enough to be crushed very easily, and quite an impressive moulding.

Before installing the engines, the airframe is brought together in one step, starting with the upper fuselage being mated to the lower fuselage, then the nose being slipped into the socket that was installed in the front of the fuselage earlier. The fairing behind the cockpit slots in behind the nose assembly on four pegs, again ensuring good alignment. Following this, the intakes (dropped or straight) are added along with the windscreen, which is thin and clear as you'd expect. The engines simply slot inside their apertures in the rear of the fuselage, and I suppose there's nothing to stop you from leaving one loose if you wanted to show it off?

With the airframe ostensively complete, the small and easily damaged parts are added throughout, such as the canopy with separate frames and PE rear bulkhead, which has a pair of actuating rams if you want to pose the canopy in the opened position. The airbrake that nestles behind the cockpit is also able to be posed open or closed, with the addition of another actuating ram for open, and the removal of the tips of the hinges for closed. The twin tail fins have separate rudders, and are topped by an aerodynamic sensor fairing, which is added from a separate part. The US airframes have a larger "cigar tube" on the starboard fin tip, so watch you don't confuse yourself here. The elevators are of the all-moving type, and are single parts that slot into a circular hole in the sides of the fuselage, with the tips of the tail sponsons devoid of ECM fit and capped with two small tapering parts that have slide-moulded hollow centres to save them from sink marks due to thick plastic.

Happily for this modeller at least, the landing gear is added after main construction is complete, and its fit isn't compromised as a result. The nose gear leg is virtually complete as a one piece moulding with minimal seam-lines marring the finish, two landing lights added from the clear sprue, and of course the wheel, which is made up from separate halves. There's a Good Year logo moulded into the tyre, and hub detail is good, with a couple of red stencils added after painting for a little extra interest. The main gear legs have a one-piece main strut with a slight sinking of the styrene at the lower extremity, so you can decide whether to fill this based on whether you think it will be seen. A retraction jack and separate oleo scissor-link is added, and then the two part wheel on the axle. Detail is good here with defined tread on the wheels, but someone has reversed the BF Goodrich logos on parts J11 & J14, which might not notice if you don't paint them white, but is nonetheless incorrect. The hub and brake detail is some compensation, as is the subtle flattening of the bottom of the tyre to simulate the aircraft's weight, but once seen the reversed logo can't be unseen. All the bay doors have detail on their inner faces that will show up well under painting, but the aft nose gear door has a pair of ejector pin marks down the centre that will need work before completion. You will probably lose some of those nice raised rivets on the surface, so take a quick picture and replace them with Archer 3D rivet decals once you're done. The bay doors can be closed for an in-flight model if you prefer, which just needs the hinges cutting flush to achieve.

Weapons & Fuel Tanks
The F-15 is capable of carrying a sizeable war-load, and this is reflected in the quantity included in the box. The aforementioned slide-moulded missiles are each single parts with all four fins moulded in fore and aft, so can just have their seams cleaned up and you can then paint them. No fiddly fins to add, only to find you didn't line them up quite right later. There is also plenty of additional tankage included in the shape of three additional fuel tanks on pylons suitable for their location, with separate sway-braces. The full complement of weapons is as follows:

3 x fuel tanks
4 x Python 3 missiles with adaptor rails for side-mounting on the wing pylons
4 x Python 4 missiles with adaptor rails for side-mounting on the wing pylons
4 x AIM-7 Sparrow missiles with shackles to mount them on the belly racks

Detail is good on the drop-tanks, which have raised weld seams on their surfaces, and the missiles are well moulded too. Their sprue gates are extremely fine, which caused one Python 4 to break free of its sprue during extraction from the plastic packaging, with no damage to the part. As well as the four seam lines to remove (slide moulding detail generates extra seam lines, sorry), each of the Pythons have three small ejector pin marks on one side, which are probably best hidden by placing them against their ejector rack. The Sparrows have only two each, and again they can be placed against the fuselage if you either don't want to remove the marks, or don't make a good job of their disposal. Each weapon, tank and pylon has a set of decals applied to it, which should improve the look of the build noticeably. As you'll probably notice, the Python missiles aren't standard US fit, but are instead indigenous to Israel, and are produced by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to counter enemy air assets. The Python 3 was used extensively during the Lebanon War, and was improved to work with Helmet Mounted Guidance systems, as the Python 4, with limited fire-and-forget capabilities.

A tail fairing between the engines, arrestor hook and housing, plus a few small aerials in the nose area, and that's construction completed.

Markings
Two sets of markings each are provided for Israeli and American aircraft, which seems fair. They are printed in China, which IIRC is a departure from their usual Cartograf sheets, but apart from a few corners that could have been cut off the carrier film here and there, there is very little to pick fault with, apart from a slight mis-registration of a muddy blue colour used on the largest sheet on a couple of decals, most noticeably the refuelling probe guide and a pair of yellow decals that are used on the wing tips. Registration is otherwise good, as is sharpness and colour density, and for sheer number of decals you certainly get your money's worth. There are lots. The Eagle is bespeckled with stencils over what seems like every panel, and it takes four busy pages of the instruction booklet to document them. You could argue that more pages are needed, as it gets a bit crazy on the topside, with arrows everywhere. Do not attempt to stencil your Eagle whilst hung over. It will not end well.

Your markings options are as follows:

• F-15B (73-0113) No.113 Knights of the Twin Tail Squadron, 2006 – Grey FS36375 with FS36320 upper disruptive pattern. Eagle motif on outer fin & black band with eagle head on inner fins.
• F-15B (76-1524) No.704 Knights of the Twin Tail Squadron, 1982 – Grey FS36375 with FS36320 upper disruptive pattern. Eagle motif on outer fin & black band with eagle head on inner fins.
• F-15D (83-0046) 67th Line Jet 2009 - Grey FS36375 with FS36320 upper disruptive pattern.
• F-15D (79-0011) 65th Aggressor Squadron Nellis AFB - Grey FS36375 with FS36320 upper disruptive pattern. Striking eagle on outer fins with Oregon in the tip.
  

The last option has since been retired to AMARC in June of 2010 for storage or reclamation of parts. Both US options have revisions in the addendum sheet, which covers the serial. for the last option, and something I haven't yet spotted for the other. The same holds true for the US markings on the top and bottom sides, with the alterations escaping my notice so far. Where's Wally/Waldo?

Conclusion
Aside from a few occasional minor gripes, this is a first rate kit that just cries out to be built. There is detail almost everywhere that will be seen, and on the engines and radar, that probably won't, which is a shame. A few spare exhaust parts would have allowed the modeller to set aside a completed engine for display by their model, to show off the detail that is otherwise lost to the dark.

There is little that could be improved using styrene alone, and I'm hoping that fit measures up to expectations. Having built a few GWH kits already, they have been pleasant experiences overall, with good fit throughout. There are certainly a lot of F-15 aficionados waiting to build one or more of these kits, and for those folks, I'm sure the aftermarket companies will be rushing to bring the parts to super-detail your Eagle.

I understand from internet sources that production on this issue has been stopped to concentrate on new boxings, so if you take that on face value, it may be wise to pick one up sooner rather than later.

Watch for a build review soon.

Review sample courtesy of

[Caution Wake Turbulence]

Hi Mike,

according to ARC, GWH are re-tooling a number of parts for this kit, including parts of the forward fuselage and the engine humps. These parts should be available 'free' to those with this kit at some point via retailers/distributors.

(http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=273138)

Mind you, it looks like a nice kit out of the box already.

Cheers,

Andrew

Edited March 8, 2014 by Caution Wake Turbulence

[Scarlet]

•F-15D (79-0011) 65th Aggressor Squadron Nellis AFB - Grey FS36375 with FS36320 upper disruptive pattern. Striking eagle on outer fins with Oregon in the tip.

Looks more like: - F-15D, 79-0011, 173 FW/Oregon ANG to me?

[Caution Wake Turbulence]

I received the set of retooled parts yesterday, courtesy of Creative Models. Happy to post some pictures if anyone's interested.

Cheers,

Andrew

[GregW]

I received the set of retooled parts yesterday, courtesy of Creative Models. Happy to post some pictures if anyone's interested.

Cheers,

Andrew

Yes please.

Thanks

Greg

[Caution Wake Turbulence]

Ok, give me a little while to clear some space and set things up....

Andrew

[Caution Wake Turbulence]

Ok, here's an overview of what you get. If you want any close-ups or specific comparisons (old v. new) let me know.

Untitled by Caution Wake Turbulence, on Flickr

Untitled by Caution Wake Turbulence, on Flickr

Untitled by Caution Wake Turbulence, on Flickr

Untitled by Caution Wake Turbulence, on Flickr

Untitled by Caution Wake Turbulence, on Flickr

Cheers,

Andrew

[GregW]

Thanks Andrew.

That's quite an impressive number of parts. It certainly looks as if GWH have taken at least some of the criticism of the original kit on board. Personally I would have like to see them include the later LAU-128 missile rails but you can't have everything and they are available in resin.

My parts are on the way from the Far East so will hopefully arriving in the next week or two.

Thanks again for the pictures.

Regards

Greg

Edited May 10, 2014 by GregW

[GregW]

Been looking over the replacement parts which arrived from Lucky Model earlier in the week, some of the differences are quite subtle. Impressive product commitment from GHW for stepping up to the plate and making the corrections.

Looks more like: - F-15D, 79-0011, 173 FW/Oregon ANG to me?

Looking at the instructions I've just noticed that the Oregon ANG machine is listed in the original compass grey two tone! But I would have thought it and the 67th FS line jet are more likely to be in the later Mod Eagle scheme?

Greg