1/72 Hasegawa F-15C & E Gulf War Eagles

[Phantome]

A labor of love that took a while to finish due to numerous mishaps (including have to completely re-paint the C). Here be two lovely Hasegawa Eagles in The One True Scale™.

 

No need to go over the qualities of the Hase F-15 series. Best Eagles on the market despite the molds being nearly 30 years old! It is a testament to the quality of the originals that they are still better than anything built since. The F-15C is from the original 80s boxing while the Strike Eagle is from the newer "updated" set which despite being quite pricey (£25 on eBay from a Japanese seller) is a significant improvement over the highly inaccurate original E version. The new CFTs are beautifully molded, as are the targeting pods which are taken directly from one of their weapons sets. Everything fits like a glove. If you ask me, it is well worth the price and only option for an accurate E in this scale. My only gripe with the kits is that the engine exhausts are a pain to build and that there's hardly any rivets (except in the Strike Eagle CFTs).

 

Some info on the two builds:

 

F-15C

This is Cpt. Cesar "Rico" Rodriguez from the legendary Gorillas (58th Fighter Sq), who shot down 2 Iraqi jets during the war and nearly a decade later added another to his tally in Kosovo. The markings were taken from an old Microscale set and the stencils from Two Bobs. Gunze paints were used in the original ghost gray camo and note that this aircraft still featured the old style hi-viz markings. A keen eye will note that I lost the canopy actuator. If anyone has a spare, please drop me a line as I feel that was the only error in the build. Also have not had the time to arm it with missiles so that'll have to wait (will post updated pics later). Weathering was done with Humbrol dark gray wash with some extra streaking in black and burnt umber below.

 

F-15E

There's a dearth of Gulf War Strike Eagle decals in 1/72 scale so my only shot at this was the Hi-Decal set which is pretty awful: they are thick, prone to silvering and the pilot names are unreadable. Also take a lot of Microsol to settle in and the yellow squadron band on the fins simply did not conform at all so I removed them. Despite having numerous Two Bobs sets in reserve, I stupidly chose to use the kit's decals for the stencils since the Hi Decals were quite thick already. BIG mistake: lots of silvering throughout which was really disappointing. Oh well. I'll build a nicer replacement one day. Aside from that, no major problems. This airframe (87-183) from the 335th Squadron (Rocketeers) has only a few bomb markings so it was logical to assume it was still early in the conflict when Strike Eagles could only carry dumb bombs. So I used the kit supplied Rockeye cluster bombs for a full load. I added at LITENING pod anyway even though this would be inaccurate. I also accidentally painted the Rockeyes olive drab when they probably were white. Because I used the kit decals, the yellow band is also inaccurate since it is just yellow when during the war it had white stripes. Sue me! Painting as done with Tamiya XF-24 which I think is the most accurate representation of FS36118 in acrylic (Gunze is way too light and does not have a bluish tint). Was given a black wash with similar weathering to the C.

 

Quite happy with how they came out so enjoy the pics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 19, 2016 by Phantome

[djos]

Both looks very very nice. Shame that pictures are not better as there plenty of details hardly visible on those photos. For sure those two looks fantastic in real life

Regards

[Phantome]

My camera phone is pretty bad for close ups. Also has a rather annoying reddish tint to them. So that's as good as it gets unfortunately

[Rich G]

Really nice work, it's nice to see an earlier F-15C paint and marking scheme, excellent work on both.

 

Rich

[batcode]

nice looking pair of Eagles

[Mark4700]

Really nice pair of Eagles.