Jump to content

F-15 50th Anniversary STGB Chat


Recommended Posts

10 minutes ago, Johnson said:

Never seen so many in one go, pairs yes. They just kept on arriving. Wonderful.

 

F-15Es?

 

Probably.   It's a bit difficult to tell when they're up in the air.  But if they have pods dangling from the undersurfaces of the intakes, then they are F-15Es.

 

I recommend getting an app for your phone or tablet called Flightradar24.  I use it to find out about everything that flies over my house.   Every civilian aircraft is on it.  About 50% of the military stuff gets shown as well.  If the 48 FW are making a show of force over Romania, they always allow themselves to be tracked.

 

Never seen an F-35 from Marham on it though. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Enzo Matrix said:

Flightradar24

I'll give it a try. I have adsbexchange which probably works in the same way. Didn't register the F-15s at all. As you say, not all mil stuff shows up. It may depend on the transponder (?) they have, and whether it's turned on. Worked for the Wessex that went over a few weeks back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Johnson said:

 As you say, not all mil stuff shows up. It may depend on the transponder (?) they have, and whether it's turned on.

 

I think you are correct.  Sometimes you can see from the track of a military aircraft when they turn their transponders off.   It is interesting watching Typhoons from Coningsby.  They take off and travel relatively sedately over the Lincolnshire coast.  Then they turn north, accelerate strongly and all of a sudden their transponder trace drops out.   I wonder what they are doing...   :lol:   

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

In need of some help, trying to pick the scheme for my repaint,  my decal sheet has this 493FS example with commander stripes but all pictures of that serial show it in standard 493 tail markings nor can I find any pics of another sqn bird with the commander stripes, is this just something Astra made up or did another aircraft have such markings?

edit: another hour wasted on google and I still can't find pics of this scheme so I shall write it off as fictional and pick the other option 

A79C25C6-339D-47CD-A263-B74800F11A02.jpg

Edited by PhantomBigStu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Hi All,

I am building a 48th TFW machine from the Hasegawa kit. I have a load of dumb bombs which came wth the kit as do the 2 pods under the intakes. I believe these are lazer pods for the lazer guided bombs. So the question is ..... would the plane carry the lazer pods with a load of dumb bombs?

Advice appreciated.

 

Thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not necessarily.  I've seen lots of pictures of clean (no loadout) Es still carrying the pods.  I've also seen pics w/o pods, so it's probably totally up to you.  Though that said, they are still used for identifying, targeting, and navigation even when not carrying guided munitions.  I suspect (I'm no expert on the bird) the likelihood of no pods with any type of A/G munitions to be almost non-existent due the additional capabilities they provide outside of laser designation.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, helios16v said:

Not necessarily.  I've seen lots of pictures of clean (no loadout) Es still carrying the pods.  I've also seen pics w/o pods, so it's probably totally up to you.  Though that said, they are still used for identifying, targeting, and navigation even when not carrying guided munitions.  I suspect (I'm no expert on the bird) the likelihood of no pods with any type of A/G munitions to be almost non-existent due the additional capabilities they provide outside of laser designation.

I agree … I think they are almost always on the aircraft from what I can see. I think they're carried even with empty racks for travel to other locations. 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speaking of loadouts, I could use some guidance. I have googled A LOT and not really come up with anything that's just simple and clear. My F-15E in this GB is from the 03 era and I want to have a mixed load of various laser guided bombs. I quite like two things - the mixed load of various different ones, and also those monster big ones (GBU-24). I have really struggled to find any pics other than two of other models (which I already linked in my thread). 

 

Has anyone got a good go-to source? 

 

I wouldn't ask unless I'd already spent hours googling and google imaging. It doesn't help that so many images seem to be of DCS screens!

 

I've got the Hasegawa LGB set so I'm not short on paveways of different sizes, just clueless about what to do with them!

 

Edited by bianfuxia
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Colin W said:

I am building a 48th TFW machine from the Hasegawa kit. I have a load of dumb bombs which came wth the kit as do the 2 pods under the intakes. I believe these are lazer pods for the lazer guided bombs. So the question is ..... would the plane carry the lazer pods with a load of dumb bombs?

Advice appreciated.

 

 

Another thing to consider would be the year of your project.  It would be pretty much unheard of for any NATO aircraft to carry dumb bombs at any time in the last fifteen years.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just realised that the bomb carriers on the conformal tanks in the Hasegawa 1/48 kit are completely wrong. Pictures in the walk round section show single pylons along the length but the kit just has a multi ejection rack fitted to a single point. Some scratch building may be required unless I can source some from another kit. Presumably the GWH kit gets this better,?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Enzo Matrix said:

Another thing to consider would be the year of your project.  It would be pretty much unheard of for any NATO aircraft to carry dumb bombs at any time in the last fifteen years.

A good point Enzo, I'll check the decals when I get chance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi folks,

 

My Desert Storm F-15C will carry Sparrow AIM-7M missiles. But I'm not entirely sure about the colors. @Ol' Scrapiron posted a useful photo in the F-15 reference;

 

F-15A-Eagle-NMoUSAF-2018-05-17-1549.jpg  F-15A 76-0027, NMoUSAF

 

aim-7-sparrow-004.jpg

Looks like an operational F-15 (From Fine Scale Modeler, link copied)

 

The fins look dark grey (not black as given in instructions) and in both pics the missile body certainly seems lighter and slightly bluer than the Light Ghost Grey FS36375 of the F-15A carrying them. Any ideas?

 

And, while I'm asking, do you think the plane would have carried wing and belly tanks on Ops?

 

Cheers,

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, Johnson said:

The fins look dark grey (not black as given in instructions) and in both pics the missile body certainly seems lighter and slightly bluer than the Light Ghost Grey FS36375 of the F-15A carrying them. Any ideas?

 

The wings and fins are probably dull natural metal, similar to the fins on Sidewinders.

 

The missile body is Light Ghost Grey.  However, as the missiles spend a lot of time in conditioned storage they don't get as weathered as the aircraft.  Just choose a Light Ghost Grey paint from a different manufacturer to the paint you used on the aircraft itself, which should give you a bit of contrast. 

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Enzo Matrix said:

Just choose a Light Ghost Grey paint from a different manufacturer to the paint you used on the aircraft itself, which should give you a bit of contrast. 

 

Excellent suggestion Enzo!

 

A quick delve into the paint stash and I have Xtracolor X136 FS16375 Light Compass Grey and Sovereign Hobbies Colourcoats ACUS03 Light Ghost Gray FS26375;

 

y4m6gnhSnuseJBQE-EBJuxIhC8J3xkTUf94SMFNU

 

The Xtracolor 'Light Compass Grey' will be perfect for the weathered F-15 and the slightly bluer Coloucoats 'Light Ghost Gray' for the AIM-7M (and AIM-9L) missiles.

 

(theoretically they're the same colour, they both have the same FS number (the first number is whether they're gloss, satin or matt paint). The IPMS Stockholm FS Colour Chart only refers to Compass Grey, so where Ghost Grey comes from is a mystery to me. A bit spooky really :ghost:! Maybe @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies can explain why his paint is Ghost Gray?)

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, PhantomBigStu said:

FS colours don't have name's,  instead its colloqail names from the service crews, and seems to be in this case a navy vs air force thing

That would explain it, thanks Stu.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Johnson said:

 

Excellent suggestion Enzo!

 

A quick delve into the paint stash and I have Xtracolor X136 FS16375 Light Compass Grey and Sovereign Hobbies Colourcoats ACUS03 Light Ghost Gray FS26375;

 

y4m6gnhSnuseJBQE-EBJuxIhC8J3xkTUf94SMFNU

 

The Xtracolor 'Light Compass Grey' will be perfect for the weathered F-15 and the slightly bluer Coloucoats 'Light Ghost Gray' for the AIM-7M (and AIM-9L) missiles.

 

(theoretically they're the same colour, they both have the same FS number (the first number is whether they're gloss, satin or matt paint). The IPMS Stockholm FS Colour Chart only refers to Compass Grey, so where Ghost Grey comes from is a mystery to me. A bit spooky really :ghost:! Maybe @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies can explain why his paint is Ghost Gray?)

Its often referred to as Compass ghost grey either Light or Dark depending on FS #. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I checked back through our records. It used to be labelled as Light Compass Gray by WEM but they changed it to Light Ghost Gray before we became the owners. No idea why...?

 

As to colour, ours matches our FS595C. There is a very, very slight difference in CIELAB values shown on e-paint.co.uk for 595A but it's nothing a human eye will perceive in >99% of cases.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Wings unlevel said:

I mentioned this in my build post but does anyone know if there is a way of telling if an F-15E has been upgraded with the APG-82 AESA radar?

Looking through a few things quickly I think its all internal ? I admit I could be wrong but thats what it looks like on paper ? 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

I think its all internal ?

Yeah I’ve not seen anything to the contrary, and can’t think of a reason why there’d be any external tells. Academic because my F-15E’s nose will be shut but the fact the kit had a radar made me curious.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/8/2022 at 1:23 PM, arfa1983 said:

I have lost the main actuator arm for the canopy and will need to scratch a new one. :banghead:
 

Can anyone tell me what length the actuator arm is in 1/48 scale? In millimeters preferably!
 

 

Hi Arthur,

 

The Academy strut is 22mm; bottom 11mm is 1.5mm dia and top half 0.95mm dia (plus of course the small locating pin at lower end).

 

Mike

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...