F-15C Eagle ****FINISHED***

[PeterB]

Hi Charlie,

 

All I can find is that according to the Aerofax book, the turkey feathers complicated maintenace and cost $1200 each so they were "removed on most but perhaps not all plane" by the time the book was published in 1998, and that when an upgraded engine was fitted in 1986 it did not have fittings for the turkey feathers. Pictures show that with them removed all the control rods and plumbing on the outside of the burner cans is visible and Hasegawa look to have covered that in my Strike Eagle kit - the whole assembly is much longer and more detailed than on my F-15C where the cans just glue on the back of the fuselage. Incidentally, one other change that took place involves the arrestor hook mounted on the boom between the engines - my kit just has the end of the hook moulded onto the fuselgae, but later the doors that covered it were apparently removed so that the full length is exposed, and usually painted in  black and white stripes. I have no idea if any of the later boxings have been modified to allow for this.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[PeterB]

Final coat of the light "Compass Ghost Gray" on.

Now I need to do the patches of the Dark Compass Ghost Gray, and pics suggest it has a soft edge. I suppose I should therefore mask and airbush, but with hindsight I made a mistake gluing the vertical tails on! I may brush the darker gray on and then perhaps try and use my airbrush to soften the edges, or maybe even try and do it freehand like my Mig-29 15 years ago - we will see! Because of the problems with the afterburner cans I mentioned earlier I will have to make an early version and I have a choice of either one at Eglin AFB or one at Kadena in Japan, both in the late 1970's/ early 1980's I think - the schemes are the same except for the radome which is dark on the first and light on the second. Later versions either had the same scheme albeit slightly different shades, or the darker modified scheme. The instructions for the old Hasegawa kit of the F-15A said that the sealant between the plexiglass and cockpit frames was copper coloured and that was I suspect the first time I ever indulged in painting sealant on - this kit says the same, but other sources say brown/red and the walkrounds here on the BM site suggest that it was not really visible anyway so I may not bother!

 

This boxing just predates the release of the Hasegawa weapons sets, but the kit is much older so it has both AIM-7 and AIM-9 included (the F-15E kit I have from 1988 also has a full weapons load including no less than 22 Rockeye bombs, though I might change it somewhat). I have to say I have mixed feelings about Hasegawa's later policy of not including weapons, and am glad that some other manufacturers include them still, though I have by now aquired quite a wide range of loads from Hasegawa, Dragon, Airfix and Italeri, but it was quite costly even when I bought them, and at today's prices it is a real pain! Just imagine the cost if Monogram had not included the M117 bombs for the "fat belly" version of their B-52D - 12 on each underwing pylon, and if you wanted to model the bomb bays open, as Hasegawa have only 6 in each box  you would need to take out a second mortgage on your house😒!

 

Oh well, I will probably get there in the end.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited January 28, 2021 by PeterB

[Johnson]

That looks great Pete, nice finish on the paint!

 

For the next coat, have you considered using hand cut masks and an airbrush? Freehand airbrush will give you a quite a wide feathering effect, and brush painting will obviously give you a hard edge, which might actually be OK at 1/72 considering the colours. Masks, if positioned about 1mm above the surface with bluetac snakes, tend to restrain the airbrush feather, but I know from experience that they take an age to cut and position and even then the result can be variable! A difficult finish to affect!

 

Whatever you choose, I'm sure it will be fine.

 

I have the later Hasegawa F-15 kits in the stash. No weapons! . Ridiculous.

 

Cheers,

[PeterB]

Hi Charlie,

 

I did manged to do a decent job freehand on my Mig 29 but that was over 20 years ago and my hand/eye coordination is not what it used to be. As to masking then spraying, my last few efforts have left something to be desired! I guess it depends what mood I am in🙂.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

Si, here we are again after a couple of weeks delay, part of which was due to thinking about the best way to do the camo painting. As you will probably know, the earliest F-15A were painted in a pale blue scheme, but after that a scheme with two greys was used - over time I have seen them called Ghost Gray, Compass Ghost Gray and more recently just Compass Gray. The actual shades used did apparently change slightly after a while, and then a revised "Mod Eagle" scheme was intruduced. Essentially the Compass Gray scheme consists of large irregular areas of the dark gray over the light gray on the upper surfaces, and they seem to have had a soft edge. Masking to spray the darker gray is potentially complcated, so I decided it would be better to paint it on with a brush and then perhaps mask it and overspray the edges with the lighter gray. 

However, as you can see the contrast between the two shades is very slight, and it varies a lot with both lighting and angle. I am not totally convinced that spraying the edge would be worth the considerable effort, but I am still thinking about it, and may give it a coat of gloss varnish to see if it changes the appearance though as the Xtracrylic is gloss I doubt it! In the meantime I have finally managed to put a finishing coat of varnish on the other 4 entries for this GB which were in the queue, and will get some pics for the gallery the next time the sun makes an appearance. Once I have sorted the grays out I will have to paint the rear end in the appropriate "silver" colour - Hasegawa says " Iron" but walkrounds show it a fair bit lighter.

 

More before too long hopefully.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited February 12, 2021 by PeterB

[Johnson]

1 minute ago, PeterB said:

I am not totally convinced that spraying the edge would be worth the considerable effort,

Neither am I Pete. Looking at the photo I thought it did have a soft edge, but it's probably the resolution of the image and the colours used. Whatever, it looks really good and will look great with decals.

 

Cheers,

[PeterB]

Well, I guess I am ready to start applying decals - just hope they work!

I will try the kit option of one from Kadena AFB in Japan, but if that does not work I have some old Microscale ones intended for an F-15A which might be of some use.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[Col.]

Hopefully the kit decals are good for you Pete but at least you have the Microscale option to fall back upon if not.

[PeterB]

As I feared the decs were very fragile, which does not bode well for the other 6 or Hasegawa kits I bought at the same time and are currently in my stash - guess I had better make a start on them!

I managed to get all the "aircraft specific" decs on with a bit of varnish painted over them, but I have ordered some more Microscale liquid decal film. In the past it worked pretty well until one day it seemed like it might have gone off and went all "snotty" when the decs were put in water - I threw it in disgust and have just used one or two thin coats of varnish ever since. All the miriad of other stencil decs are ones I should mostly be able to replace from my decal store. Curiously the one I really expected trouble with was the coloured "flash" at the top of the fins which has to wrap round the leading edge an be fiddled with, but that actually worked out pretty well.

 

Oh well, these things are sent to try us!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[PeterB]

The decs are going on slowly. The varnish holds them together but the adhesive is pretty useless so I am having to stick them on with diluted Pledge,

If I include the 40+ "don't walk" ones I am less than a third of the way there, but I am not going to hurry. Incidentally, looking at the pics on the dStorm website, the junction between the light and dark grays was in fact a pretty hard one so all my soul searching over whether or not to mask and spray was somewhat wasted!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited February 19, 2021 by PeterB

[Johnson]

1 hour ago, PeterB said:

If I include the 40+ "don't walk" ones I am less than a third of the way there

Have you tried the new Airfix Phantoms Pete? 258 stencils on the FG1 if I counted them right.

 

Your model is really taking off with the decals!! Brings back happy memories of seeing one flying at the Greenham Common  IAT back in 1981;

 

 

 

These were home developed B&W photos which I used to love doing, but they took up almost as much time as modelling and life got in the way. It was obviously a dull day and combined with my developing, the images are fairly low contrast, but I think that the camouflage scheme is the same as yours. Even with a contrast stretch there isn't much difference between the greys, and the edge is quite hard, so yours is spot-on.

 

Cheers,

[PeterB]

Hi Charlie,

 

2 "new" Airfix F4 and 1 Buccaneer in the stash - not looking forward to all those tiny stencils very much!

 

Pete

[Johnson]

Hi Pete,

 

When I built the FG.1 last year I enjoyed them in a bizarre sort of way. I trained as a cartographer and in those pre-computer days in the 1970s/80s all the names were applied to maps as little bits of waxed type, they had to be positioned and aligned very precisely, exactly the same as placing decals. It was obviously good training. Enjoy your 'don't walk's!

 

Cheers,

 

 

[PeterB]

Thanks Charlie,

 

I think I am suffering decal fatigue, or perhaps stencilophobia  - 94 on and still around 50 to go - the plane looks like it has a rash! Presumably later schemes would tone the ruddy things down considerably or just miss many of them out - nowhere near as noticeable in the pics of F-15C on the dStorm website. When I first started building kits over 60 years ago there were no stencils, but gradually they started to make an appearance, and now if anything there are perhaps too many, though I guess that is accurate. Of course I could always leave some off, but as a Yorkshireman I sometimes tend towards the attitude - "I have paid for them and they are in the box so I will ruddy well use them"! I rather think some of the smaller ones on the Airfix Phantoms will get left on the sheet otherwise I will have trouble seeing the kit for the decs to paraphrase an old saying about a wood and trees.

 

Oh well, a couple of more days should see it done!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited February 19, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Most of the larger and more obvious decs are on and to be honest I am not entirely certain I like it. The Port side is very "busy"

but the Starboard side is not too bad.

Cheers

 

Pete

[PeterB]

Nearly there!

All the decs are on except for one which was a spare and five that do not appear anywhere on the placement instructions! Speaking of instructions the ones relating to the undercarriage doors are a bit odd. Hasegawa have moulded each set as a single piece but there is not the usual pic showing them being cut up but they come with locating tabs and the instructions show all 8 of them in the open position. However, except when open for maintenance, pictures show that 5 are actually closed on the ground so be warned if you are building this or any other kit from the same moulding!

 

Next I will fit the doors, which could be fiddly, then the drop tank and Sparrow missiles. After that I just have to get 2 black decal lines round the body of all 4 Sidewinders, assemble the inner pylon and missile rail units and finish it off. One final comment about the rather high visibility stencils - for whatever reason the one that I would expect to be clearly visible is that for the IFR receptacle, and yet it is actually almost invisible as you might be able to see above - it is on the Port LERX (leading edge extension), and I have filled in the ramp door in a darker grey rather than the interior green or metallic blue/green shown in the instructions. In the pics on the dGulf website the lines to guide the flying boom operator are darker than on the dec and quite plain to see but the door is normal camo colour by the look of it, but then they were from a later period.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

 

Update,

 

As I feared the gear doors are clearly not designed to be mounted in the closed position and needed a lot filing and adjusting. They are eventually on but not at all a good fit so out with the filler once they are dry - "Null Pointes" for Mr Hasegawa! At least I am forewarned if the doors in my F-15E are the same. Bit of a shame as the kit has gone together pretty well until this last stage, but that's modelling! Good job I am fairly experienced as I hate to think how a young modeller would have managed.

 

PS They have modified both the doors and instructions on the E. 

 

Stu @PhantomBigStu, you may already be past this stage, but if not and you are building yours gear up as you normally seem to do watch out for this, though your kit may be Ok!

Edited February 20, 2021 by PeterB

[Col.]

I'm liking how this one is looking Pete. The busy nature of it with all the decals on adds a lot of visual interest. Pity the doors were such a pig fit but sounds as if you've mastered them.

[PeterB]

Thanks Col,

 

I have been looking at Scalemates, and it would seem that my 1985 rebox was essentially a conversion of the original F-15 Eagle kit Hasegawa released back in 1974. When they issued their modified F-15E Strike Eagle in 1988 they clearly made a number of changes, not only to the wheel doors but also the exhaust cans as I mentioned earlier. The same year they released a re-jigged F-15C which has the same modifications, together with an improved and more detailed cockpit and undercarriage, and  with revised pylons which can take tanks as well as Sidewinders. Of course, by that time they had released their weapons sets so no missiles were included! So if anybody is thinking of buying a 2nd hand Hasegawa 1/72 Eagle kit can I suggest they look for one issued in 1988 or later providing they have the appropriate weaponry!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[PeterB]

For some reason the pic has come out looking a bit pink! All the bits are on - later mouldings apparently had the small pitot heads on either side of the nose.

A little touching up to do then I will give it a finishing spray and take some outdoor pics as and when the weather permits. The Sidewinders are actually gray, believe it or not!

That's a bit more like it!.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[Johnson]

1 hour ago, PeterB said:

That's a bit more like it!.

 

It certainly is Pete. Very purposeful, lots of ordnance. Like it!

[PeterB]

Thanks Charlie,

 

Typical of its generation  - 4 each medium range and short range missiles. I suppose the Mig-29 and Su-27 family are potentially better armed with up to 10 missiles. I don't really know that much about the Rafale and Typhoon but I suspect they may also have the potential to carry more.

 

Pete

Edited February 22, 2021 by PeterB

[PeterB]

So that is now finished and I will post some pics in the Gallery shortly, but her's a reminder.

As I mentioned earlier it is not as good as the later modified mouldings perhaps, but it does not look too bad.

 

Thanks for watching.

 

Pete

[Johnson]

6 hours ago, PeterB said:

perhaps, but it does not look too bad

 

Looks very good Pete! And I like the gallery pics. While I was there I had a look around, some very impressive builds. And I see you've been pretty busy!