1:48 Strike Eagle - which kit is best?

For 1/48 scale, the only option I know of regarding weapons kits are the Hasagawa "aircraft weapons" kits. These are boxed "A" through "D" and include some weapons used today. They are also great for Vietname era planes, as they have some older missiles and bombs as well.

For an F-15E, the following kits would be good for you:

Hasagawa Aircraft Weapons "A": contains lots of Mk82s, 2 Mk84s, and 6 Mk20s.
Hasagawa Aircraft Weapons "B": contains 2 GBU-10s and 4 GBU-12s
Hasagawa Aircraft Weapons "C": contains 4 AIM-9Ls that can be fashioned to look like AIM-9Ms. It also contains 6 AGM-65s.
Hasagawa Aircraft Weapons "D": contains 6 GBU-12s, 2 GBU-16s, 2 GBU-24s, 2 GBU-10s, and 2 GBU-31s (JDAM)

The above kits contain a lot more weapons, but the ones I lised above are those that the F-15E can carry.

I haven't been able to find after-market kits that contain ordance that is carried by the F-15E in recent strike missions. This would include JASSM, JSOW, WCMD clusters, any CBUs, AGM-130, BLU-118 (thermobaric), GBU-15, or GBU-28.

Hope that helps,

- Snacko

Thanks all for the great info... looks like I'll take a shot at the Revellogram F-15E ;-) As for the fact that I want to build this sucker in flight, and the problems associated with keeping the wheel bays closed... well I'll just have to deal with that as per your advise. I've never built one wheels up before so I really want to do something different this time, but alas the last aircraft models I built were over 10 years ago... been doing armour mostly...

Cheers all...

-Greg

Ditto on the Monogram F-15E. Go a few extra bucks for the Pro-Moderler version which has extra weapons and stores.

Tamiya makes an excellent 1/32 version (so I've heard)

Academy makes an excellent 1/72 version (I've built this one)

Just thought of this... I dunno if the kit has seated crew figures or not. Also, you said you're going to build it "in flight"...

Have you done anything wheels up before? One problem you're going to encounter is the fact that most kits are engineered to be built gear down. Often times, the gear doors won't fit well into the openings. And if they do, they most likely have no support to keep them from falling into the wheel well.

To help with this problem, glue some strip along the inside of the gear wells to support the doors and to keep them from falling in.

If the fit is terrible, you may have to fill in any gaps and rescribe the lines.

Just a few words of advice. But then if perchance you've done this before you probably know all of this already, in which case; nevermind.

Fade to Black...

As my pal Butz can tell you, the Revellogram F-15E is a great kit; a bit nicer, in some respects, than the Hasegawa offering (and a bit more accurate) and a whole lot cheaper, too.

Hell, if Butz can build it and make it look good, it MUST be a good kit!

Fade to Black...

Revell Monogram F-15E , is the best of all the F-15E's

Grettings

Iván