1/48 Revell F-15E Progress Thread

Here's a shot of the decal sheet I'll be using.  They are the Mountain Home Gunfighters by Afterburner:

The landing gear are mostly done.  They are very simple on this plane.  Here I've glued the landing gear together (there are 3 parts to each main gear) and loosely attached them to the fuselage.  This way the parts will dry in the correct position:

The nose gear brace has some holes "molded" into it for detail.  I decided to drill these out with my pin vise and a small bit:

Looks better:

I cut out some circles from Tamiya masking tape to match the landing light lenses:

I mentioned in an earlier thread that I planned to add some hydraulic lines to the gear.  I've also added a few styrene details.  Here they are:

Note the resin shimmy dampener on the nose gear:

Here they are with the initial paint:

Here are the Royal resin weighted wheels.  I'm sorry but I didn't take a pic of the wheels before they were painted.

Here they are with Mr. Color Tire Black.  I also sprayed some lighter grey on the treads to make them look a bit dirty:

And here they are with the wheels painted white and washed with Citadel Nuln Oil:

I cut off the kit's horizontal stabilators by scoring them with the back side of an Xacto blade.  I've replaced them with new stabs by Quickboost:

The detail is almost identical but now the stabs can be placed in a drooped position.  It wouldn't make much sense to have the ailerons drooped and not the stabs.

In the pic above you can see the resin part that fills the space in between the engines.

Here's the AN/AAQ-13 LANTIRN pod and the adapter for the AN/AAQ-33 SNIPER XR pod attached using CA glue.  I've also painted Mr. Surfacer around the mating area to fill any gaps:

I'm going to paint the SNIPER XR pod separately and attach it at the end.

Maybe I'm wrong, if I am , I apologise but I am pretty sure the horizontal stabs don't droop when the F-15 is at rest, I have only ever seen them sit straight.

Dean30

Maybe I'm wrong, if I am , I apologise but I am pretty sure the horizontal stabs don't droop when the F-15 is at rest, I have only ever seen them sit straight.

In any event I'm still glad I got the Quickboost stabs.  When assembled there is an obvious gap between the molded in kit stabs and the fuselage half that they weren't molded to.

Nice legs and tires! Aftermarket control surfaces that fit that nice?? Well done.

Thanks Nathan!  Gonna put a few more details on the legs, gloss 'em up and then give them a wash.

Here's a look at the windscreen, canopy and the canopy frame.  I used Novus to polish out the clear parts.  I did not dip it in Future nor will I:

Initially, the plan was to paint the inside of the canopy as well as the outside so I masked both sides.  I wasn't going to try it with the windscreen, though.  Here's the windscreen masked with tape and liquid mask and the canopy with just the tape:

But after playing around with the canopy and the frame that it attaches to I began to think that I would not be able to apply the glue to the join around the base of the canopy and not have it "squish" out so that it wouldn't be visible inside.  So I ended up masking a very thin frame around the clear part so that there is a little room for error with the glue.  I did paint the inside frame black, though, as you can see in the pic below:

Again I used Tamiya tape and liquid mask.

Hey Fly-n-hi the model looks really great, and I'm building the same eagle right now...not that good though  Anyways I just found this thread so I apologize for the late request, but if it isn't too much trouble I'd really love to know how you painted the afterburner cans. I'm still pretty new to the hobby and your paint job looks spot on. I know you have already explained your method for painting the inside of the cans, but could you just briefly explain how you painted the metallic outside of the nozzle? 

My mistake I just found your response to Nathan T's request. Sorry about my lack of attention, but everything looks amazing. Keep up the excellent work and I'll be following the build, there's a lot I can learn here.

That canopy looks fantastic, the clarity is superb!

DWood, Thanks!  I'm sure your F-15E will turn out great!  And painting the outside of the burner can was the easy part for sure.

Dean, Thanks also!  I love polishing canopies with Novus now.  They come out crystal clear without the overly glossy Future shine.  The canopies in real life, although very clear, aren't super glossy.

I cut out some block from the foam that lines the fuel tank area of an RC plane and mashed it into the opening of the cockpit and painted the area black:

You can see in the pic above that I added a bit more Mr. Surfacer to eliminate the seam that joins the nose section to the fuselage section.

After this I dry brushed some grey onto the raised details.  Also, here you can see that I filled in some faint ghost seams with Mr. Surfacer on the nose.  They were just ever so visible if the light it them just right.

Loving these progress shots, keem em coming!!!

Thanks, Jester!

After I filled all the seams, polished them out and re scribed destroyed panel lines I gave the whole thing a primer coat of Mr. Base White.  I didn't take a pic of the plane with just the white paint, though.  Sorry (Just imagine a white F-15E).  I then went on to pre shade most of the panel lines with flat black.  Sometimes I'll use a dark grey for the pre shade but since the base paint is already a dark grey I needed something darker:

This took about an hour and 15 mins to pre shade.

Great progress going on here. I'm sitting back taking notes of your great build.

Thanks plastic!  But like I said before...maybe you should wait till its done before you take notes on this.  There's still time for me to mess it up.

Awesome work Fly-n-hi!  I've seen the Gunfighter aircraft up close several times as I only live about an hour away from Mountain Home.  I regularly see the Gunfighters and Bold Tigers flying over the area making approaches into Boise.  F-15E one of my all-time favorite aircraft.  Cant wait to see the finished product!

This looks like an incredible build!  With an F-15E in my stash (eduard) I'm watching closely!

Groot

jelliot, thanks!  Must be cool to see those bad boys fly over!

Robgroot, thanks also!  You'll have to start your own progress thread when you get going on it.

Alrighty...Here are some pics with the first couple of layers of paint.  She's really starting to look like an F-15E now!  I didn't take pics of each individual layer, though.  I just applied a very thin layer of Gunship Grey so that the pre shade would show through.  Then I post shaded most of the panels with a lightened mixture of Gunship Grey.

In this pic I lightened up the access panels a bit more:

So right now you're looking a 4 layers of paint...the primer, pre shade, base color and post shade 1.  There's gonna be a few more layers.

Looking really good!

Fly- I love that 4-layer paint job!   I think that it's pretty much the only way to add depth and character to such a basic color.  

I can't wait to see how you finish this Eagle.

I'm a newby trying to learn something  here. You painted it with a white primer, then flat black on the panel lines, then a grey mist coat to blend out the black, and touch up inside the panels with lighter grey? It looks awesome! Not so over done it looks fake. Just right.

Jay

T3ch & Dre, thanks!  Always appreciate the comments!

beeryboats

I'm a newby trying to learn something  here. You painted it with a white primer, then flat black on the panel lines, then a grey mist coat to blend out the black, and touch up inside the panels with lighter grey? It looks awesome! Not so over done it looks fake. Just right.

Jay

Jay, thank you, too!  Yeah, this pretty much sums it up.  There are a few more layers that I will be applying in addition to this.  The trick is to build it up slowly and thinly.  Its always easier to add more to a layer that needs more...but its very difficult to correct a layer that has too much.  And the paints are thinned quite a bit.  Much more than I usually thin them.  This helps me build them up slowly.

Dre

Fly- I love that 4-layer paint job!   I think that it's pretty much the only way to add depth and character to such a basic color.  

I can't wait to see how you finish this Eagle.

4-layer cake is even better!      Sorry, I just couldn't resist......

Fly!  Everytime I look at this thread, I can smell hydraulic fluid, and coolanol!  Great work!  Thanks for posting the pics!

Eagle90

I'm glad you kept the pre shading light as some modelers tend to let it be dark and not really looking realistic but yours looks just right.

Eagle & Plastic, thanks!

I added a darker post shade but I didn't really take a pic of it.  I just went back over some of the panel lines and shadowed areas.  That makes 5 layers so far.

Next, I've tried something new (to me) on this build.  This is the first time I've used the salt weathering technique.  I wanted to give the paint a bit of a random fading and weathered look.  I sprayed some water on the upper surfaces only and sprinkled some large granular kosher salt on top.    I only salted the top because the idea is that the Sun is beating down on it from above.  The lower areas aren't nearly as exposed.

I mixed Gunship Grey (the base color) with just a few drops of white so that the overall mix was just a tad bit darker than the paint already on the model.  And I only sprayed it towards the middle on the plane in the dirtier areas.  I did it very lightly so its a bit difficult to pic up with the camera.  If you look at the left wing in the lighted area you can make it out:

In this pic you can see it a bit more clearly.  I've also added a filter of toned down Gunship Grey to blend it together a little more.  Now we're up to 7 layers:

Don't worry...the weathering is still there.  The camera's flash really drowns it out.

That's very interesting using it in that fashion  to get subtle paint shade variation. I really like the effect you get with the salt method specially if you are trying to show chipped paint over nm as here with this 1/48 George I did for the Japanese GB