|
THE AIRCRAFT
Throughout its history, with the exception of a (thankfully) brief period
in the mid-1980's, U.S. F-15 A thru D models have been used in an exclusively
air to air role. From its inception, though, it was always recognized that
the airframe had an inherent air to ground capability. In the early '80's
the USAF started looking for a replacement for the F-111, and in the resulting
competition the F-15E won out over the F-16XL. The
process of making the Eagle into a Beagle involved taking a perfectly good
fighter and ruining it by adding an intercom switch, a second seat, CFT's, and
green drag inducing devices. Other changes were a new radar, HUD,
navigation and targeting pods, an upgraded internal jammer, and modified landing
gear to handle the increased weights involved. While it didn't have the
range of the F-111 it replaced it had a vastly greater self defense capability
due to its maneuverability, excellent radar, AIM-7, and, later,
AIM-120 capability. I can remember flying the F-15C at one of the first
Red Flag's the F-15E took part in. We put all the Eagles and Beagles out
front, the result was that all but two of the red air forces were
"killed" in the first 50 seconds of the "war." Despite its
air to air capabilities, though, the F-15E's mission is air to ground, and the
majority of their training and employment reflects that. On the first
night of Desert Storm there was a "train" of 16 F-15E's striking
targets around Basra, and a MiG-29 tried running intercepts on them. One
after the other the MiG was unable to make a stern conversion on the Beagles,
who continued to press on to the target, till the MiG had finally worked his way
down to number 15. The pilot of that aircraft almost had the first kill of
the war, when he took an AIM-9 shot at the MiG, but the missile failed to guide,
and the MiG continued on to the last aircraft in the train. The MiG
eventually crashed trying to turn the corner at night and low level on number
16. I bring this up because the F-15E crews, being the professional bomber
pilots they were, all kept pressing to the target, rather than turning on the
Fulcrum, once they determined the MiG was no threat to them. If that had
been F-15C's there would have been a "feeding frenzy" on the Fulcrum
that would put great white sharks to shame. Since its combat debut the
F-15E has fought in the continuing campaigns in Northern and Southern Watch,
Bosnia, Kosovo, and most recently in America's operations in Afghanistan and
Iraq. The changes to the F-15E since that time have been minimal as far as
the aircraft itself. It's the weapons that have changed the most, as
"dumb" air to ground ordnance and early LGB's have given way to
more and better precision weapons.
|
Click on
images below to see larger images
|
|
|
|
THE MODEL
There is no really accurate kit of the F-15E in the one, true
scale. The kits out there were based on the concept demonstrator, so they
have some combination of incorrect CFT's, lack various bulges, and don't include
the modified landing gear and doors. That said, I used the Hasegawa kit as
my starting point, and resigned myself to some scratch building and kit bashing.
The kit that supplied the spare parts was the Academy F-15E, from which I took
the main and tangential front and rear CFT racks and the arresting hook.
Construction started, as always, with the cockpit. Out of the box it
provides a reasonable representation, but I elected to use aftermarket, white
metal seats from Aeroclub. One bit of trivia, post flight the seat on the
F-15 is left in the full up position, so it actually sits about 1 foot off the
floor. Even in-flight the seat is only moved down a couple of inches to
provide the best visibility. In addition do not drill
out the ejection handles on the seat sides. They have a piece of flexible,
black plastic on the inside of them to prevent something on the pilot's G-suit
from snagging them and providing a short, unexpected, possibly fatal ride.
The kit did not include the side sticks used to control the radar and sensors,
so these were added from the spare parts bin. The coaming over the
Beagle's front cockpit instrument panel has a different shape from the Eagle's
because of the MFD's, but I elected to leave it alone other than
sanding off the molded on ridges. I did use a replacement HUD from Teknics
to replace the kit one. Clear acetate was tinted with Gunze H94 clear
green and glued onto the HUD frame. The forward fuselage halves were glued
together with no major headaches, and while all this was going on I glued the
main fuselage and wing halves together. The forward fuselage was then
mated to this assembly. The forward to main fuselage and wing to fuselage joints
both required a small amount of filler (CA glue in this case). After
sanding rescribing was done using my standard tools: an old, dull X-Acto razor
saw for straight lines and a sewing needle in a pin vise and a Verlinden
template for curved lines. At this point the first major modification had to be
done, when the arresting hook fairing between the engines was removed and
blanked off using sheet plastic. In addition the gun clip fairing was made
out of laminated sheet styrene and glued onto the belly of the aircraft. I
elected not to widen the wheels given the small amount of difference it would
make in this scale, but the main gear doors were modified to their bulged
configuration using laminated styrene. The CFT's were added at this point
and fit surprisingly well; some Elmer's white glue was used to fill the few gaps
at their joints. The main CFT pylon was glued on along with the tangential
pylons. Again these fit well; even though, they came from a different kit.
The missing center, tangential pylon was hacked out of a pair of F-18 pylons
from the spares box. They
were cut, sanded, and rescribed according to photos and seeing the real thing,
then glued onto the CFT's. At this point the rest of the pylons, vertical
stabs, rear TEWS antennas, and windscreen were added with the windscreen
requiring putty to fair it in. The windscreen on the F-15E is of the bird
resistant type, so the angle between the canopy bow and the base of the
windscreen is 45 degrees, not 90. The navigation and targeting pods were
also added at this time along with chaff/flare dispensers in front of
the main wheel wells. These were etched metal and came from the Airwaves
A-10 set. While not totally accurate they are close enough. One
other comment on these; a full load of chaff/flares can't be carried on the left
side because the targeting pod blocks them, so only two rather than four
dispensers are fitted on this side. The most "fiddly" part of
this kit is, by far, the nozzles. The nozzle sections were assembled onto
the rings, then the actuating struts were added. These were added after
all painting
was done.
EXTERNAL STORES
At this tine USAF aircraft typically flew with symmetrical
loads, but on the first couple of nights of Desert Storm the air to air threat
led to some Beagles flying with an asymmetric configuration. For this
configuration I used missiles from Hasegawa's Weapons Set III and resin Mk 82
AIR's from the now defunct PP Aeroparts range (set #AC754). The AIM-7's
had to be modified, because they are molded as AIM-7E's which have two external
cable fairings, while the AIM-7F/M only had one. I sanded off both
fairings and replaced them with a single one made of sprue. This work is
now unnecessary as Hasegawa Weapons Set V provides correctly molded AIM-7F/M's.
I also drilled out the ends of the AIM-7's but not the AIM-9's. The
Mk-82's are nicely molded and require the etched metal fins and base plate to be
glued on. I also cut the fuses off of some spare Mk-82's and glued these
onto the noses of the PP Aeroparts items. Finally I elected to use only
two external tanks rather than three. These jets were pushing their
maximum taxi weights, so they rarely, if ever, flew with three external bags.
I did modify one of the external tanks to look like a "nestable."
These are pre-fabricated tanks that are not meant to be used over a long
duration like the normal external tanks on the F-15. The only external
difference, besides the color, is the tail end, which is blunt (like
the F-16). I cut off the end of the tank just forward of the tail end of
the fin and used sheet styrene to close the resultant hole.
PAINTING AND DECALING
The first thing was to mask off the natural metal
areas; these would be painted last. The canopy and windscreen were also
masked at this time, and the model was then painted using Gunze Sangyo paints.
The overall color is H305 (Gunship Gray #36118), while the missiles and the
"nestable" tank were painted H308 (Light Compass Ghost Gray #36375).
The landing gear was added (minus the wheels) at this point to give the model
something to sit on while drying. For a touch of color I elected on one of
the AIM-9's to paint the fins white. This was relatively common on
missiles during Desert Storm, when older AIM-9's (manufactured during the white
to gray changeover) were
taken out of their storage bunkers. The radomes of the AIM-7's were painted an
off white, while the drilled out motor was painted red brown. The wings
and fins were all painted a dark, matte metallic gray. For the AIM-9's the
rocket motor cap was painted a light yellow, the nose graphite and the fins
metallic gray. The extreme nose was painted silver and the seeker
"glass" dark earth. Finally the rollerons were done in matte aluminum.
The Mk-82's received a coat of Polly S #505080 (ANA613 olive drab) on the main
body, while the aft section was painted Polly S #505370 (olive drab) .
Various antennas on the wings and fuselage were masked off and painted in Light
Compass Ghost Gray, then a coat of Tamiya clear gloss was applied.
Decaling was done using Super Scale sheets #72-468 for the stenciling and
#72-617 for the squadron markings, along with bits from the kit decal sheet,
mainly the formation strip lights. The rear formation strip lights have
been modified by cutting them into two pieces. On the real jet the
electronic equipment that support the rear TEWS antennas forced this
modification. Since these aircraft were relatively new at the time they retained
a lot of their original stenciling, so I went whole hog on those. One
thing to point out here is the weapons. Real air to air weapons are
heavily stenciled; each section (rocket motor, warhead, seeker, TDD, CGS) will
all have info with the serial number, manufacturer, and technical data on it in
addition to the usual brown and yellow stripes carried on live weapons.
This ended up being around ten decals per AIM-7 and AIM-9. One of the
reasons I went on a long WW II kit building spree was that I got tired of
stenciling decals!
Incidentally the missiles are supposed to be AIM-7F's, so they only carry two
fuse windows rather than the four on the AIM-7M, and the tips of their wings
were painted matte RLM-66 to simulate the tip weights that the AIM-7F carried.
The Mk-82's also carry stenciling on them that came from Hasegawa's Weapon Set
I, and the nav and targeting pods carry "radiation hazard" warnings
and various stenciling that came from Hasegawa Weapon Set IV. Once done a
gloss coat was again applied to seal the decals and to help prevent any
silvering. This was followed up by Testor's Dullcote to get the
appropriate matte finish. The masking was now removed from the areas to be
done in natural metal, and the surrounding painted areas were masked off.
Testor's Metallizer was used for this, mainly Non-buffing aluminum and titanium
to differentiate darker areas. The inside of the burner cans were painted
Gunze H336 (Hemp) and streaked with matte black. The nozzle rings were
done with Rub N' Buff, and the nozzles themselves were sprayed with Testor's
exhaust. Once all that was finished the masking was removed and the
engines glued on using liquid cement. Finally the TEWS antennas (off
white), anti collision beacons (dark red), and position lights (dark red and
blue-green) were all painted.
FINAL ASSEMBLY
The wheels were glued on at this point, and they were painted
pure black, not a scale black. Tires on modern fighters are replaced after only
four or five missions, due to the high landing weights and speeds involved, so
they usually look brand new with the exception of the tread. The landing
gear doors, weapons, and finally the external tanks were added in that order
using CA. The final bits to be added were the canopy and arresting hook,
both held on with liquid cement. Since the aircraft modeled was relatively
new weathering was very light consisting mainly of streaking from control
surface hinges; this was done using a touch of black acrylic paint that was
streaked in the direction of the air flow using my finger. To make a
relatively accurate F-15E with the current kits out there is not overly
difficult, and a totally accurate one involves just a little more work. It
amazes me, though, that one of the manufacturers hasn't filled this gap with a
really accurate 1/72 kit or that one of the aftermarket companies hasn't
jumped into the fray after all these years!
Murph
|
Click on
images below to see larger images
|
|
|
|
|
|
