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Tamiya F-15C Kicked Up A Notch- Dec 1/17: DONE!


chuck540z3

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I'm in as usual Chuck! great subject! I would have loved to see you tackling a japanesse aggressor maybe after the Ra'am? anyway this is gonna be one long learning and fun journey!

 

Thanks God you didn't take too long to come back! I kinda need to follow any of your progress since I learn a lot!

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Thanks a lot guys for your interest in my build threads!  

 

One of the reasons I like to document my progress in a modeling project is that I write magazine articles for Fine Scale Modeler after I finish a model.  The last few weeks I put together an article of my P-38L build and it was pretty easy to go over all the WIP pages and pluck out pics and descriptions of what I did and why I did it to put the article together.  Without the build thread to refer to, especially after a year or more since the start of the model, I really wouldn't have a clue where to start.  Going over my progress of that model over the last 14 months can be a real eye opener, because you forget all the little things you did along the way- good and bad- before the model was finally finished.  No, I did NOT include the melt-down of the nose of the P-38 in my article, using GOOP as an adhesive to hold lead nose weight!  Some things in modeling are best kept secret, so only some of you guys will know.

 

The other reason I like to do these threads is that I think it makes me a better modeler.  By taking detailed photographs, especially super close-ups that reveal all construction and painting sins, it forces you to try and do better.  I can't count the number of times I thought I had accomplished something pretty special, but after taking close-up pics I found that I hadn't done a very good job at all, so I redid the build step until I got it looking right or at least better.

 

Getting back to my P-38L thread, one thing that I found annoying when going through my progress was that I filled that thread with a lot of non-P38 items like pics of other builds and a few tips and tricks I've learned along the way- and continue to learn about.  While I was given praise for doing so now and again from those who found them interesting, I can imagine that others found it annoying as well, so I'll try to tone this thread down a bit to only those things that are F-15 related to keep things on track.  I doubt that I'll actually pull this off, but I'll try!

 

One last thought is something I've mentioned many times before.  I do enjoy feedback very much, even "attaboys" now and then, but I don't like to respond to each and every response unless there's a question.  I will answer any and all questions to the best of my ability, but I find that build threads full of pages and pages of individual responses are as annoying to sift through as all my stupid tips!  No offense to those who like post this way, since we all have our individual preferences and, hey, it's your build thread!  For those of you who frequent ARC as well as LSP, you may notice that I am not posting this build over at ARC at the same time, as I did for the P-38L.  I found that posting the same stuff to two different forums made a big job all that much bigger and I found it to be a real PITA.  This time I chose to pick one, which is obviously here at LSP.  I have not "left" ARC at all, but I will post less frequently in the "In-Progress Forum", at least for now.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

 

 

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Oh Boy Chuck, you just made my day sir, have been wanting someone to build and aggressor like this in a while. I will be following this build real close and I know you won't disapoint on your spectacular builds.

 

Chris.

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I do like a lot your tip posts, cause that's the whole reason I visit forums, I try to stay in my corner quiet unless there's something I'd like to ask or cause it's absolutely necessary to say at least something when the update desserves it, the same way for replies for every update, if I don't have anything to ask I just don't post but I look every single one of them, the point is, some of us will miss those big and useful posts with tips, you might find it annoying but IMHO, beside the great modeling stuff, your tips are what make your "kicked up a notch" threads something special and out of the ordinary, just my two cents

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Hello Chuck!! Great to see you take on the big Eagle. I've done five of these kits, have to say there are a few fit gremlins. This is an older Tamiya kit and it doesn't have the precise fit of their newer kits, nothing you won't be able to fix. Can't imagine the workload posting on two forums was like, glad you chose LSP to post your great WIP!!

 

Don

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Thanks Guys.

 

A few points before I get started if you can please indulge me.

 

1)  Although I will try to make this bird as accurate as possible, I am not a big stickler for exact details as I used to be.  Beauty trumps accuracy all day long for me recently, which is why I stuck an A-10A cockpit in my A-10C build 2 years ago.  The Cutting Edge A-10A cockpit is the best resin cockpit I have ever seen, so it stayed, right or wrong.  More on that later as you will see.

 

2)  I am always looking for tips, especially from you guys who have built this model before and I am always open to new ideas.  I have some questions already at the end of this post.

 

3)  I may or may not take your advice.  Please don't take that as a slight if I don't, because I am always weighing the work involved vs. the potential improvement.  Sometimes I just punt and move on if I don't think the effort is equal to the reward.

 

4)  If I screw up, please let me know publicly.  I'm a big boy and I'll never be perfect, so pointing out my errors might help others.  Conversely, I might not have made an error, so it gives me a chance to explain.

 

5)  Like most of you guys, I build in spurts, so if I don't post for a month, I haven't given up on the build.  I don't have a “shelf of doom†yet and I don't plan on starting one any time soon.

 

6)  I will be referring to Jake Melampy's “Modern Eagle Guide†a lot as I go through certain details and any technical stuff I yak about will be straight from Jake's book.  I freely admit that I know almost NOTHING about the Eagle and I'm not showing off with my technical know how.

 

 

So here we go.  As shown in the first post, I have both the Aires and Avionix (formerly Black Box) resin cockpits.  Aires is famous for excellent resin detail that doesn't fit and it invariably is too short in one direction or another, which is usually easy to fix.  BOTH resin cockpits have horrible instructions, so a lot of construction is hit and miss.  Here's the Aires pit, which is for a “Late†F-15C.

 

 

Cockpit1.jpg

 

 

Here is the Avionix one and I'm not sure if it's an early or late version, but it sure has a lot of parts!  I'm liking this pit already for ease of painting and detailing.

 

 

Cockpit2.jpg

 

 

Now some close-up side by side comparisons.  Notwithstanding that the Aires resin has missing handles on the Internal Counter Measure System (ICMS) components in Bay 5 (See, I'm quoting Jake Melampy already!), the Avionix resin on the bottom is a lot more detailed.  Handles are added later using wire.

 

 

Cockpit3.jpg

 

 

Front cockpit is sort of a tie.  The Aires pit has nicer throttle handles (Avionix are separate), but the Avionix pit has a more detailed oxygen hose spaghetti on the right.

 

 

Cockpit4.jpg

 

 

The Aires front instrument panel, however, blows away the Avionix one which is not even as good as the kit part.  Further, the Avionix pit doesn't have the detailed glare shield/coaming.

 

 

 

Cockpit5.jpg

 

 

The Avionix seat is more detailed, but much harder to paint the tiny detail like seatbelts.  The Aires seat has separate brass seat belts and other bits on the previous pic, so the nod again goes to Aires.

 

 

Cockpit6.jpg

 

 

With the above info and already knowing that the Aires cockpit is a bit short front to back, I will be using a composite of both the Aires and Avionix pits.  I will use mostly the Avionix pit, but I'll use the Aires instrument panel /glare shield and the seat.  I might even use some kit parts and I will definitely be adding some scratch built parts and plumbing here and there.

 

 

First order of business is to remove the side wall detail from the kit parts.  I find that using a sprue cutter to get off the big chunks off followed by this sanding bit in a rotary tool works best.  Avionix cockpits are famous for being too fat with the side walls attached, so I will no doubt be doing some more grinding of plastic and resin later to keep the fuselage from swelling.

 

Cockpit7.jpg

 

 

 

There are not many things I truly hate in modeling, but cutting off big blocks of resin is surely one of them.  It's very dusty and dirty and it's hard to handle the parts without ruining fine detail. After the majority of the base block is cut off with a razor saw, I rub the base on a sponge sanding block to smooth things out and erode a bit more resin as required.

 

 

Cockpit8.jpg

 

 

 

Dry fit on the kit front gear well the cockpit sits on, the front and back parts fit within the front fuselage reasonably well.

 

 

Cockpit9.jpg

Edited by chuck540z3
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