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RichieB

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Everything posted by RichieB

  1. Many thanks for your comments chaps, Chek- great top tip, always looking for other source material. Maru5137 - thank you, it's slow but getting there. With added lighting you have to think 3 steps ahead as once you've glued it together its very difficult to add or correct.
  2. Just a very quick update to prove that (some) progress is being made! Gary at GT Resin kindly supplied me a replacement set for the exhausts as my originals had a flaw in them. New set looks great and is a leap above the detail provided by the Revell kit (far right). As this is an early bird, they still have the turkey feathers on. Each exhaust comes in three pieces and includes a separate flame holder (not shown), for ease of painting. After a bit of tidying up and spot of primer on them I'm just about ready to paint them up. This is the fun but slightly daunting part where you can bring a part to life .. or kill it stone dead! Not sure which method to use to weather them up as the images I've seen show quite a distinctive but complicated pattern. Much pondering to be done!
  3. Whilst contemplating the front fuselage I decided to have a go at the intakes. These are notoriously challenging to remove the join seam and the revell ones are no different. To assist, I decided to glue them together then cut them in half. This achieved two things, firstly it made the job of creating a demarcation line between the main paint scheme (which extends into the intake) easier and secondly it meant I could access each bit of the join better. It pays to take care when cutting as the two halves have to 'seamlessly' fit back together again eventually. The back end was also shortened a little as I needed to use the bulkhead they normally fit into, to fix the acrylic rods for the in-flight stand instead. The back and front ends needed lots of TLC to fill the seams and I reinforced the join from the outside at strategic points to avoid cracking during sanding. Once primed the multitude of filling and sanding efforts are nicely blended. Finally I used the GT Resin engine face instead of the stock Revell item as the detail is much better. Just need to paint and weather them up a bit now as they didn't stay clean for very long!
  4. You probably need a range from 0.25mm for fine lighting ie cockpit bulbs, 0.5 mm and 1 mm for instruments and nav lights. I have used 2mm for HUD and radar displays but not often. If need be you can always group fibre optics together but the smaller sizes are the easiest to bend, 1mm can be quite difficult to curve in tight spaces. In this case I slightly melt it. For stronger or larger light sources I'd use a suitably sized LED. Sometimes it just pays to experiment.
  5. Hi Neo, there are many places out there selling LEDs, some actually do whole wiring set-ups for a particular aircraft. I tend to design my own circuits just because it gives me some flex when I decide to change my mind or get it wrong! I've used different sellers but the one below is quite good as they supply very small but bright leds (pico) which are great for cockpits etc and larger LEDs with resistors already included (for engines etc), so you don't have to worry so much about balancing voltages from different coloured LEDs. They also do small flashing LEDs (for anti-cols) and I like their connectors. https://evandesigns.com/collections/hobby-leds I'm sure other suppliers can do the same. There is also quite a lot of good info on the web on how to create an LED circuit which is basically how I picked things up (I am no electrician!). For some applications, fibre optics are better but they still need an LED light source. Hope that helps.
  6. Thanks Neo, adding lighting certainly teaches you new skills! Top tip is to start with something you can fit lots of stuff into as space can become a premium depending on how you light and power it. Good luck!
  7. Hi folks, hope you're all keeping well. The wing tips required quite a lot of work to prep for lighting. Lots of thinning required to allow the electrics to fit and some careful carving of the lit areas that will be visible. You can also see the wingtip nav light in the prep stage as discussed previously. The good thing about EL panels are they are quite thin but you need to be quite conservative with how much you use as a 3v coin battery doesn't drive a large amount of it (typically <25cm for good brightness). I had to use two strips back to back so that the top and bottom illuminated but wasn't sure what it would look like side on or whether it would just short out! That arrangement made for quite a bulky wiring connection but luckily the Revell plastic is quite thick so can take a fair bit of hacking. Before assembly I sprayed the wing insides black as the thinness in some areas would easily let light bleed through and make it look like a ghost ship! Once trimmed to the right size, I added thin clear plasticard on top of the EL tape so that I could scribe in some of the distinctive panel lines you see on the wingtip slime lights. I scribed a single longer sheet of plasticard with the same lines so that even if they weren't quite perfect they would all line up when I cut each of the 4 sections (2 wings, top & bottom) out. I wasn't sure how to make sure the wingtip slime lights blended together (rather than look like 4 layers sandwiched together) so I used CA glue to help create the final shape and seal the EL tape (hoping it wouldn't short the ends again!). I'll need to lightly coat the lights with the right colour to stop them looking so green. On this photo you can also (just) see the fuel dump amendment I made by adding a squashed bit of copper tube and the modified ECM bullet which looked too small so I removed the original, added a longer bit of sprue and shaped accordingly. And of course the fingers crossed moment..... And breath. Next, it looks like I need to return to the forward fuselage area for some more rivet love.
  8. And so with the wings glued together it was time to fix the lighting. As with most of this kit, you start with a pretty blank canvas. Painting plastic to look like glass is quite a trick so if possible I revert to transparent plastic. First task is to cut the right shape from the plastic for which I used a sharp knife and some scraping tools. I next cut a chuck of plastic from an old toothbrush (as plastic sheet wasn't thick enough) and carefully cut it into a shape where one side fitted the gap where the light needed to go. The more accurate you can get this bit right the better. You can use paint to help define the edges but you run the risk of light bleed through. Once super glued in place you end up with this: Then I used a sharp pair of cutters to carefully trim the plastic to shape before sanding with ever increasingly fine sanding sticks until it is the right shape and a glossy finish. Finally, a light test! Next up is finishing off the wingtip formation lights which are somewhat trickier!
  9. Thanks for staying with this one chaps! Whilst I continue to finish and the top fuselage surface, in a rare moment of free time I thought I'd make some progress on the wings, or more the point, the wing lighting. F-15s have three lights on each wing and I've approached each differently for differing reasons. All of the light areas required considerable thinning of the plastic (which is quite thick on this kit) to make room for the light sources and especially the wiring. I also thinned the training edge while I was at it (a scale 4cm thick!). The wingtip formation lights need to match the other ones so EL tape was used. As the light has a top and bottom (and EL tape only lights on one side) I had to create two pieces then sandwich them together. This turned out to be a real pita! Mainly because trying to rewire them once you had cut them to shape was not easy. I had to get special small crimps that I wasted about 50% trying to find the sweet spot between the two layers of phosphorous. Any overlap and they short out and one layer as only 2mm wide! I also wasted a fair amount of EL tape on failed connections as I realised a bit too late that trying to solder the wires on when the crimps were already in place just melted the plastic surround and shorted the circuit again! So, solder wire to crimp, carefully apply both crimps ensuring no overlap, connect battery and pray! I also shortened the wires as they were too long and joined two into one to reduce the number of connectors in the fuselage. Needless to say this was a bit of a leap of faith as if they didn't light when reconnected that was a lot of time and effort wasted. (Luckily it did - huge sigh of relief!) The wing tip navigation light is fibre optic as an LED would be too bright in that area and it reduces the overall power consumption (not much but every little helps when your using low voltage). This will be lit by one white LED light (which I'm using to light other fibre optics) as I'm using coloured plastic rather than multiple coloured light sources. Finally, the wing-root light is an LED as its quite visible and bright on the real aircraft. The black is to cut out light overspill. In case your wondering (I know I would be!) the square plastic is there to act as a support to the top wing so that when I attach the pylons later it should reduce flex and promote a good fit. Well that's the theory anyway.
  10. Thanks Jake, spend a lot of time in your reference work!
  11. Hi everyone, hope you are all managing to stay safe (& sane!). Next up on the to-do list was scribing and rivet detail on the top surface as some of the Revell lines are wrong or missing, and there is no rivet detail. Just to add to the fun I decided to try and improve the somewhat 'soft' detailing around the vents. This was mainly helped with the addition of the F-15 vent set from GT Resin. Unfortunately they don't include the two main areas which is the one over the gun and the heat-exchanger behind the cockpit and these turned out to be a bit of a labour of love. I had to use thin plastic strips equally spaced, and cut-in the plastic dividers to get a grid shape. The one behind the cockpit had to be made up using different shaped plasticard pieces as the grid is a compound curve on the twin-seater. One or two attempts later (!) I finally got a version that looked ok on both then had to sand them carefully in, especially on the gun vent as the fuselage is curved. The GT Resin vents look like they are designed for the Tamiya kit but work well enough on the Revell kit and add some nice detail. The forward gun vent is too far back on the Revell kit so I decided to cut around it, including the area of the correct position, and reverse it. A bit of thinning opened the vents up and I'll back fill all the 'modified' vents with some mesh to avoid obvious holes. You can see where I've cut a hole where the airbrake is to allow access to the batteries. Both the Jake Melampy and Daco books are great references but the Daco one has a lot of bare metal photos which really helps. There's actually loads more rivets on the real thing but this is where artistic license and patience start to come into play. I also used Chucks work on his beautiful Aggressor F-15 to fill in some of the information gaps. I had to add some panel fastener detail and the vent between the engines. Different rivet spacing also adds interest (even though not strictly correct). Finally, the rear end got some similar treatment. The panel wash helped show where I needed to fill in some scribing errors, one or two of those! The hole forward of the fin attachment point is for the fibre optics. It's been quite a lot of work to get to this point but it certainly adds some much needed detail. I'm now almost at the point where I can (finally) start joining all this together. Next up is joining the wings together and adding lights.
  12. Many thanks Rob, that's the only problem with a blank canvas, lots of things to fill in!
  13. Finishing off the underside of the fuselage, the missile launchers have had some miniature magnets attached to allow the Aim-7s to be easily removed if required. Most of the early F-15s did not carry much in the way of weapons, usually an Aim-9J training round, so these will probably be left bare but it would be quite nice to load her up just to see what it would be like! I also drilled out and thinned the inlets at the bottom of the photo to make them a little more to scale and adding some tubing on the other side to give a sense of depth to the intake. Similar magnets are placed on the front launchers, I've yet to add the distinctive C-shaped brace . The grills on the avionics access bay have been drilled out to add more depth and a PE grill placed behind for effect. More latches have been added and of course an abundance of rivets! I also purchased the grills and vents set for the F-15 from GTResin. They are designed for the Tamiya kit but they fit the Revell one just fine. This is the grill underneath the rear of the nose section and helps add a nice bit of depth to the piece. Just need to tidy up a few mistakes ...ahem....before moving on to the much more visible top surface of the fuselage. No pressure!
  14. Stunningly detailed no wonder it’s taken so long!
  15. Most of the previous work was a precursor to tackling the fuselage halves. Using a mix of rivet spacing/styles I used the reference works by Jake Melampy and Daco, plus a fair smattering of Chuck's build pictures, to try and work out what rivet detail would show on an early F-15B. Needless to say the bare metal back end needs a fair amount of detail adding. The black wash is from Flory models and being water based is easy to remove. It's a bit more rough and ready than the pin washes but it shows up rough surfaces well so looks like I've got a bit of polishing off to do! I redid the insert at the bottom of exhaust petals and added the fairly visible plate that sits around the prominent vents on the tail booms. The vents also have a guide vane down the middle so I had to add that with some thin plasti-card. In a fit of AMS I also removed the plastic engine oil vents which were a bit clunky and replaced them with brass tubing which I squashed to about the right shape and then added some plasti-card detail. The JPS vent was a bit complicated to replicate so I just scored out the grill a bit more with a pin vice. The vents further up were drilled out and some PE mesh put behind the gap to add a bit of missing detail. The large black areas are where two additional NACA vents were located but these needed to be filled in. I then scribed some latches on the door panels. Looks like I have some more work to do on sanding smooth the surface and removing some heavy handed sanding work! Oh and then there's the re-riveting of the holes I just filled in .....it seems never ending!
  16. Many thanks and will do Thor, just adding some changes to the bottom fuselage half which I'll share soon. The kit is not bad at all, just lacking in detail so if you're happy to put the effort in it's a lot cheaper than the Tamiya F-15 kits and a lot closer to an actual B model.
  17. Many thanks for the very kind words Maru, more soon hopefully!
  18. And so the application of hundreds and hundreds of rivet holes continues ..... Having acquired a copy of the Daco F-15A book (which is superb by the way), I have come to realise that this bird is absolutely covered in the dam things. An element of artistic license will have to be applied in order to preserve sanity as in reality most are hard to see unless the aircraft in question has been heavily maintained or badly needs a paint job. To that aim I've adopted a 2-stage process where obvious rivets (like those on the base of the fin) are made a touch more prominent using a hand rivet tool whilst those usually obscured by paint are applied more subtly using a Rosie riveter tool. I've tried to follow the general lines of the aircraft but almost inevitably a fair degree is just what seems to look right. I've filled in the middle panel line on the central part of the fin as I believe his is just a solid piece of composite material (Boron?) and similar got rid of some spurious panel lines near the leading edge. I've also drilled out the light at the top rear of each fin ready for a light source. The tailplanes are a bit simpler but followed the same process. I also thinned the training edges of both control surfaces as they are a bit thick on the Revell kit. The panel lines are a bit wide on the Revell kit but I don't intend to use a very dark wash so shouldn't be that noticeable. I'm also trying to give the surfaces a more polished finish before priming as the Revell kit is a little rough. These have all been a little bit of a practise for the main event, which is both fuselage pieces, as quite a bit of work is required to lift the detail level on these items!
  19. Before any major assembling is done I decided to address one of the weaknesses of the Revell kit which is the lack of surface detail, specifically rivet detail. Now there is a fine line between too little and too much but in the right proportions it does add to the sense of scale and realism. The trick is to find a good reference (or three) and stop before it looks like the plane is made from nothing but rivets. Jake Melampy's F-15 book is a great start but for real detail you cannot beat the Chuck's epic walk through of his F-15C aggressor listed below: Tamiya F-15 Kicked Up a Notch I also had a few older F-15 references as I wasn't sure if the F-15A/B were different in panel line detail to the F-15C/D. Funnily enough the Revell kit follows the panel line details found in an old Squadron/Signals publication so not sure who copied who as the detail is slightly different to others, perhaps more recent! One thing is sure, this aircraft had a lot of rivet detail but not all of it would show up clearly as the photo (by me) below shows: Anyway, in keeping with my 80% mantra I'll change the panel lines if it's obvious and add detail where its relevant, so I've started the process with the wings. Now considering that there was the no rivet detail at all when I started, this kit is going to require hundreds if not thousands of these dam things. I'm desperately trying not to count them when I add them. While I was at it I also removed the wingtip slime lights and anti-collision/navigation lights - more of that later. Mostly done by hand using spacers marked on Tamiya masking tape, or the 1mm Rosie Riveter tool. Some of it may be too subtle so I'll probably need to go over the weaker lines again - what joy! This had better be worth it. The underneath area of the wing is generally poorly referenced but also rarely viewed on the model. Not sure about those panel lines at towards the trailing edge of the wing, are they for real or over-exaggerated rivet lines? While I was at it I also thinned the trailing edges of the wings as the are quite thick. Now working on the fuselage which has a whole load of additions and changes to be made - what fun!
  20. Hi themongoose, EL tape was bought from an ebay company called elpanelandtape but there are others out there. Regards,
  21. And so to one of the first major steps of this project, assembling the cockpit section which also means constructing the cockpit lighting. As you can see from the picture below the front cockpit is the Aires F-15A resin version trimmed to fit, and the rear cockpit is the Revell one, somewhat adapted to F-15B standards. The placing of both was mainly through lots of dry-fitting and the use of plastic blocks to prop the cockpit up. Each of the main instruments in each cockpit was fed by an appropriately sized fibre optic and routed to one of 2 LEDs. I also added some additional lighting optics on the side instrument panels for a bit of artistic license. Each of the 4 sidewalls and the HUD was fed by a separate fibre optic and connected to a green LED to add some colour interest. The foil is to cut out stray lighting. Luckily this is all on 1/32 otherwise it would be a bit tight what with the EL tape lights in there as well. The hole to the right is for a vent which I cut out and replaced with a scratch built one to give it a bit more depth. Once all connections, both electrical and fibre optic, had been made I glued the two halves together. Key was to ensure the cockpits were level and of the correct height to allow the canopy to sit properly with the seats and pilots in. Quick test to make sure it all still works! The front cockpit dial detail is from Aires and has some great detail on the acetate sheet placed behind the PE. The Radar and RHWR were created in colour separately and printed onto acetate to give those displays more colour and detail. The Radar and RHWR displays in the rear cockpit were done similarly but the rear instruments are a mix-match of acetate dials from other kits and dials copied from cockpit jpegs and printed onto acetate. My preferred choice was to have been some decals for the cockpit dials but whilst they looked good, they did not let enough light through. I doubt any F-15 pilot would actually be able to fly of the gauges in the back but they do at least resemble a cockpit! And one in the dark for effect. Quite glad the cockpit section has come together at last as it finally begins to take shape, might have to blank some of that excess light out though. That said, lots of work to do yet on the fuselage if the cockpit section is anything to go by! That's all for now but thanks for looking and wishing you all a Happy and Constructive New Year!
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