RichieB

Hi Geedubelyer and thanks for watching, this version of the exhaust nozzles has the turkey feathers still in place.
Good point though the original lip would have looked out of place (probably a scale 1.5 cm all round). However, I think I've left enough to give the impression of a small lip but we'll see!
 
Thanks Maru, I hope your patience will be rewarded (eventually)! 

I am sure it will.
 

Hi Geedubelyer and thanks for watching, this version of the exhaust nozzles has the turkey feathers still in place.
Good point though the original lip would have looked out of place (probably a scale 1.5 cm all round). However, I think I've left enough to give the impression of a small lip but we'll see!
 
Thanks Maru, I hope your patience will be rewarded (eventually)! 

Super  updates.
Still following  with enthusiasm. 
 

Interesting to see this come together.
The peek down the intake trunking looks good.
 
It's not easy to tell from your second to last image but do the exhaust nozzles have the turkey feathers modelled? 
 
Also, a bit late for you now, but the real aircraft has a step from the end of the nacelles to the engine doughnut. Possibly something to consider if you should ever make another. 
 
I'm eager to see this all in place. Keep at it. 

Thanks for the info Bruce, this kit didn't come with a canopy so I bought a cheap 'Bicentennial edition' which did and that one is clear luckily.
Of note, the bicentennial kit doesn't have any weapons or even the cradles for the sparrows!

About time for an update...
I've reassembled both intakes having cut them in half to making seam removing and painting easier and added the engine face at the rear. Have to say that bit worked out quite well and made the internal painting and a bit of light weathering (these were pretty new jets after all) pretty straightforward. Sorry the picture is not great, trying to find a depth of field where everything was in focus was the trickiest bit! 
 

 
In test fitting the resin exhausts I found the Revell kit back-end to be a tad wide creating a small but noticeable step. My somewhat crude solution was just to file the back end down a bit and rescribe any lost detail. I've also been spraying primer as I go to make sure there aren't too many surface flaws and yes, I found quite a few!

 
The exhausts themselves are going to be sprayed a blend of Alclad metallics but first a bucketload of masking.

 
The exhaust internals where weathered using panel line wash and sand coloured filters to capture the slightly tinged ceramic look of the PW engines. I then added some soot pigment trying to mimic the images I'd seen the Jake melampy and DACO books. The bands on the outer  rings are two shades of Alclad Aluminium tinged with some Tamiya weathering pads. The rear exhaust has a clear hollow rod attached which will assist in creating the in-flight mode. This will need careful reinforcing as a lot of weight will get transmitted through this rod.

(Very) Slowly coming together!

About time for an update...
I've reassembled both intakes having cut them in half to making seam removing and painting easier and added the engine face at the rear. Have to say that bit worked out quite well and made the internal painting and a bit of light weathering (these were pretty new jets after all) pretty straightforward. Sorry the picture is not great, trying to find a depth of field where everything was in focus was the trickiest bit! 
 

 
In test fitting the resin exhausts I found the Revell kit back-end to be a tad wide creating a small but noticeable step. My somewhat crude solution was just to file the back end down a bit and rescribe any lost detail. I've also been spraying primer as I go to make sure there aren't too many surface flaws and yes, I found quite a few!

 
The exhausts themselves are going to be sprayed a blend of Alclad metallics but first a bucketload of masking.

 
The exhaust internals where weathered using panel line wash and sand coloured filters to capture the slightly tinged ceramic look of the PW engines. I then added some soot pigment trying to mimic the images I'd seen the Jake melampy and DACO books. The bands on the outer  rings are two shades of Alclad Aluminium tinged with some Tamiya weathering pads. The rear exhaust has a clear hollow rod attached which will assist in creating the in-flight mode. This will need careful reinforcing as a lot of weight will get transmitted through this rod.

(Very) Slowly coming together!

About time for an update...
I've reassembled both intakes having cut them in half to making seam removing and painting easier and added the engine face at the rear. Have to say that bit worked out quite well and made the internal painting and a bit of light weathering (these were pretty new jets after all) pretty straightforward. Sorry the picture is not great, trying to find a depth of field where everything was in focus was the trickiest bit! 
 

 
In test fitting the resin exhausts I found the Revell kit back-end to be a tad wide creating a small but noticeable step. My somewhat crude solution was just to file the back end down a bit and rescribe any lost detail. I've also been spraying primer as I go to make sure there aren't too many surface flaws and yes, I found quite a few!

 
The exhausts themselves are going to be sprayed a blend of Alclad metallics but first a bucketload of masking.

 
The exhaust internals where weathered using panel line wash and sand coloured filters to capture the slightly tinged ceramic look of the PW engines. I then added some soot pigment trying to mimic the images I'd seen the Jake melampy and DACO books. The bands on the outer  rings are two shades of Alclad Aluminium tinged with some Tamiya weathering pads. The rear exhaust has a clear hollow rod attached which will assist in creating the in-flight mode. This will need careful reinforcing as a lot of weight will get transmitted through this rod.

(Very) Slowly coming together!

About time for an update...
I've reassembled both intakes having cut them in half to making seam removing and painting easier and added the engine face at the rear. Have to say that bit worked out quite well and made the internal painting and a bit of light weathering (these were pretty new jets after all) pretty straightforward. Sorry the picture is not great, trying to find a depth of field where everything was in focus was the trickiest bit! 
 

 
In test fitting the resin exhausts I found the Revell kit back-end to be a tad wide creating a small but noticeable step. My somewhat crude solution was just to file the back end down a bit and rescribe any lost detail. I've also been spraying primer as I go to make sure there aren't too many surface flaws and yes, I found quite a few!

 
The exhausts themselves are going to be sprayed a blend of Alclad metallics but first a bucketload of masking.

 
The exhaust internals where weathered using panel line wash and sand coloured filters to capture the slightly tinged ceramic look of the PW engines. I then added some soot pigment trying to mimic the images I'd seen the Jake melampy and DACO books. The bands on the outer  rings are two shades of Alclad Aluminium tinged with some Tamiya weathering pads. The rear exhaust has a clear hollow rod attached which will assist in creating the in-flight mode. This will need careful reinforcing as a lot of weight will get transmitted through this rod.

(Very) Slowly coming together!

About time for an update...
I've reassembled both intakes having cut them in half to making seam removing and painting easier and added the engine face at the rear. Have to say that bit worked out quite well and made the internal painting and a bit of light weathering (these were pretty new jets after all) pretty straightforward. Sorry the picture is not great, trying to find a depth of field where everything was in focus was the trickiest bit! 
 

 
In test fitting the resin exhausts I found the Revell kit back-end to be a tad wide creating a small but noticeable step. My somewhat crude solution was just to file the back end down a bit and rescribe any lost detail. I've also been spraying primer as I go to make sure there aren't too many surface flaws and yes, I found quite a few!

 
The exhausts themselves are going to be sprayed a blend of Alclad metallics but first a bucketload of masking.

 
The exhaust internals where weathered using panel line wash and sand coloured filters to capture the slightly tinged ceramic look of the PW engines. I then added some soot pigment trying to mimic the images I'd seen the Jake melampy and DACO books. The bands on the outer  rings are two shades of Alclad Aluminium tinged with some Tamiya weathering pads. The rear exhaust has a clear hollow rod attached which will assist in creating the in-flight mode. This will need careful reinforcing as a lot of weight will get transmitted through this rod.

(Very) Slowly coming together!

About time for an update...
I've reassembled both intakes having cut them in half to making seam removing and painting easier and added the engine face at the rear. Have to say that bit worked out quite well and made the internal painting and a bit of light weathering (these were pretty new jets after all) pretty straightforward. Sorry the picture is not great, trying to find a depth of field where everything was in focus was the trickiest bit! 
 

 
In test fitting the resin exhausts I found the Revell kit back-end to be a tad wide creating a small but noticeable step. My somewhat crude solution was just to file the back end down a bit and rescribe any lost detail. I've also been spraying primer as I go to make sure there aren't too many surface flaws and yes, I found quite a few!

 
The exhausts themselves are going to be sprayed a blend of Alclad metallics but first a bucketload of masking.

 
The exhaust internals where weathered using panel line wash and sand coloured filters to capture the slightly tinged ceramic look of the PW engines. I then added some soot pigment trying to mimic the images I'd seen the Jake melampy and DACO books. The bands on the outer  rings are two shades of Alclad Aluminium tinged with some Tamiya weathering pads. The rear exhaust has a clear hollow rod attached which will assist in creating the in-flight mode. This will need careful reinforcing as a lot of weight will get transmitted through this rod.

(Very) Slowly coming together!

Unbelievable scratchbuild - Bravo!

Unbelievable scratchbuild - Bravo!

One of the fixes you'll need to adress is the canopy. The only F-15 that had a tinted canopy was the demonstration a/c, the box top one you have.  Revell issued the kit at one point with a clear canopy and so did Revell of Germany.
 
Bruce
(from Parts-R-Parts)

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. 

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!

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. 

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!

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!

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!

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. 

Your lighting, especially the formation lights look brilliant. Just right.
I've found with some brands of old toothbrushes the colours can fade to very faint shades with age.
I used to scavenge broken brake light lenses from minor car accidents for red clear material, and even managed to find part of a broken green dome
from a doctor's emergency light, which were far more colourfast. 
But now while I still use my stash, I give them a thin brush of Tamiya clear colour which makes them a bit more bold,

Richie,
 
SUPER work  updates. The lights et al looks AMAZING. 
and Gary did good by you too.
 
Keep up  the EXCELLENT workmanship .
 

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!