1/32 F-15A Streak Eagle WIP.

[danimalmagic]

1/32 F-15A Streak Eagle WIP.

Hi all, I have to say I was finally glad to get stuck into this project as it has been on the cards for quite a while.
I will be using the 1/32 Tamiya F-15C as a base for the conversion with the addition of some resin parts and scratch built detail.
This project will be another adventure with Alclad as the Streak Eagle has some very striking differences in the NMF as the images below show.



Good accurate sources of information and more importantly images are not easy to find but I have compiled the following list from various sources and articles of the modifications needed.

I will no doubt pick up more as I go along but I think the following will do for a start.

1. Burners are fully feathered and we have this nicely covered with the GT resin set and kit parts
2. The cockpit will utilise the Early F-15C Aires resin tub using an Aires ESCAPAC seat.
3. The rear avionics bay has the TAC/TEWS/ECM boxes removed in the actual Streak Eagle, other specific parts for recording telemetry were added back in including video recording equipment but without reference material it's hard to know exactly.
4. The Ejection seat needs to be changed to an Escapac IC-7 version without the canopy breakers, from the information I have the Escapac for the A-4 will be the best/nearest option.
5. Airbrake, the one fitted on the Streak is much shorter this is highlighted in the 1/48 Hasegawa kit and in other sources, brake fairing also needs to be checked, modify as required.
6. Gun Port, this needs to be covered up as obviously the Streak had no armament, this is basically nothing more than a plate patch.
7. Wheels, this is something that may be an issue, the Tamiya F-15C we have has the later wheels, we need the earlier F-15A wheels with 12 holes in the hub. I have found the perfect wheels from http://partsrparts.homestead.com/F15parts.html but I cannot get hold of Bruce to get UK postage cost.
8. There is no HUD fitted to the Streak.
9. The Pitot tube will need to be modified as again the one fitted to the Streak is different, again that should not be an issue, copy the Hasegawa example.
10. The arrestor hook is completely removed and the associated recess covered.
11. Duraluminum nose cone
12. Sealed gun bay vents for cooling air and gas ventilation
13. Sealed round vent on the starboard side near the rear canopy rail
14. Eliminate UHF/VHF radio antenna blade on upper fuselage spine
15. Sealed Sparrow missile attachment point, close all openings
16. Eliminate strake over rear Sparrow missile attachment points???????
17. No pylons on wings or fuselage
18. Wing flaps permanently up (actuators were eliminated to save weight)
19. All formation and navigation lights sealed on wings (including low intensity panels on wingtips)
20. Remove the starboard side lower aft avionics heat exchanger exhaust duct and intake door
21. Remove low intensity navigation light panels on sides of aft fuselage (framing remains)
22. Vertical stabs with EWWS (or similar) antenna housings on both tails (pre-record attempt with tail patch marking
23. Vertical stabs with small mass balance on both tails instead of EWWS housings
24. Coloured navigation lights on upper trailing edge of both tails sealed
25. Eliminate taxi and landing lights from nose gear
26. Forward nose gear door closed while on the ground (prior to record attempts)
27. Forward nose gear door open while on the ground (for record attempts)
28. Forward main gear doors closed while on the ground (prior to record attempts)
29. Forward main gear doors open while on the ground (for record attempts)
30. Add "over the shoulder" video camera and mount next to the port side of the Ejection seat
31. Add large white UHF blade antenna on rear canopy deck
32. Fill Kit Chaff and Flare Dispensers
33. Fill Holes for C/Line Pylon
34. Access hatches on top of the engine humps and the JFS starter intake and exhaust, 2 not 4.
35. Remove bulges on the vertical tails for the rudder actuators as they are late model configuration and too exaggerated.
36. Remove the Stiffener panels on the horizontal stabs.
37. Front landing gear below shock absorber need to be rounded not square.
38. Front instrument panel displays/panels removed:- HUD Control panel
    - TEWs display,
    - Radar scope
    - Armament Control Panel
    - Standard G-Meter
39. Port Console panels removed:

- All Navigation related panels
- IFF and TEWs panels
- Radar Panel

1. Starboard Console panels removed:

- All TEWS, Navigation , and Compass related panels

Points 31-33 will be virtually impossible to remove neatly, I have some good cockpit layout drawings so I know where they are, I suspect these will be best left alone.

 

I am estimating around 7 weeks to complete with probably two weeks of that devoted to the Alclad NMF.

The first place to start is the cockpit or more specifically the rear equipment bay, the Streak had a fair bit of equipment stripped out of her to save weight, basically if you did not need to fly the plane it was removed.
In the rear electronics bay there are 6 black boxes on the Port side these are related to the various counter measures and combat systems (TAC/TEWS/ECM). From what I have researched these were all removed so I need to replicate the same, this meant modifying the nice Aires resin tub to incorporate some of the kit parts.

This is the standard Aires resin tub as is with the port side electronics un-mounted, we do not want the boxes, I thought of trying to modify the resin part but that would have been a whole sack of stupid. ïŠ

Starboard side, this area for the most part concerns all the various circuit breakers so I will leave pretty well alone unless I find something specific.

Fortunately the kit part allows for the electronics boxes to be assembled individually so I decided to graft the mounting frame from the kit to the resin tub.

Initial test fitting and all looking good.

I have some images of the frame that these electronics boxes sit on from the Verlinden Lock On Book but I wont post due to copyright etc.
With these images in mind I decided to add some of the wiring loom that runs along the top of the boxes. It may well be this was removed in reality to save weight so I will not fix it in at the moment, it needs a little more work but once painted it should work well.

Next I added the various guides that locate the individual boxes.


That is it for now, hoping to make some bigger strides next week but at least we are off to a start.

If any of you know if Bruce at http://partsrparts.h...m/F15parts.html is still in business please let me know.

Regards.

Danny
www.modelmasteruk.com

[danimalmagic]

The next step was to remove the raised detail from the side walls of the kit parts.

After. (not a 5 minute job)

On the port side above the frame for the electrical boxes there is some visible ribbing on the fuselage wall, I have replicated the same.


I had already made a start thinning down the tub walls, this was pretty straight forward, the fiddlier bit was the large step of excess resin on the bottom of the tub. This has to go in order for the front gear well to fit properly.

A little more tweaking yet but that is essentially the tub pre fitted with the Fuselage and Gear Well.

Time to get some paint on, this is real early days, I have painted the forward console and a number of other parts but I will come back to this next week.

One thing about the Tamiya kit is the fact that the front landing gear leg has to be fitted in place before the forward section can be assembled. The kit supplies some rather nicely detailed metal gear so the first step is to polish up the damper surface ready for masking and spraying, I will continue on with the front U/C next week and that rather nasty ejector pin mark.  The lower section of the gear strut that the wheel mounts to needs to be modified as well, the section on the kit part is square and should be round.

The last thing done was the following little annoyance, the port side electronics door had come away from the sprue leaving some nice holes to fill, just to add insult there is also a nice casting flaw to fill as well.

 

Regards.

Danny
www.modelmasteruk.com

Edited July 17, 2015 by danimalmagic

[allthumbs]

You're off to a great start Danny.

 

That landing gear leg polished up nicely. Can you describe your technique for achieving that shine?

 

Rich

[Azgaron]

Wonderful! Nice work so far!

 

HÃ¥kan

[LSP_Kevin]

Cool project, Danny!
 

If any of you know if Bruce at http://partsrparts.h...m/F15parts.html is still in business please let me know.

Bruce is actually a member here, under the handle of, well, Bruce. Shoot him a PM.

Kev

[blackbetty]

will watch closely!

[danimalmagic]

Hi Rich, I just use a thin strip of abrasive paper, quite fine then use a thin piece of cloth with some metal polish, does not take long.

[danimalmagic]

Thanks Kevin, that is handy to know.

[danimalmagic]

F-15A Streak Eagle Week 2.

Hi all, I have been pretty flat out this week, I had hoped to get back on the cockpit and get that finished but instead I have been tackling the various modifications required. Nothing really too exciting in this report just allot of the obligatory filling, sanding and preparations.

I will start with the front nose wheel, I got a real helpful comment here regarding the profile of the bottom of the fork leg so I have tweaked to suit.
The front landing gear supplied is for a later F-15, the profile of the bottom of the leg should not be square, we also have the nasty pin mark, the square section is what is being held in the vice.

The area of the pin mark should actually be a tie down ring so that was a simple fix with some wire, from there I have just filed and sanded the bottom section to a more rounded shape.


With that done I could get the paint on, please note that there will be no landing lights fitted, these were removed on the streak. I need to paint in the wiring cable and do a little wash/weathering but essentially it is done.

I would have thought they would have removed the cabling for the landing lights but as per the following image it is still there at this point in time.

Next up are the vertical tails, I have got some good advice here which I have checked and modified accordingly. First of all there is a reinforcing plate at the top of the tail on each side that needs to be removed. There is also a large bulge for the for the rudder actuator that needs to be sanded away as well.

Before I dealt with the rudder area I filled the internal detail with Cyanoacrylate as the sanding would leave this area paper thin.

Nothing to arduous there I just had to keep re scribing as I went so as not to lose the detail and repeat for the other 3 sides.

While we are on the subject of the vertical tail I still have to modify the mass balances, I have had some more good pointers here and some excellent images supplied that show the tail in two different options, neither is right or wrong it just depends on what point in time you are building the Streak Eagle to represent.
Long story short, during the record attempts both tails had the small mass balances fitted, F-15 tails are apparently interchangeable.
For some reason when it came time for PR and Photos the Port mass balance was changed back to the ECM Pod, I have images of both set ups.
I still need to modify this area but that depends if we are going to decal her fully then we need the ECM pod as the decals are not there on the tails during record attempts. The only decal relating to the Streak during record attempts is the big one on each side of the nose.

 

More to come.

[danimalmagic]

Next up I needed to fill in some surface detail, the two forward access hatches need to go and there is some detail between the nacelles that also needs filling.


Same for the Starboard side of the cockpit, chaff and flare holders


Slime lights on wing tips, but keeping the rivet detail.

Gun port vents need to be filled as well.

[danimalmagic]

Next up I need to sort out the airbrake, the very early F-15A had a much smaller airbrake, these were shorter and much more rectangular. They were changed as the small airbrake raised up to high and caused to much instability, a longer brake was then fitted that raised up at a lower angle and achieved the same braking.
For the most part this is not to bad but the reinforcing detail and the spine shape has to be changed.

First up I have cut the brake at the estimated position, I have good reference here and the Hasegawa kit so it should be pretty close. Ignore the grey line off filler as I initially scribed it in the wrong place, my bad. ïŠ

Next I need to fill the tapered section of the airbrake then sharpen the existing surface detail to give us the rectangular profile.

This just leaves the reinforcing plate of the original brake and the spine to sort out, note the sharpness of the spine on the reinforcing plate. I will be looking to create a much rounder and less acute profile for the spine.

With a fair bit of sanding I got the air brake section close to what I wanted, some of the rivet detail still needs a touch more filler.


I have reduced the airbrake thickness as well so it sits more flush to the fuselage.

[danimalmagic]

In between all the filling and sanding I moved onto fitting the Rhino Models seamless resin intakes, intake face painted and fitted.

Next I need to cut away the intake lip to accept the resin intakes.

Test fitting of resin intakes to rear sections.


A little bit of filling required to finish but all in all quite nice.

Rear gear bays are a good fit as well.

[danimalmagic]

Next I moved on to the GT Resin Burners, there are a few minor flaws to rectify but overall they will do the job nicely.

Flame ring and compressor face painted.

Fitted to flame tubes, I still have some more weathering and washes to do.

I need to do a bit more repair work to the nozzles before they can be finished.

I have finished off filling the wing tip slime lights but there are still a number of things left to do.

Initial filling of intake lip, a little more Mr Surfacer and this will be complete.

Next issues to tackle will be the removal of the rear Sparrow Launch Rail, from what I have gleaned this is gone on the Streak.

The same can also be side for the front but I suspect I will just fill the detail in.

Holes for the C/Line pylon will also need to be addressed.


Needless to say there are a great many other bits and pieces going on but I think that will do for now.

I will continue to chip away at my master list bit by bit and we will see where we are next week, in an ideal world I would like to have the cockpit finished and fitted.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Regards.

 

Danny.

Edited July 19, 2015 by danimalmagic

[ClumsyDude]

Danny, great work and some top research. I can see how much time has gone into this one, keep it up!

 

Jim

[LSP_Kevin]

Fabulous work, Danny! Terrific stuff.

 

Kev