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


chuck540z3

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Guest Peterpools

Chuck

Awesome work on the front office - your detail work and careful painting is simply superb.

Keep 'em coming

peter

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Gorgeous work, sir, but the seat belts looks a bit too clean to my eyes.

 

 

I totally agree- and thanks for that feedback.  The super clean look of the PE belts is a bit of a distraction to the worn look of the cockpit, especially with close-up photography under strong lighting.  I was meaning to spray them with dull coat and add a little pastel grime, but I was more motivated to take pics and post my work than finish the job properly.  Consider them a bit dirty now!  Still, no matter what I do with the seat belts, they will never be as nice as the HGW fabric ones I used on my last 2 prop builds.  Painted molded on seat belts and other painted PE belts would likely not look much better, so as we modelers often have to say on various stages of any build, they are "Good Enough" for me.  ;)

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Really great work Chuck, I admire your neat and clean detail work :)

 

If you have not finished your instrument panel, I would advice using 2k auto gloss lacquer for the glassy look in the IP dials. It would really look great with this amazing cockpit.

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First a little housekeeping.  After a suggestion above that the seat belts were too shiny, I sprayed them with some dull coat and added a bit of Tamiya pastels to tone them done.  I think they look better now.  Thank you Shaka HI!

 

 

Seatfix.jpg

 

 



Really great work Chuck, I admire your neat and clean detail work :)

 

If you have not finished your instrument panel, I would advice using 2k auto gloss lacquer for the glassy look in the IP dials. It would really look great with this amazing cockpit.

 

Thanks for the tip!  Although that's a great idea, I always fill each dial with a droplet of Future with a small brush.  It's easy to do, easy to clean up and the result looks just like glass.

 

Now a mini-update.

 

It turns out my Aires replacement resin cockpit I bought from a hobby store in England on ebay has still not arrived after 4 whole weeks of waiting.  I have no doubt the store actually mailed the item, but they must have got the address wrong or something and it's now lost in the mail.  I've waited long enough and after a bit of communication with the seller and ebay, I asked for my money back last night and actually got it this morning.  That's the third "dispute" I've had with an ebay seller and I have won them all, so that's why I continue to shop on ebay for model parts.  With my money back, I just ordered another Aires cockpit from Sprue Bros, who is my go-to on-line model part supplier, so I should be working on a new instrument panel in about a week.

 

During my last two builds that were both Trumpeter (1/32 A-10A & P-38L), I had to re-scribe and re-punch every single panel line and rivet, because the kit detail was very inconsistent and all over the place.  After a lot of work and lots of sanding, here's an example of how clean the plastic came out after painting with Alclad, which hides nothing!

 

Final23.jpg

 

 

While this Tamiya kit is MUCH better than those kits, I have decided to do the very same thing with this build.  For ease of handling, it is much better to do as much as you can to the main fuselage and wing parts before you glue them together.  It also gives you an opportunity to correct panel line and rivet detail.  This Tamiya kit has the same "error" as their F-16 kits, which has a deep panel line around the pitot tubes.  This panel line isn't real at all.  What it represents is the staining around the pitot cover, so it should be filled in.  The forward blade antenna on the bottom should be cut off as well, but I was unsure of that rectangular panel just above it.

 

Pitot%20Cover2.jpg

 

Checking my pics of this subject, you can barely see it, which turns out to be a  Electronic Warning Warfare System (EWWS) antenna, which is on either side and on the top of the fuselage in front of the windscreen.  Note the large pitot cover.

 

 

EWWS%20Panel3.jpg

 

Checking the F-15 bible, the Modern Eagle Guide by Jake Melampy, I didn't see any reference to it, so I considered deleting that panel last night as well since you can hardly see it on the Aggressor.  BTW, this book has been out of print for a few years now and some copies have sold on ebay and Amazon for over $200 a copy!

 

Eagle%20Guide%201.jpg

 

Well, am I ever glad I didn't!  Guess which book is better than the Modern Eagle Guide?  The Modern Eagle Guide, 2nd Edition!- which I just received today....

 

Eagle%20Guide%202.jpg

 

While the first Eagle Guide is really good, this new version is awesome.  Some of the pics and references are the same of course, but 80% are new pics that cover early jets better, Aggressors and export jets, including Saudi, Singapore and Korean Eagles.  The book is heavier with more pages, with more images and the printing quality has improved.  While the old book did not really reference the side EWWS antennae with photos, the new book sure does....

 

EWWS%20Panel2.jpg

 

Another area of the F-15 that is really hard to find references for is the top fuselage.  This is particularly important for this kit, because it has a lot of F-15E detail on top which is wrong, so some of it needs to be filled in while new detail is added.  Here's another example, although this will be the last pic of this book I will post to protect Jake's copyright protected pics......

 

Fuselageback1.jpg

 

 

If you would like a copy of this great book, it can be ordered here- or you can buy my old one for $199?  :whistle:  Also, I do not know Jake personally nor do I get a royalty for promoting his book- not even a free one.  However, I can't imagine building an F-15 in detail without it.

 

 

Reid Air Publications

 

 

That's it for now boys.

 

Chuck

Edited by chuck540z3
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Providing any feed back in this forum is very difficult for someone like me. The quality of work displayed here is extremely intimidating so your response is very reassuring. Thank you.

I totally agree!....Harv

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Well boys, I DID ask for it about a month ago! (see #4)

 

 

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.

 

 

 

And I still would like similar feedback if you think I'm headed in the wrong direction.  If you look at a modeling subject long enough, you sometimes can't see stuff that others find obvious, so I appreciate any suggestions.

Edited by chuck540z3
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