Undercarriage assemblies
These are very neat and have those screws to attach the wheels to their legs and all works well. Small panels slip in to cover the screws. The parts are well detailed as is and don’t really need much in the way of extra detailing.
I did add some lenses to the nose gear as they are very obvious features of the F-15.
The tyres are the rubber-vinyl type and I know that not everyone is a fan of these. For me, I quite like them and they are easy to turn into realistic rubber-looking tyres. See your SMN Techniques Bank for some HD video demos on how you do this.
Back end and this exposed ‘Turkey Feathers’
Tamiya have done a very good job recreating a busy looking pair of reheat/afterburner jet pipes. They have the rods and petals associated with the so-called ‘Turkey Feathers’ and when using different shades of metallic paint come up very well. I used Humbrol Metal Cotes here (Polished Steel, Aluminium). Nowadays, I would probably use the Alclad2 metallics that are my favourites and as ever, the choice is yours.
The interior of the jet pipes almost always stain heavily as the ceramic lining reacts to the extreme temperatures during reheat (afterburning). The internal detail is raised and so you can recreate the effect by layers of careful dry-brushing with off-white or cream-coloured paint. Here’s a photo of the real thing – see what I mean?
Painting
At the time I built this model Tamiya had just released a rattle spray paint can for the Gunship Grey (TS-48) camo colour and I couldn’t resist using it given the size of the model. It sprays beautifully, the only problem of course is that the perfect, satin smooth finish isn’t smooth enough for decals and so I still had to gloss the model for the decals and then matt it all back afterwards.
You now have a huge choice of paints to use and if doing another I would definitely spray with my airbrush and use one of the excellent acrylic paints like the ones from Tamiya, or MRP.
The interior bluey-green colour is well represented in the Hannants Xtracolor range (X-159 McDonnell F-15 Interior Blue/Grey enamel) and I used that here.
Decals
Tamiya decals at that time tended to be a bit thick (and still are today) and I did struggle to get them to bed down into the recessed panel line detail. You do get plenty of stencil markings though and so, if you can get a highly glossy finish before applying them, you should fair better than I did. Some of my issues were definitely because I tried to preserve some of that nice satin spray can finish (mistake!) before applying the decals.
Weathering
Obviously, as time has passed, the F-15E’s aren’t always in pristine condition (The ones based at RAF Lakenheath in the UK at least) and so, if you search your references and especially the internet, you’ll see plenty of airframes with heavily chipped upper surfaces and the Zinc Chromate Yellow showing through.
For me, I went the clean route this time as you can see.
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