F-15C Eagle

by Scott Snow

Academy's 1/48 scale F-15C Eagle is available online from Squadron

Here is Academy's 1/48 scale F-15C Eagle.

This kit, which I purchased many years ago, had been sitting on the shelf and every time I passed it, it called, telling me that it wanted to be built. Ignoring it for so long, I finally relented after I purchased an eye catching set of Superscale decals. Since I had also acquired a Black Box resin detail set, I decided the F-15’s time had come.

Construction started with the cockpit, and I was more than a little concerned that the resin cockpit, designed for the Hasegawa kit, would give me fit problems. To my pleasant surprise, there wasn’t anything to worry about. By carefully sanding the excess resin under the cockpit floor, the whole assembly fit snugly between the fuselage halves and the ceiling of the nosewheel bay.

The level of detail in Black Box’s cockpit set is exceptional; however, the kit’s styrene cockpit isn’t all that bad either. It did turn out that the canopy would not completely close after I installed the resin ejection seat; even after sanding its base a great deal. I simply left it out until after I had finished painting the kit.

Academy’s kit is nicely done, with fine recessed panel detail, and overall good fit. I anticipated some problems where the forward and aft fuselages join, but there was no step, and seam cleanup was minimal.

Other problem areas I encountered during assembly were the left and right intakes, the wing to fuselage attachment, and both elevator slabs. Both intakes required extra work with the sandpaper and a touch of filler to blend with the fuselage.

The wings mate to the fuselage by means of a slot and tab attachment. The slots offer no internal bracing causing a weak joint, and the resultant seam does not coincide with actual panel lines. Consequently, I ruined a lot of surface detail cleaning up the seams. Re-scribing was easy; however. The problem with the elevator slabs is that the mating pins are short and way too small for the attaching holes in the aft fuselage. My solution to this little problem was to simply butt-join the elevators to the fuselage with superglue.

The styrene canopy consists of a separate windscreen and hood; both parts are thin and crystal clear. The canopy matches the fuselage contour perfectly.

The landing gear is highly detailed but there were numerous mold release marks that were hard to clean up.

The kit comes with a full complement of AIM 9 and AIM 7 missiles, jamming pods, and three external fuel tanks. To maintain the Eagle’s sexy lines, I chose only to attach the belly tank.

This kit includes both feathered and featherless exhaust nozzles. Since I was modeling an aircraft from the Oregon National Guard, the featherless exhausts were appropriate. Surface detail inside and outside of the nozzles is fairly well done, but the kit’s exhaust petal actuators were oversized and incorrectly shaped.

I replaced the kit actuators with ones of my own, made up of fine plastic rod and scrap photo-etched details.

I painted this kit using the Federal Standard colors (Testors Acryl) called for by Superscale to represent a “Mod-Eagle” paint scheme.

I think there is too much contrast between the two gray shades, but I was unable to find a picture that gave me a definitive reference.

I used Tamiya acrylic paints for the metal exhaust surfaces, and I was very pleased how well they represented a real metal surface. I glossed the aircraft with Future and then used Micro Sol and Micro Set to apply the excellent Superscale decals.

This turned out to be a really enjoyable build. The kit’s attributes far out weigh its liabilities and I recommend it highly. A good representation of America’s premier fighter aircraft has been long overdue in my collection, and the Academy F-15 fits the bill perfectly.

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2003 by Scott Snow
Page Created 11 February, 2003
Last Updated 17 March, 2004

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