Tamiya 1/48 F-15J

[EagleOnyx]

Hey guys, I'm building a Tamiya 1/48 F-15J from the 201st Squadron, Chitose Air Base Fighting Bears! We recently flew with this squadron at Red Flag Alaska and I wanted to build a jet with their markings to commemorate it. This Tamiya kit is OK. The fit isn't too bad and required only a few strips of styrene to help fill some gaps and a little bit of putty. I would have liked the surface to have had more rivet details on the commonly accessed panels but they are basic representations. Bay 5 is entirely too basic so I'm closing the canopy to cover it because I don't have the scratch building expertise to make it right. I got a raised step on the upper surfaces of the wing joint for some reason, but it will require more sanding than I want to do to correct it so I'm leaving it. They should have engineered the kit to form the joint at the real panel lines, but they bisected all the panels up there. The instruments are just decals but with the canopy closed it will look fine to me. F-15J's have raised grounding strap thingies on the radome, but this kit doesn't represent that and I don't care enough to try to add it. I was happy to notice they included a separate Left Vertical Stab counterweight for the F-15J as they do not have the big fat EWWS Antenna up there like American F-15's do. They also include an option to remove the rear Band 3 ICMS antenna on the right rear stinger and replace it with an antenna-less stinger. I forgot to cut it off and replace it so mine still has the Band 3 antenna. Meh. Anyway, here it is midway through construction:




I like the toothpick picture because I always thought the F-15 landing gear looks like toothpicks for such a large fighter jet.

[grover]

haha, yeah. Compared to navy planes, the Air Force planes do look like they are sitting on sticks. Looking nice mate

[vyper1]

Looks solidly built, wish I knew what you were on about with EWWS & ICMS but look forward to seeing this completed

[EagleOnyx]

Sorry, EWWS and ICMS are countermeasures systems, electronic warfare jamming and whatnot systems.

[EagleOnyx]

Ok, so I have an update on the J. I've done 99% of the painting, panel line wash and most of the weathering. It still needs some attention to the absolutely terrible and incorrect exhaust cans and things here and there but it's mostly done. I really wish I got aftermarket exhausts but I couldn't find any that were designed for this kit. It's going to piss me off every time I look at it I just know it. I used Testors Black Acrylic wash for the panel lines and grime and hated almost every hour of it. I think it turned out ok but I should have used an enamel wash over the Future clear instead. I also looked up this tail number and couldn't find any pictures of it with this squadrons tail art. Anyway here are the pics

[UKguyInUSA]

Wow....beautiful work so far on that "Eagle" mate!

Cheers

Martin

[vyper1]

Looks great EagleOnyx I see a lot of tiny decals, I bet they were a chore to do Anyway it looks super and I hope the nozzles don't bug you too much

[EagleOnyx]

Thanks guys! there are a lot of decals but the kit contained less stencils than what the real aircraft have. The Japanese actually stencil all the panels with the panel numbers, such as 3L or 125R, its like graffiti all over the damn things. I'm glad they didn't include all the stencils the real jets have!

[Goose]

I'm currently building this kit too.

hope my result will be as good as yours. Just a question, the wheels wells are white no?

I think i ll do the one with the eagle tail art.

see you

[EagleOnyx]

thanks! Yeah the wheel wells and wheels are gloss white on the real jets. I like the eagle tail art a lot more but I worked the guys that fly the Fighting Bears so that's why I chose this one.