McDonnel F-15E Strike Eagle

And now for something completely different, at least for me. What I foolishly thought would be a quick out-of-the-box build: the Italeri F-15E Strike Eagle with Print Scale decals. 

Assembly started with the cockpit, detail rather vague here, misplaced the front instrument panel so replaced it from the spares (and it turned up shortly afterwards...). Airbrake took some convincing to stay put nicely 

Cockpit completed and installed, fuselage closed up, using lots of pressure. Fit is indifferent all-over. Intakes are really unconvincing so decided to add intake ramps. 

Intakes installed, huge gaps. Same story for wings, difficult to remove as well. Why Italeri decided to engineer things like this... 

Installing gear doors and more seams to cope with. Restoring holes drilled in CFT's, as these proved unnecessary. Sigh. 

Intake ramps are a simple and worthwhile improvement. And more seam filling,  

Unfortunately the kit has no wing tanks. Had to have a few so dug something useful from the spares box. Matchbox F-16 and EA-6B wing tanks were the best match, but the F-16 tanks are pretty useless as they are squarish.  

Combined both tanks and adding strips to achieve roundness... 

Lots of filler and sanding later and they are round enough. Used a drill for a lathe. Italeri apparently modeled a prototype with a different pylon arrangement, so pylons had to be scratched as well. 

Figuring out the correct position on the wing tank pylons, which were shortened to match references. 

Installing corrected pylon arrangement, used the kit pylons as base material. 

Ready for closing up the cockpit. Italeri moulded the canopy rail separately, which I hate as there is no way to avoid damage to the canopy itself due to the sprue gate. 

Canopy masked and installed, tail feathers on. The port stabilizer kept on falling off due to the excellent fit (not...) 

And we are into the painting stage! Primer coat on and looking OK. 

Slighty lightened gunship gray radome and metal engine panels sprayed. So far so good. 

Masked and on to the main coat. With a single color I expected a quick spraying job but the Mig Jimenez acrylic behaved badly, splatters all over so off it goes again... 

Finally wrestled it on but result very grainy.... 

Sanded smooth and touching up raised panel lines. Kit is now getting a nicely worn look, although not quite in the way I had foreseen. 

In the meantime I used some spare bombs to make GBU-12 LGB's. I only had two correctly sized bomb shapes so this was going to be a lightly loaded Eagle. 

GBU-12's finished, much easier than expected. Added AMRAAM's from the Hasegawa set and kit Sidewinders. 

For a change, the gloss coat went on very well, doing it thickly appears to be trick. 

Needed the kit decals for the stencils, but these proved useless as they were milky. Luckily I could scan and print them on decal sheet, but in the process lost the yellow of the slime lights, so painted that first. 

Stencils are on, but looking too black to my liking, should have printed them in gray. 

So more spraying to mist them over. Problem solved and adding more tonal variation as a bonus. Had to improvise the refuelling receptacle surround from thin grey strips of decal. 

Print Scale decals next. Very thin and delicate but managed to get them all on in one piece. 

Adding stripes to the missiles and decals done! 

Some more weathering with pastel powder, followed by a matt coat. 

Demasking... and aargh, paint mist under the canopy! Carefully pried it off to fix that... 

canopy back on with minor damage, exhausts installed. 

On the home stretch, installing gears and ordnance. Really done with this kit by now... 

And the final detail: a scratch-built tailhook. The F-15E has no fairing between the exhausts so this was removed including the kit's impression of the tailhook. 

And done. Result OK-ish, but boy what a dog this one was. I recommend looking elsewhere for your Strike Eagles!