1/48 Revell/Monogram F-15E Strike Eagle

Gallery Article by Kelly Quirk

 

This is the fantastic offering from Revell in 1/48 scale, the F-15E Strike Eagle.  With a few exceptions I'll point out, it is built pretty much straight from the box.

Faithful readers of the ARC Discussion Board might remember a post I made several weeks ago about this kit flying off my air compressor and plummeting to my floor, taking a healthy bounce off my wood bar stool on the way down. The main damage was the left intake was crushed on the end, the right vertical stabilizer was sheared off at the top, and numerous dings and scratches in an otherwise nice paint job.  At first I thought it was trash, but encouragement by others had me take a second look.  I finally decided I could fix it, and even despite a most generous gesture by Dave Roof in
sending me a new kit, I did just that.  (I'm turning your kit in to an F-15I Dave, thanks!)

 

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The intake was rebuilt from small strips of sheet styrene and superglue, and sanded back to shape.  The stabilizer was glued back on, and the crack filled with white out fluid, as were the deep gouges in the fuselage.  All the bad spots were touched up with paint, and now you really have to look hard to see any of the damage at all.  I was pretty pleased with myself! I'm kicking myself in the rear now (so is Steve Bamford!) for not taking pictures of the damage.

I wanted to break up the monotonous gunship grey paintjob, so I first preshaded all the panel lines in flat black, then shot a lightened coat of gunship, then I masked off several different panels and shot them varying shades of gunship grey.  The overall effect looked satisfactory to me.  In a sad turn of events, the preshading virtually disappeared when I shot a coat of future on it.  I hoped it might reappear when I put the final flat coat on, but it did not.  But, you can still see the varying panels.  A wash of burnt umber brought out the panel lines.

As I said, most of the model is OOB.  I did add the "glass" to the Lantirn pods, which are strangely not represented on the kit.  I made these simply with thin clear plastic, painted on the back side with Tamiya clear red.  When pressed against the dark grey paint, they take on a realistic appearance (to me anyway).  I also added six Mk-20 cluster bombs from the Hasegawa weapon set, and just so my jet wouldn't look like everybody else's, I added a third drop tank on the belly pylon, and only used two of the AIM-9 Sidewinders.  I also dropped the flaps, the same way our own Uncle Rick
described.

The cockpit, wheel wells and landing gear are straight OOB, and I used the kit decals which went on with no problems.

My final thoughts: 
Overall a fantastic kit, it looks every bit as good as my Hasegawa F-15C, and cost less than half the price. I'll end this with a bit of advice: If you really screw something up late at night, just put it down and go to bed. I'll guarantee you it won't look nearly as bad in the morning!

Kelly Quirk

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Photos and text © by Kelly Quirk