Revell 1/32 F-15B, 74-0141, NASA 836

[wetsellery]

I bought a second hand Revell 1/32 F-15C, kitnumber 4759. It came in this box :



But inside the box I found all the parts for a two-seater, except for the left and right forward fuselage halves and the seats. The conformal fuel tanks and 2 ASAT missiles are also in the box.

Most of the parts were loose in the box, some of them were already painted.


I had no idea what to do with this two-seater, untill I saw pictures of the NASA F-15B, S/N 74-0141, NASA number 836.

It seems that every picture of this airplane shows some differences, I've decided to go for this version :







But without the test equipment under the belly :



The seats look like those found in early F-16's, with "horns" on both sides. I will use the seats from CMK or True Details. The IP's and wheels will come from partsrparts. Exhausts will be from CAM or GTresin.
The forward fuselage parts will come from Revell or a fellow modeller.
The gold stripes will come from an AM decal sheet, the NASA "swooshes" will be homemade (or at least I will try to make them myself).

I'm no F-15 expert, please feel free to point me in the right direction to turn this kit into a F-15B.

[wetsellery]

No sprue shots, all the parts were cut loose when I got the box, the sprues were no longer there.

I started with the bottom half of the fuselage. The sides and wheelbays were glued in place :



Needs a little filler and some sanding, the NACA ducts will be filled with placticard and putty :





The wings, stabilizers and fins all have two halves. These were glued together, the gaps filled with putty and the trailing edges sanded :





I'm having no luck in finding pictures of F-15B's. All the walkarounds deal with the D model. But I have an old Tamiya 1/48 F-15A and a Monogram F-15C. Would any of those be a good reference ?

Sincerely

Pascal

[wetsellery]

With the help of a couple of fellow modellers, I now got some very nice pictures of this aircraft. Thank you very much guys.

I'm a lousy fotographer, but I'll try my best to show the results of today's work.

I filled the NACA ducts with pieces of plasticard, the rest of the gap was filled with CA glue and sprinkled with flour. The glue and the flour combo gives a quick drying filler that is also very strong.

The duct nearest to the camera has been sanded :



There's a rectangular piece of plastic - with two rectangular holes in it - that's not on the real aircraft, this had to go :



I used my dremel to sand off the piece. The heat of the sanding disc melts the plastic into the rectangular holes, so in one move I got rid of the excess plastic and the holes were filled :



There are supposed to be 2 pieces like this on in the Revell box, I'm missing one :



Fortunately these parts look different on the real aircraft, so I made the first of 2 out of a sheet of plasticard. The panels were scribed and six holes were drilled to simulate the screws (these are very visible on the real aircraft) :

[wetsellery]

The JFS (jet fuel starter) exhaust (round hole with louvres) looks like this :



But with the help of some fellow modellers, I found out that the louvres were removed and that the tube of the exhaust is visible on real aircraft. The ten louvres on both sides of the exhaust seem to be there on the real NASA F-15B, but I'm not sure as I haven't find a picture that shows this part of the aircraft.
For now I will leave those louvres in place.

I drilled a hole where the exhaust was and inserted (dryfit) a piece of plastic tube :





Under each engine nacelle there a thing that looks like a blade antenna. Are those fuel dump vents ? :



The intake trunks (is that the correct word, or am I talking elefants ?) had big seams on both sides. After a lot of sanding I poured latex paint in the trunks. It's the first time that I used this technique but the result looks very good :





Sincerely

Pascal

[wetsellery]

More filling and more rivetting :





Still not 100%, but it looks good enough for the underside of the plane.

Made some more panels that come where the holders for the sparrows are on a regular F-15 :



The first one is glued in the body :



Some gaps need to be filled but it's flush with the fuselage :




Sincerely

Pascal

[dupes]

Dang, man...some good work on this one! I'm assuming that you got the front fuselage parts from the Revell D/E kit. Do they actually mate up with the C fuselage? I haven't compared sprues for both kits (but I can if it would help) to see if the rear portion is identical or not.

As far as B/D differences, I'd was going to dig out some Hasegawa kits in 1/48 to see what changed, but it turns out they never did a dedicated "B" model - just A, C, D, E, J, DJ, and a TF-15. No luck!

[deafpanzer]

Holy smokes! She has to be HUGE... 1/32?!?!? Can't wait to follow the whole thing!

[Leon]

WOW!!!!Your doing some awesome work Pascal and it is looking good.

[wetsellery]

Thanks for the replies.

Oct 25, 2014 16:48:44 GMT -5 dupes said:

Dang, man...some good work on this one! I'm assuming that you got the front fuselage parts from the Revell D/E kit. Do they actually mate up with the C fuselage? I haven't compared sprues for both kits (but I can if it would help) to see if the rear portion is identical or not.

As far as B/D differences, I'd was going to dig out some Hasegawa kits in 1/48 to see what changed, but it turns out they never did a dedicated "B" model - just A, C, D, E, J, DJ, and a TF-15. No luck!

I bought another second hand F-15C, this time it was a single seater as advertised. But the front fuselage parts don't mate up with the two-seater fuselage. I had no luck ordering the front fuselage parts from Revell, the kit is from 1982.

Fortunately I managed to find the necessary parts in the US :

I got a cardboard box in the mail. This contained the parts that I ordered from partsrparts : partsrparts.homestead.com/F15parts.html

The detail is excellent and there are no bubbles in the resin. IP's, sideconsoles, rear instrument shroud and wheels. The IP's fit the Revell cockpit like a glove :



It also contained the nose parts that were missing in the kit :



Thank you Bruce, the quality of work is first class.

[wbill76]

A big project for sure, looks like you're off to a good start!

[venom1]

Man, what a sweet project! Great job so far Pascal, can't wait to see this one come together!

Cheers,

Sam

[wetsellery]

The plastic landing gear of the kit is very weak. The metal replacement is a lot stronger, but I didn't like the way it was supposed to be fixed to the underside of the fuselage. No hole to insert the leg of the gear, it's just butt glued.

I drilled a hole in the underside of the gear bay :



Glued a piece of 4 mm plasticard to inside of the bay and drilled the hole through the plasticard :




The legs of the main gear were also drilled and a piece of brass tubing was glued in the hole :




The brass tube can then be inserted in the hole in the wheel bay :



It's offset a little bit to the outside of the fuselage, just like the landing gear of a 1/1 F-15 :



The metal nose gear is a poor copy of the plastic one. So I made a groove in the curved part of the leg, glued a bent metal pin inside the groove, filled it with CA and flour and sanded it smooth :



Sincerely

Pascal

[deafpanzer]

Excellent tip especially making the landing gear stronger... I will need to try that on my first wingy build in 2015. Thanks!

[wetsellery]

Update :

The resin engine fans were sprayed with primer and silver from a spraycan using this template I bought for my homework in school (30 years ago !). The template leaves a nice clean ring for the CA-glue :



The fans were then glued to the backside of the intakes :




And with a generous amount of Revell Contacta both intakes were glued to the fuselage :



The tube for the JSF received a piece of plasticard to give it some extra strength, the little black plastic squares are there to cover the big vents in the underside of the fuselage. The white pieces of plasticard on both sides will make the joint between both fuselage halves stronger and prevent the sides of the upper part from bending towards the inside :




Sincerely

Pascal

[Leon]

Making good progress Pascal! Nice tip on using the plasticard.

[deafpanzer]

Looking great... bet its nice to have that metal template as I am sure it is far better than typical plastic templates!

[wetsellery]

Thanks fellas !

Actually it IS a plastic template, a transparent pink-purple one

Sincerely

Pascal

[deafpanzer]

Too funny it kinda looked metallic to me!!!

[wetsellery]

Update :

The two fuselage halves (top and bottom) have been glued together, the gaps were filled with CA + flour and Tamiya Extra Thin Cement :






The hole for the canon was filled :



The triangles at the front of the air inlets fit poorly. I can blaim Revell, but it's my own fault. All the rivetting (and dropping the fuselage parts a few times on the floor !) has somewhat altered the shape of the plastic fuselage parts.


A bit of dryfitting and some plastic strips ... :






... and they fit nicely :



I added some more rivets :



And thinned the plastic around the large holes that hold the engines :




This makes these holes a little better so I can glue the exhaust tubes INSIDE the holes instead of butt glueing them to the outside of the holes. To do this I enlarged the diameter of the tubes with plasticard :



A dryfit (the inverted U-shaped cutouts will be opened up) :



The diameter of the exhausts was sanded smaller so it fits inside the holes :



Work has started on the cockpit. The throttles were cut out and will be moved more to the inside. Thanks for the tip Bruce :



The resin seats are narrower then the Revell ones. The sidewalls were widened with plasticard :




The rear bulkhead of the cockpit is covered with fabric with a diamond shaped stitching in the real aircraft. I made a new rear bulkhead and scribed the pattern :




Sincerely

Pascal

[Leon]

Making good progress Pascal! Nice work on the engines and rear bulkhead.

[deafpanzer]

Fantastic process... keep it coming!

[wetsellery]

Thanks for the replies

Did some work on the cockpit. The rear one was modified a few weeks ago :



But then I decided to go into overdrive. Used PE-saw and my Dremel to remove some plastic of the area in front of the front instrumentpanel. The floor was lowered and boxed in with plasticard. The sides will also be boxed in after I've added some tubes and wires :



The floor is now in 3 parts. The sides are a little higher up, the part in the middle is lowered :





This middle part will receive my rudder panel construction. The 4 holes in each panel were drilled :



I need 3 for both kits, so I made all 3 at the same time :



The sidewalls of the cockpit will be widened with more plasticard :



I also drilled out all the holes for the instruments :



Both seats got their rails and I've started to add the first details.

Front seat :



Rear seat :



Both seats dryfitted in the cockpit hub :



The seats are attached to the rear bulkheads in a different way. For the front seat I've made 2 square holes that will hold the brackets :



Sincerely

Pascal

[wetsellery]

The space between the seats and the sidewalls still wasn't good. So I cut off the sidewalls :

"Look mama, it's a convertible" :





Glued everything back together, the sidewalls have been moved 1 mm inward :



Now the space between the chairs and the sidewalls is OK :



Sincerely

Pascal

[Leon]

WOW!!!!! Nice work on the pit Pascal .Looking really good.

[deafpanzer]

You are making huge improvements to the cockpit... worth the effort especially at that scale!

[wetsellery]

Thanks guys !

Not much spare time lately, but I've managed to spend an hour behind my modelling desk.

The F-15 has a some tubes, wires and things to the left and right of the pedals. With plasticard, sprue and soldering wire, I made this. The left one is ready, the tubes on the right one need to be cut to size :





A dryfit shows the little details :



But when everything is installed, very little will remain visible :



The sides of the bathtub are rough, these will received very thin pieces of plasticard.

Sincerely

Pascal