12th TFS, 18th TFW, US Air Force, Japan 1981
I bought the Academy F-15D Eagle without knowing anything about it. It’s not a great kit. The surface detail is nice, and the cockpit and other details are ok, but there are a few problems. The humps over the engines in the rear fuselage are not accurate in that they have a sharp junction with the fuselage, whereas in reality they blend together smoothly. The fit of the kit is generally poor — the worst example is the front to rear fuselage join which required copious amounts of Milliput to fill the large gaps. The seats did not fit in the cockpit tub and had to be trimmed and then rammed in. On top of this, the decals are very fragile, out of register, and translucent, but at least they are thin (but too thin for me at the time, hence the haphazard placement). I finished this kit as an early F-15D so that the kit exhaust cans, complete with feathers, could be used. Despite all this, I was fairly pleased at the time with this effort, but I wouldn’t build another one. I’ve got a couple of Hasegawa F-15s in the stash and you can see that my Revell F-15E is nicer. The finish is Humbrol enamel and I didn’t apply an oil wash to the airframe of this model. No aftermarket was used on this model.
Year bought: 1996 (Antics, Guildford)
Year built: 1997 (Send Marsh, Surrey, UK)
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Jon's Models 