F-15C Eagle Finished

Well, I was hoping to have posted more WIP episodes of this build, but this did not happen. Work just kept going on with the Eagle without many photos being took right until the end. What surprised me was that when I checked on my database of my kits, I discovered that this model was started in October 2012 and it had been sitting for nearly eighteen months waiting to be painted and finished. I have too many projects like this sitting on the shelf or in the cupboard.

So, lets bring you up to date with what was left to be done and how it finished. As I was saying in the previous post on this project, the exhausts and pilot seat were in a small box packed away somewhere. After a few attempts to find said box, I gave up and ordered some resin exhaust to replace the missing ones. There was a spare seat in the kit so this was easily dealt with. So work carried on and the model was primered and painted in the two shades of grey. Once a couple of coats of gloss clear were done, the process of adding the decals started, even though there was not as many as in the kits decal sheet, still took some time due to the multi layered decals on the sheet.A coat of matt clear was sprayed to seal the decals and work carried on with the detail painting and final assembly. 

It was at this stage I discovered that part of the undercarriage assemblies were in the same box as the exhausts and seat. I did not want to build the Eagle in a flying pose, so I guessed that the box with these parts had to be in one of the larger boxes put up in the loft after our house move. So I printed off the location sheets for all of the kits and started to go through the boxes in the loft. After about a hour up there searching, I came across the missing box of parts for the Eagle and brought it down. Work now continued to finish the Eagle up to the point where I had to fit the engine exhausts. 

I now had this dilemma whether to use the resin replacement exhausts or the kit ones. After a bit of toing and throwing, I opted to fit the kit ones. I did not think the model would be good enough to use the resin ones on, so they will be saved to use on another Eagle for which I will add a resin cockpit and etched details.

So, here is the finished model. At the present time, there are no missiles on the Eagle because Hasegawa did not supply any with it. You need to purchase one of their weapon packs to arm this model. I do have the required set, but at the moment I want to save them for my Hasegawa Phantom that I have in my stockpile. For an old kit, 1980's vintage, it has come out okay. The replacement decals have given the aircraft a cleaner, uncluttered look compared to the Strike Eagle I built from the same period using the kit decals. The good thing about TwoBobs decal sheets is that you can do two aircraft from one sheet, so another Eagle will appear at some point in the future. So after more than two and a half years from the start, this Eagle has spread its wings.

Arado Ar 240C-2 Nightfighter WIP #1

This Revell kit had been eyeing me up from the cupboard for a few months begging me to start on it. So last month it won me over and I got it out and started building it. The kit is a straight forwards, uncomplicated 1/72nd model with basic cockpit detail. So far, it has gone together without any hitches and progressed fairly quickly when I manage to work on it. As normal, the fuselage is split in half along the length, but this kit is also tooled with the front and rear sections of the fuselage as separate halves to. Not sure why as the model is not that big in this scale.

Below, the first photo is from test fitting the model together, which show that the fit of the parts were very good and I knew there would be the minimal amount of filling required later. This example of the kit dates back from 2008, though I do not know when the original tooling was done, but the panel lines and joints are very clean and precise.

The next photo is once the wings and tail plane have been glued to the fuselage. I must say that the amount of filling actually done to this model was minimal, which was very pleasing to have a model like this on the table. It is not often this happens with the lower price band of kits. 

Now a quick jump to the photos taken yesterday evening. The canopy and nose glass got masked up and glued in place before giving the model a couple of coats of white primer. I first gave the undercarriage bays a couple of coats of Tamiya's XF-22 RLM Grey. The instruction said to paint them Light Olive, but my tub of this had dried up and the Tamiya colour was the closest I had in my draws. These areas were masked up and the whole model received a few coats of Mr Hobby's RLM76 Light Blue. Once this colour was dry, the camouflage pattern was done using Mr Hobby's RLM75 Grey. That was the stage I was at last night when the photos were taken. So far today, the model has been given a coat of Johnsons Klear and I have started laying down the decals on the model. More to come soon.