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.