[Jeff V.]

I recently posted this on another forum and a fellow member asked me to post it here as he thought you guys might like it.
Here is my pride and joy. This started out as an inexpensive HET F-15 eagle kit. When I got the kit in I could not believe how poor it looked. The wings were covered with a bubbled covering and there were problems with the fiberglass fuselage, proving once more that you get waht you pay for! On the plus side this was the only fiberglass F-15 that was in a size I could handle, around 42 inches long if I remember correctly. There exists some incredible turbine powered kits which are perfectly to scale and look amazing, however they are at least twice this big.
The original kit has no provision for landing gear at all and is intended to be launched from a bunge system, but I wanted some decent looking retracts and I found out they really do not exist for a model this size, unless you go with wire landing gear. Anyway, I found some that with some custom machining and modifying could be made to work. I had a LOT of problems cramming them in the tiny fuselage. There is literally millimeters of clearance. The next problem was devising workable gear doors, which was acheived after much trial and error.
Next up was installing flaps (not an option in the kit). This was pretty straight forward.
I used a silver metal foil airbrushed with several light coats of walnut wood stain to recreate the light goldish engine covers.
I also scratchbuilt a full complement of sidewinder and sparrow missles.
Lastly, I had a set of 1/16 scale custom dry transfers made up by Aeroloft designs of a plane from the late 1970s stationed at Holloman AF base.
When completed the plane weighed 8.5 pounds and has a better than 1 to 1 thrust to weight ratio. It is controlled by a JR 2.4 9 channel system.
All in all, it took almost 400 hours of which the majority of the time was R&D for the landing gear.
First up is a picture I found on the net of the model after assembly as I did not take any pictures of the kit originally out of the box.
best wishes,
jeff

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[mdeevl]

Beautiful !!!!!

Are the panel lines transfers as well, or painted on ?????

She is really a work of art

Doc

[m1ashooter]

Outstanding. Do you have a UTUBE of her in flight????

[Jeff V.]

Thanks for the kind words! The panel lines are done by painting the whole plane dark grey then puting on all the panel lines with .4mm tape. After I painted the light blue grey camo scheme on the plane I peeled the tape off. With this method you get a tiny indentation of the panel line as well as the line itself. Lastly, I lightly over painted the lines to soften their look.
best wishes,
jeff

[Jeff V.]

Outstanding. Do you have a UTUBE of her in flight????

No flying video at this time although I hope to have one in the future.
best wishes,
jeff