1/48 Revell F-15A

Gallery Article by K Diamond on July 12 2012

 

 

This is the old Revell F-15A kit, not to be confused with the Monogram kit which is often boxed under the Revell or Revell-Monogram label these days.  When comparing the two, its easy to understand why the Revell kit is no longer in production while the Monogram kit carries on. 

 

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The kit itself is typical of Revell kits of that era with raised panel lines, bare cockpits, soft detail, etc...  So, its not surprising that a lot of work and spare parts were required to bring the kit up to par.  First order of business was to rescribe the whole kit.  After that, I replaced just about everything that could be replaced on this kit, which included the cockpit, stores, gear and antennas.

The kit cockpit was not only bare, but it also blanked over the Bay 5 area.  To replace it, I used a modified spare Academy F-15E pit.  I removed most of the rear cockpit from the Academy pit, and replaced it with a scratchbuilt Bay 5.  This was then pretty much forcefully crammed into the Revell body.  The ejection seat is from True Details.

The exhaust was both feathered and poorly detailed, which I needed the opposite of both for my build.  I replaced the kit pieces with spares from the Monogram kit.  The Monogram kit also provided the centerline tank I used.

Spare Academy parts provided the bulk of replacement pieces.  The kit tail antennas were identical and basically just blank shapes.  These were replaced by the appropriate pieces from the Academy kit.  The landing gear was just atrocious, so I replaced them as well, even though the Academy parts represented gear present on later F-15 models.  The pylons, missile rails and AIM-9s were all from the Academy kit as well.  The AIM-7s used Academy bodies, but the nose cones were replaced with Hasegawa pieces.  The Academy nose cones were too blunt, so they needed to be changed.

Some scratchbuilt parts included the AOA probes and formation lights, which I used needles and aluminum tape for each respectively.

The decals appeared almost as old as the kit itself.  I used a Microscale sheet that was thick, glossy, and the glue visibly came off in the hot water.  The Microscale sheet was complemented by one from the Italeri F-15 kit.

So the build started off just as the Revell kit, but ended up as a mix of Revell, Monogram, and Academy parts with decals from both Microscale and Italeri.  It was a lot of work, but I enjoy having it displayed on the shelf.

K Diamond

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Photos and text © by K Diamond