Pascal D

Hi, I tried to send you a PM, but you can't receive them. Are the 1/144 Space Shuttle decals still available ? I would like to order 2 sets. Sincerely Pascal

Hi Manfred, I'm a big fan of this build. It takes quite a while to read all 131 pages, but it is very interesting and I'm learning a lot. Have started my first ever 1/144 Revell Space Shuttle stack build, using your build (and the one from Crowe-t) as a guide. Hope to post photos of my progress soon. Keep up the stunning work. Sincerely Pascal

Excellent Joel ! You turned this kit into a beauty. Sincerely Pascal

Not much spare time lately, but I've managed to spend an hour behind my modelling desk. The F-15 has a some tubes, wires and things to the left and right of the pedals. With plasticard, sprue and soldering wire, I made this. The left one is ready, the tubes on the right one need to be cut to size : A dryfit shows the little details : But when everything is installed, very little will remain visible : The sides of the bathtub are rough, these will received very thin pieces of plasticard. Sincerely Pascal

The space between the seats and the sidewalls still wasn't good. So I cut off the sidewalls : "Look mama, it's a convertible" : Glued everything back together, the sidewalls have been moved 1 mm inward : Now the space between the chairs and the sidewalls is OK : Sincerely Pascal

The sidewalls of the cockpit will be widened with more plasticard : I also drilled out all the holes for the instruments : Both seats got their rails and I've started to add the first details. Front seat : Rear seat : Both seats dryfitted in the cockpit hub : The seats are attached to the rear bulkheads in a different way. For the front seat I've made 2 square holes that will hold the brackets : Sincerely Pascal

Did some work on the cockpit. The rear one was modified a few weeks ago : But then I decided to go into overdrive. Used PE-saw and my Dremel to remove some plastic of the area in front of the front instrumentpanel. The floor was lowered and boxed in with plasticard. The sides will also be boxed in after I've added some tubes and wires : The floor is now in 3 parts. The sides are a little higher up, the part in the middle is lowered : This middle part will receive my rudder panel construction. The 4 holes in each panel were drilled : I need 3 for both kits, so I made all 3 at the

And thinned the plastic around the large holes that hold the engines : This makes these holes a little better so I can glue the exhaust tubes INSIDE the holes instead of butt glueing them to the outside of the holes. To do this I enlarged the diameter of the tubes with plasticard : A dryfit (the inverted U-shaped cutouts will be opened up) : The diameter of the exhausts was sanded smaller so it fits inside the holes : Work has started on the cockpit. The throttles were cut out and will be moved more to the inside. Thanks for the tip Bruce : The resin seats are narrower then the

Thanks Jacob. Update : The two fuselage halves (top and bottom) have been glued together, the gaps were filled with CA + flour and Tamiya Extra Thin Cement : The hole for the canon was filled : The triangles at the front of the air inlets fit poorly. I can blaim Revell, but it's my own fault. All the rivetting (and dropping the fuselage parts a few times on the floor !) has somewhat altered the shape of the plastic fuselage parts. A bit of dryfitting and some plastic strips ... : ... and they fit nicely : I added some more rivets :

Very nice work Joel. The cockpit and intakes look great. Sincerely Pascal

Update : The resin engine fans were sprayed with primer and silver from a spraycan using this template I bought for my homework in school (30 years ago !). The template leaves a nice clean ring for the CA-glue : The fans were then glued to the backside of the intakes : And with a generous amount of Revell Contacta both intakes were glued to the fuselage : The tube for the JSF received a piece of plasticard to give it some extra strength, the little black plastic squares are there to cover the big vents in the underside of the fuselage. The white pieces of plasticard on both sides wil

Nice project and very nice progress. Thank you for the very good pics. If you don't mind I will use your pics as reference for my F-15 builds. Sincerely Pascal

Nice project and very nice progress. Thank you for the very good pics. If you don't mind I will use your pics as reference for my F-15 builds. Sincerely Pascal

The plastic landing gear of the kit is very weak. The metal replacement is a lot stronger, but I didn't like the way it was supposed to be fixed to the underside of the fuselage. No hole to insert the leg of the gear, it's just butt glued. I drilled a hole in the underside of the gear bay : Glued a piece of 4 mm plasticard to inside of the bay and drilled the hole through the plasticard : The legs of the main gear were also drilled and a piece of brass tubing was glued in the hole : The brass tube can then be inserted in the hole in the wheel bay : It's offset a little bit to the

Had some problems with the intakes. Those of the two-seater got one coat of latex and looked like this : The intakes from this kit received 2 coats of latex which gave a very rough finish with lots of small bumps. After a few hours of sanding I sprayed a coat of white, but the paint from the spraycan had all kinds of dried pieces of paint, the finish looked like sand. A few more hours of sanding gave this result : After two coats of white putty from a spraycan the surface is finally smooth : Sincerely Pascal

The metal landing gear is an exact copy of the Revell landing gear. Main gears have a one piece strut with 3 parts that need to be glued to the strut.

The exhausts from GT Resin have arrived : Detail is excellent : And a metal replacement for the plastic landing gear : Sincerely Pascal

Holmes and Gregg, thank you very much for your replies ;)

Thanks Eric, That helps to see the position of the short speedbrake and longer spine. The first wing tip has been glued and the gaps were filled (with CA glue, flour and putty) and sanded : A bit more filling and sanding is required to get the seam smooth : It wasn't easy to get the curvature (aerofoil ?) of the wing on the wing tip, but I'm glad it worked : Sincerely Pascal

Thanks for the help guys. I will order a couple of landing gear sets from Scale Aircraft Conversions. The single seater was delivered to NASA in 1975, before that time it still had the bigger spine and short speed brake. The second photo in my first post shows this aircraft in 1980, it clearly has the larger spine, don't thing that they changed the speed brake (from short to long) without modifying the spine.

I bought the side consoles from Bruce (partsrparts). Maybe you can ask him if he has another set ?

First order of business is to try to alter the shape of the wingstips. I cut a piece of plasticard an used my Dremel to reduces the thickness of the plasticard : This way I can slide the piece into a slot that I made in the wing : This gives a stronger bond then "butt-gluing" it to the wing. Slid in place it looks like this : The joint will need some filler and sanding and the outher edge needs thinning. But before I glue this piece to the wing I need to know if the panellines are correct. Drawings and pictures (and the GWH kit) have a panelline that I marked in pencil, Revell made

That's interesting Eric. I've looked at the full size pictures, but the 2 shades of blue are hardly visible. Do you mean that the big blue stripe is matt on one side of the fuselage and gloss on the other side ?

Another NASA F-15 ? Yessssss !!! Why ? Well I bought a second hand Revell 1/32 F-15C, or that's what I tought. The box contained an incomplete F-15D/E two-seater. The biggest problem was that both the forward fuselage halves were missing. So I bought another Revell F-15C (a REAL F-15C this time), hoping that I could use the forward fuselage halves from this kit to build the first one. But these parts are a little different and can't be used - without modification - on the two-seater. Luckily Bruce from partsrparts provided me with the missing parts, so I had two more or less complete kits.

Thanks for the replies guys :woot.gif:/> Yesterday I got a cardboard box in the mail. This contained the parts that I ordered from partsrparts : http://partsrparts.homestead.com/F15parts.html The detail is excellent and there are no bubbles in the resin. IP's, sideconsoles, rear instrument shroud and wheels. The IP's fit the Revell cockpit like a glove : It also contained the nose parts that were missing in the kit : Thank you Bruce, the quality of work is first class.