Academy 1/144 F-15A | Peter's scale armed forces

It’s been some time since an aircraft has been featured on this site, so here’s one completed last year. It’s LS’s ancient 1/144 F-15A, later packed by Academy/Minicraft (and perhaps a few other companies. Inside you will discover a rather schematic scaled-down version of the famous aircraft. Panel lines are engraved, but are deep and wide, especially so in the vertical stabilizers.

There are no pylons whatsoever. Armament is limited to 4xAIM-7 Sparrows, there is no centerline hardpoint/wetpoint with fuel tank, and no trace of Sidewinders at all. No cockpit is provided, there is a transparent canopy that covers the nothing underneath. No probes or antennae whatsoever, and you can forger about the dropped flaps on the boxart.

: Upper fuselage and nose section

: Reverse of the same sprue, note wings are single part with the upper fuse

: A closer look at the nose section with the missing cockpit

: Lower fuselage, vertical stabs, burner cans

: Bottom of lower fuse, note shallow wheels wells

: Decals for a high-viz Kadena-based bird and canopy

Undercarriage is anemic, covers are thick, and the model would be a serious tailsitter if you had it on its “feet”. Although colorful decals would certainly set the scheme off I wasn’t enthusiastic about the Academy decals, so I went for a low-viz scheme.

Bit first – some old-fashioned gluing-filling-sanding. Since gear doors did not fit the respective openings I decided to simply fill them with a mixture of baking soda and superglue. The main wing pylons are fashioned from Dragon sprue tags. I cut the noses and tails from two Academy smart bombs from the A-10 kit and made the centerline fuel tank.

: Single color scheme

: Should be easy, right?

: Note filler and scratch-built wing pylons

: which were also puttied to conform.

: A look from above

: Two salvaged 1/72 Academy GBUs were used to build the centerline tank

Adding some color… The bar you see passing through the cockpit opening is copper wire to simulate the Angle of Attack probes.

: Revell enamels were sprayed for all camo colors

: Spots were masked using UHU tack

: Then Tamiya tape provided masking for the engines

: which were sprayed MM and Alclad II metalics

: 5 different shades of them 🙂

Decals were cobbled together from various sources – mostly a bunch of 144th spares donated from a fellow modeller – and included Dragon and Trumpeter transfers, as well as custom-drawn and printed decals that served as a dedication for the receiver. The centerline wet point and the outer Sidewinder pylons are from a Dragon weapons set, the inside ones are scratchbuilt. Sidewinders are also Dragon.