Italeri 1/72 F-15E Strike Eagle

ITALERI 1:72 F-15E STRIKE EAGLE

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: 20 December 2003

Kit Details:

Italeri No.166 F-15E Strike Eagle 1:72

Aircraft History:

The F-15E Strike Eagle began from a McDonnell Douglas funded development for the Enhanced Tactical Fighter to replace the F-111, which saw a TF-15A modified heavily for air to ground operations. The "Strike Eagle" was chosen in favour of its competing F-16XL. Further development was done on an F-15B which proved to be a highly potent air platform. F-15C and F-15D aircraft were also modified before the F-15E was given the nod and became essentially the second generation F-15 Eagle. Interestingly enough the name "Strike Eagle" which was chosen by McDonnell Douglas was not actually adopted and aircrews chose nicknames like Beagle (for Bomber Eagle) and Mud Hen to use on occasion.

The F-15E introduced a whole new series of updates, most notably avionics, with the rear cockpit employing four CRT displays for weapons systems, radar and enemy tracking. The aircraft has been fitted with conformal fuel tanks which can each hold 723 US gallons of fuel as well as six attachment points for stores, without the loss of any weight loading. The Strike Eagle has the reputation of being the world's best strike platform, while still being able to mix it with the best in air to air combat, perhaps the definitive multi-role combat aircraft.

The Kit:

The kit comes packaged in an end opening Italeri box with a fiery looking Strike Eagle on the front. The sprues float loose in the box, as they always seem to, resulting in some scratches on the clear parts. Two large and two small sprues house the 65 light grey injection molded parts. There is a very minor amount of flash evident which needs only a cursory going over with a sharp blade and a few ejector pin marks to remove, mainly on the intake interior, stores and undercarriage. The surface detail is quite good and the panel lines are engraved*, although it must be said that they are not overly crisp. Another small sprue houses the two-part canopy which is commendably thin and clear (but scratched!).

* A couple of readers have reported that the panel lines are in fact raised not engraved. This could well be the case as they are so fine it is almost impossible to tell even with the fingernail and magnifying glass treatment. I shaved some pencil on the model and then wiped away with a cloth and some were left behind (indicating being caught in a groove) and in areas where I have sanded panel lines are still visible, hence leaving the review as engraved, but they could well be raised - I will have to let you decide!

Instructions:

An 8-page A5 sized foldout strip makes up the instructions complete with history overview, modelling information, sprue diagram, six fairly straight forward assembly steps and decal placement four-view diagram (that is, no painting information). The painting information is alphabetic symbols keyed to the ModelMaster range with paint name and FS number supplied where possible. A couple of dark grainy photographs of the aircraft, including one on the ground that appears to be being refuelled. To get the painting instructions for the external scheme you need to look on the bottom of the box where colour chips and a four-view diagram is supplied.

Construction:

This commences in a typically basic cockpit. The ejection seat is three-piece but as usual Italeri do not provide exact positioning details for the arm rest, and if it is not affixed correctly it results in problems with the canopy closing later etc. Basically the curve of the side of the arm rests should meet the curve of the side of the seat. The cushions are painted FS34097 Green; the rest of the seat black and the rest of the cockpit FS36231 Gull Grey. Two seats are put into a cockpit tub which has side panels but no console detail, other than some ejector pin marks that need shaving off. Two instrument panels which do have console detail are included for both crew members, along with a control column for the pilot. HUD for both crew members are attached which completes the basic cockpit. Super detailers will want to scratchbuild a lot more. I added in some detail for the side consoles and bits of stretched sprue for throttles and other bits and pieces just to busy up the interior.

The fuselage is split horizontally. Once the cockpit is taken care of the unit can be affixed to the top of the nose wheel bay, with small alignment rails on the underside of the cockpit unit to guide its exact position. Holes have to be drilled out in the lower fuselage piece just behind the intake area for attachment of the Lantirn pods later. Some nose weight can be put in the nose section and/or in the separate nose cone later to prevent tail sitting. The top fuselage halve is then mated with the lower half, trapping the cockpit and it all lines up very well. However, to minimise join lines and gaps, rubber bands, masking tape and pegs were all called upon to clamp the halves shut and definitely a must. Surprisingly though, only a very minor amount of seam filling was needed afterward, with sanding enough to blend it all in smoothly.

From here construction progresses fairly quickly for the major components although there are a few things to deal with. There is a mold line on the mating surfaces of all the major components, which need to be filed smooth to ensure a better fit. The main wings are split horizontally with the lower wing piece being only the inner panel section, and holes needing to be drilled out for underwing stores to be shown. This lower wing piece does not fit in the cut out section of the uppe main wing perfectly, with gaps needing to be filled. The mating section of the main wing to the fuselage needs a good sanding to smooth it out, and they affix quite well but large gaps at the root need to be filled and sanded smooth.

The tailplanes each have one locating pin, meaning they can be positioned at any desirable angle. The tail fins fit very well, but note that the instructions have the part numbers the wrong way around. Their locating pins are spaced so that each tail fin fits on the correct side, which is opposite to what the instructions say, remembering the smaller fintip ECM antenna goes on the starboard side. Again, the mating surfaces need to be sanded to remove the mold line so they will affix to the fuselage better.

One area of concern was the nosecone. There is an inner plate (part 23) with a groove cut out for the nose cone to fit on a certain way, except the instructions would leave you to believe there is a small groove cut at the top and bottom! Whatever the case, it just does not work, whether you put it on upside down, back to front, or whatever, the nose cone won't fit! The solution was to simply ignore part 23 and butt-join the nose cone, which when done carefully and checking alignment, fits beautifully.

The intakes are in two pieces which means joining them together. Some ejector pin marks need to be removed from the interior and their mating surfaces can do with some sanding. There are no locating pins to join them together, so alignment is crucial but this is still pretty straight forward. Once the glue has dried the seam lines need attention and I also painted the rear intake wall "black". Unfortunately it is all too obvious when you peer through the intake, as there is no trunking behind the covers, some modellers may cut out and add in their own blanking plate further back, something I am not prepared to do. The intakes fit nicely onto the fuselage, but again you need to take lots of care lining it up. I gave it the obligatory once over with the sandpaper but they didn't really need it.

The dorsal airbrake is separate and a hydraulic jack is included to allow it to be displayed open. For me I went with a closed air brake. There are two triangular spikes on the instrument panel shroud but there is no clear part to put here to act as a HUD, so I used a bit of vacform scrap to depict a HUD. The canopy mount is glued to the cockpit rim and the rear canopy hinge fairing is also affixed into place. The canopy comes in two parts, allowing this to be displayed open as well.

All wheel bays have only "beam" and structural detail, there is no plumbing or hydraulic stuff supplied. For wheels up modellers the gear doors are not exact fits over the bays, and a slight amount of flash needs removal first, but this is all revealed with test fitting, and a bit of filler or hobby glue is enough to take care of the small gaps.

The kit certainly provides enough stores to keep most punters happy but is still not complete. For a start you have the Port and Starboard Lantirn pods mounted under the intakes and the large Conformal Fuel tanks to tack onto the fuselage sides, which has three stub pylons to carry bombs. Included in the stores are a pair of AGM-130 TV-guided ASMs; six 2,000-lb bombs; rocket munitions pod and four AIM-9M Sidewinders. None of these are molded entirely accurate although all look reasonably convincing, and I have had to make a calculated guess on the ASM, bombs and rocket munitions pod types from reference material. The only problem is that there is not enough stores for every pylon in the kit. One of the underwing pylons is left bare if you use up the stores on all the other pylons as instructed. After checking some reference material for typical loads, I simply grabbed a couple of AIM-7F Sparrows from the spares and whacked them on the bare pylons. I did my usual habit of painting and assembling the stores separately and left them and their pylons off the Eagle until the end of construction.

Port and Starboard conformal fuel tanks (CFT) are provided, and holes need to be drilled out as marked if you want bombs on pylons to be shown. The pair of holes for the middle pylon are hard to work out, because there are four holes plus an ejector pin mark to choose from! From memory the pair of holes closest to the front are the ones to drill out, so just be wary of this part - it's not too difficult to work out because they look more central. It's also worth noting that the CFT can carry six pylons, three in the continuous form and three stub pylons, but only the three stub ones are provided. Also, the kit pylons for the CFT are different to each other, ie: there is a front, back and middle pylon that are attached in that order. If you are like me in that you sub-assemble and paint the pylons/stores separately, then you need some way of knowing which pylon goes where. The most effective method for me is to simply put the tiniest coloured texta dot on the mating surface of the pylon - and then the same texta dot on the instruction sheet matching up the pylon. The beauty about this is that it does not mark the fuselage or any painted surface. In this case I used the traffic light effect, that is red for top/front, yellow for middle and green for back so I knew which pylon went where. I hope that all makes sense!! Mind you, it doesn't make a lot of difference because the holes for each individual stores station are spaced apart differently so the pylons go on in order. The resulting effect is not quite accurate in my opinion, the rear bomb has a very noticeable downward slant, when photos suggest it should be more level facing.

Anyway, the conformal fuel tanks do not conform very well to the surface of the Eagle, needing plenty of filler and sanding to blend them into the fuselage, which required lots of work. The instructions are not overly clear in exactly how they are attached to the fuselage but it's not that hard when you check photo references. The sprue lugs are also quite thick here when detaching the CFT, meaning care needs to be taken, and then some sanding and fixing up work afterward.

A few antennae and probes are missing from the kit, which I detail a bit more in the accuracy section below, so it is up to the modeller to scratchbuild these and add them to the model. The aft facing ECM antennas behind the tailplanes were added with tiny bits of sprue, with a lot of attempt to shape it with the sandpaper and file. I didn't do this perfectly but it will pass off okay. The upper fuselage UHF antenna was added from the spares box, so is not entirely accurate but serves its purpose okay. Air scoops underneath the wings are also missing, I left these off and might see if I can organise something for this later since scratchbuilding these is not something I think I can do too well!

With construction pretty much complete the aircraft was painted in FS 36118 as instructed, which translated to Humbrol 125 Dark US Grey and all the stores added on last, which fit very well it must be stated. The canopy was also affixed but the fit was not great, there was a very small gap between the windscreen and main canopy. I moved the windscreen back a touch and filled the front with hobby glue.

Colour Schemes:

Only one scheme is produced in this kit, which is found on the bottom of the box. This is an F-15E USAF Dual role fighter, 1987 with no other information supplied, although by virtue of the "F-15E No.1" decal you would have to assume it is the prototype or first aircraft which entered service. Surprisingly I cannot find a picture of this aircraft in my reference! The example is finished in overall FS 36118 gunship gray.

Decals:

The decal sheet is small but very well printed by Zanchetti and contains effectively just dark grey/black coloured decals. There is a very good amount of stencilling provided as well as navigation strips, although some of the smaller stencilling such as "no step" are not included. Unfortunately there are no small coloured bands that you often see on Strike Eagles just below the fin tip, but as mentioned above this example depicts the first production F-15E and it may not have carried them. The decals apply very well to the gloss coated surface and of course took hours to do! I did have a few problems with the decals sticking fast sometimes on meeting the model surface and then having to use lots of water and/or setting solution to lift off and move into its correct place. Bit of a mixed bag but overall they were very good.

Accuracy:

As I find in many cases with Italeri kits of late, overall the aircraft is not bad in profile and replication but there are some deficiencies in the variant it is replicating, almost as if they get the base model right and some of the major differences (eg: CFT's in this case), but have not included all the updates for the kit variant, my review on the F/A-18 Hornet is probably a good example.

Dimension wise the kit measures 266 mm Length and 181 mm span compared to correct dimensions of 269 mm and 181 mm respectively. The span is obviously spot on. In the most part the kit captures the look of the F-15E very well and would certainly pass one off convincingly if converted to full size. Attempts have also been made to include the correct fairings and antennae in the right place, in particularly the fintip receivers. However there are a few anomalies and small omissions. The fins are not quite correct in shape and whilst the wings are very good, purists may well find a small shape flaw with these. One feature that you spot is that the kit wingtips are slightly different, in that there is a smaller amount of space between the port ECM forward antenna and the tip of the wing to paint the port nav light, than the starboard side. Not noticeable really to the naked eye on a casual glance, you need to look for it.

The stores are not overly accurate either, they are good representations to enable you to at least have a fair idea exactly what they are trying to be, but they are no where near perfect. As mentioned in the construction sequence, only the stub pylons for the CFT are provided and the spares box needs to be raided to fill the empty underwing pylon.

There's something about the nose I am just not happy with, I think it is narrower than it should be. The shape of the intakes are not perfect, as all the photos show a slight downward slant whereas the kit has a straight roof. The nozzles as mentioned in construction are molded for in-flight. There is no hatch for the port side refuelling probe and the small additional intakes/scoops underneath the wing are omitted. A couple of small probes are missing including the incidence probe (like a tiny needle sticking out from the nose sides) and another probe underneath the starboard forward fuselage. But as far as probes are concerned the glaring omission are the aft ECM antennae which should be at the very rear point of the aircraft between tailfins and tailplanes and the upper fuselage UHF antenna behind the cockpit! All of these need to be scratchbuilt.

Overall Recommendation:

The kit certainly builds into a very nice replica, although if you want a truly accurate F-15E then you need to make a few adjustments. The construction was straight forward, but there were some bits that needed a bit of extra work, such as the CFT's, and thus the kit has its own challenges to overcome. Overall recommended for intermediate modellers and up.

Addendum supplied by Albert Farrugia:
It shows the Strike Eagle in its prototype form (see the decal sheet) and therefore a lot of work has to be done on it especially on the CFTs. The production pylons attached to the CFTs are completely missing. The only CFTs with the production pylons are on the Airfix F-15E models. All the other kits (Academy, Revell of germany/Hasegawa) do not have these.

For production models, all kits require removal of the tail fairing in between the engine exhausts exposing the tail hook as these were removed on aircraft of the USAF. I am not sure whether the Israeli ones have removed this.

Please also note that as far as I know, there is no accurate production F-15e in 1/72 scale. I have built the Airfix, Revell of Germany and Academy models and all these kits require some kind of conversion.

Addendum supplied by Jozic Ivan:
I noticed in your review that you saw engraved panel lines and the readers reported raised panel lines. In fact, you are all correct as there are two versions of the kit. The older had the raised panel lines, while the new one has them engraved. I can verify this since I have built the old one a long time ago (still have the built model) and then some years later I bought one and to my surprise, the model (it had the same box art) had engraved panel lines. So, at some point Italeri switched to the new tooling. I didn't notice any other changes but wasn't looking for them so there might be some more. And I don't have both boxes at hand to compare them in detail, but I can say that they have the same box art and the paint guide

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