Academy McD-D-15C (Oregon ANG special)

I am not a big fan of Boring Gray Jets. If all you get are code letters and national insignia I tune out pretty quickly. All of the modern jets I have done have had some sort of special or anniversary markings, which I tend to be drawn to in any case. That is certainly the situation with this F-15, which sports the rather garish markings from a couple of years back as used by the Oregon ANG. Oregon is, of course, right next door to me here in Washington, so that provided a local connection as well.

The kit is the Academy F-15C. It goes together well, though the seam produced by the upper/lower fuselage split did require a fair bit of attention. It stalled in the autumn of 2018 because I was not confident I could get a good freehand representation of the dark patches in the center of fuselage and wing surfaces with the compressor I had. Once Christmas rolled around, I was ready to give it a try with the new compressor.

Though this was definitely part of the learning curve, it went well enough for my standards (you may take that as you will). Next came the exhaust cans. You have two options, one simplified in single-piece form and one multi-part version which incorporates the mechanisms for what I take to be an early form of thrust vectoring. I decided to take the plunge with the multi-part version. They were eventually painted a bright Alclad metallic and then toned down with a Black acrylic wash. All good so far.

Then those intimidating decals. Some of the markings make for rather huge decals for 1:72, and the Warbird printing process produces fairly thin decals. The topside versions went on well enough, but the lower surface markings seemed to want to curl and fold at the slightest provocation. The nose eagle was chopped into a couple of smaller parts to help with getting them to fit round the intake area. After a couple of evenings of sweating my way through the process, it was time for a matte topcoat and the finish line.

This is apparently what it takes to get me to do a modern USAF jet. But thankfully, this seems to have satisfied the F-15 itch, so unless some other outlandish color scheme comes along I think I have filled that hole in my lineup.

This is completed aircraft #507 (5 aircraft, 1 ordnance, 1 vehicles for the year 2019), finished in February of 2019.