F15E Strike Eagle Aircraft

When I was wanting to build an F-15e I began looking at all the kits out there, and ended up going with this Revell one since I found it locally and its low cost. I was very surprised with how much detail this kit had and how well it went together. The cockpit was very detailed, and worth putting time in to paint the buttons, gauges, and switches. The external detail was also impressive, along with the detail of the landing gear and landing gear bays. The only thing lacking is this kit only comes with 4x AIM-9's, 2x drop tanks, and targeting pod system. So, to display an F-15e in all it's glory of a large Air to Ground payload you will need to get some after market weapons. But, to be fare, the lack of air to ground weapons is reflected in the low cost of the kit. The one and only other issue I can remember, would be that the canopy had a big seam on top from end to end, so that took some work to remove. The decals were easy to work with, but I had trouble getting them to completely adhere. The directions were clear, in a nice book form, and had a lot of information in it. This was a great kit for the cost, and with some after market Paveway's, CBU's, or Snake Eyes's it can be even better.

Revell has really done an excellent job with this kit. The level of detail is excellent, especially for the price you pay. Cockpit details are well rendered as are surface details. The afterburner cans are simply superb. There are only a few things that keep me from giving this kit five stars. There is more flash on the parts than there should be. It is especially prevalent on some of the more delicate parts, such as the afterburner can actuators. Some of the sprue attachment points ate very heavy and make it difficult to detach the parts without damaging them. Painting instructions are a bit vague and generalized for some areas but are otherwise sufficient. Overall this is an excellent kit that turns out a great representation of the Strike Eagle.

I'd have given this kit 5 stars if only it came with some stores for the racks. It only comes with four AIM-9 Sidewinders for the underwing rails and nothing for the bomb racks. A nicely detailed kit with an assembly was fairly simple and straightforward. Simple except for one area - the exhaust nozzles. The exhaust is very detailed, but to get that detail be prepared to spend a lot of time with tweezers and glue for mounting the actuator arms for the afterburner nozzles. That was the only really tedious part of the assembly, besides the massive amounts of maintainence stencils that every F-15 kit comes with. You'll need to take some minor care when you attach the CFTs because they tend to move around just a bit while gluing them in place. I always build my kits with the gear doors closed and these doors went into place very easily, especially compared to some kits I've built. The main problem with this kit, again, is the lack of stores which I fixed by buying a Hosegawa weapons set. After replacing the included LANTIRN pods with the more detailed LANTIRN Navigation pod and a Sniper XR pod from the Hosegawa sets I added two GBU-12s, three GBU-38 JDAMs, a GBU-31 JDAM on the centerline, and two AIM-120 AMRAAMs on the outer missile rails with AIM-9 Sidewinders on the inner rails and ended up with an extremely nice Mud Hen that looks great, especially with the other F-15s on the shelf (there's just something about how the Eagle looks in that gunship gray paint scheme with those rounded CFTs on the sides).