# F-15E Tiger Meet 1998



## Els (Mar 13, 2011)

Hello all,
This is my 1:48 Revell F-15E. This aircraft was from the 494FS, RAF Lakenheath, U.K. It participated in the 1998 Tiger Meet at Lechfeld Germany. While the Revell F-15E kit is a great kit, the decals suck. They don't just suck, they really suck. They are super thick and laugh in the face of Micro Set/Sol. I bathed the decals in this stuff and they said "thank you sir, may I have another".
Fortunately for me I knew about the decals before building the kit. Since I didn't know how bad they would be, I didn't want to put a lot of effort into building the kit if it was going to turn out bad because of the decals. I decided to go old school and just build the kit straight out of the box with out changing anything. I didn't fill seams and I didn't even file off the raised words on the kit.








It is a testament to the quality of the Revell kit that even after that you can still have a nice looking kit on your shelf.

























I have some after market decals for other F-15E Tiger Meet participants and will do a little better job/put more effort into those builds.
It was kind of fun building a kit the way I did when I was a kid though. Just slap it together and paint it. No puttying and no sanding. I recommend it. It is a nice stress relief.
Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.
Els


----------



## Ace Airspeed (May 16, 2010)

It looks great, Els. :thumbsup:


----------



## Modlerbob (Feb 10, 2011)

I'm not sure why, knowing how bad the decals were, you didn't procure a quality set from one of the several decal firms that have a heavy presence on the internet. Your model looks good as is and you apparently have sufficient talent to produce an outstanding model. I never let kit decals control a build as there are so many aftermarket decal sets out there. Especially for the F-15.


----------



## Els (Mar 13, 2011)

Ace Airspeed, thanks.
Modlrbob, thanks for your comments. Most of the time I would tend to agree with you about letting the decals dictate the build. I am a Tiger Meet fan and try to build/purchase anything related to that I can get my hands on. One problem is that a lot of the older Revell Tiger Meet kits have the only decals available for a particular aircraft. Those decals are not always the greatest. I have purchased and used numerous aftermarket decals for other kits and have a badly abused bank account to prove it. Unfortunately there are no aftermarket decals for this particular aicraft. I believe that a company did produce a replacement set for this aircraft several years ago but they are no longer available. I have searched Ebay for a long time with no luck and finally decided to just build the thing. I didn't want to have a really nicely built kit with crappy decals. Kind of like having a piece of crap car with great rims.
The good news is that the new Revell decals are produced by Daco and they are excellent, I highly recommend those kits. Here is a kit that I built with those decals. 








I have 3 more of the Revell kits in the stash that I have after market Tiger Meet decals for, and I will spend more time on those.
Els


----------

