NASA F-15E Strike Eagle, N883NA, "Orbital Eagle/Aquila Astra"

The beginning...This is the first Tamiya kit I have purchased, and it surely came in a large box.  

Wings assembly. Some misalignment can be seen here.. 

Wings assembly. The ailerons were molded for ground service build, so they must be clipped to make the model into a flying pose.  

Wings assembly. They are quite large! 

Test fit. At this point it is quite apparent that the kit will be a large one... 

Cockpit painting. While it's not all that visible, I enjoy painting the details... 

Pilot painting (meatball is a decal). They are based on NASA pilots. While the molds don't match, that can be easily overlooked.  

Seated  

Canopy fit. Unfortunately had to break the second seater's arms to fit them in.  

F100-PW-229 nozzles. It is not apparent in here, but in real life, on real F-15s, they are quite large.  

Test fit. Tamiya fits well, and besides the wings it seems no putty will be used... 

White base paint (four cans of Tamiya white spray cans). Initially was handbrushing white 2.0, but it was too thick, and with no airbrush setup, spray cans are the next best option... 

Masking for the blue stripe. The characteristic NASA blue stripes distinguish these research warbirds from the armed forces killing machines. Almost none of NASA's aircraft fleet have ever seen combat - and those who did, that's an exercise for the reader... 

Completed with gold lines. The NASA Armstrong/Dryden stripes are complimented with gold lines - they are not compliant with the NASA style guide! But of course, this makes it easier than the other NASA stripes to mask. Instead of having to do three separate masking, one can just leave the original blue masking on and just mask slightly offset for the gold lines. But perhaps next time, it is better to buy some gold stripe decals... 

Total amount of masking tape used.  

Glamour shot before the decals.  

Custom decal test print. The duration of the program coincided with the name change from Dryden to Armstrong. But since it is a theoretical aircraft anyways, might as well as pick the more modern name... 

The drivers with maintainers' names on the side (double checked with the F-15 maintainers to make sure the order is correct!). 86-0183 was chosen as it was the first F-15E ever made - a modified F-15D from Edwards. And rumor has it that NASA was supposed to get this airframe.. 

It is not common to put the crew chief and maintainers names on the side - usually, that's where the pilots names go on warbirds. But that is how it is done on the NASA F-15s. The NASA crew keeps these ancient birds running well past their armed forces equivalents. And sometimes, the NASA crew chief gave some naive NewSpace engineers a metaphorical kick in the shin... 

The NASA meatball is very important! NASA tail numbers are not usually sequential - they are picked with some references to their armed forces serial numbers. Hence, 883 was chosen.  

Now, that is a big Eagle...The stencils were from Tamiya's stock sheet and did not always play well with NASA's unique high visibly scheme, but there was no time to custom print a sheet of stencil. In real flight ops, the stencils are up to the crew chief's digression, and NASA doesn't always have the funds to paint their aircraft, so perhaps this is overstenciling... 

A shot taken with a museum piece F-15 ACTIVE. That will be a future project.  

The rocket was modeled and 3D printed. Images and references of the actual rocket is scant, and since it never flew in this form (more on this later...) the modeler ended up with the liberty of designing the paint scheme and the decals. Following the example set by the center name, the name of the prime contractor is pushed to the present day - at the time, the prime was operating under the name "Ventions, LLC", and later changed their name to Astra (and personally, the starmark logo simply looks better). A hypothetical mission patch was designed. The modeler has never worked on non amateur rocket systems, so all the stencils on the rocket are guesswork.  

The conops is similar to Celestial Eagle (ASM-135 ASAT test), which lead to many people on NASAspaceflight speculate that it was supposed to be an ASAT weapon testbed instead of a rocket for satellites. A stand that placed the aircraft in a similar fashion to the famous ASM-135 photo was build.  

A side effect of the configuration is that the pilots are now less visible.  

However, the size of F-15's wingspan is now very obvious to the viewer. 

A chance meeting with Adam London, the true founder of Ventions/Astra, who came to see the model despite his busy schedule.

SALVO would later develop into Rocket 3, but the program would formally end in June 2022. However, that is another model...