Skull Leader

Dave Aungst's online build has been a bible for many people over the years. He installs a resin cockpit though, so not a lot of help there. http://www.hyperscale.com/features/2001/f14cockpitdwa_1.htm

Just let him build the kit he's already got... wow.

I remember my first beer too.

The control stick is required regardless of the screen. The RIO cannot use the LANTIRN without the left grip.

Didn't the new-build Bs delete them all together too?

VERY well defined! Lol

point of order: Your F-14D has glove vanes.

he mentioned early aardvarks... are you talking about the grey over white delivery scheme they used in the late 1970s? If so, the fightertown sheet is very unusable, there are differences to the aardvark, tailcodes, and nose stripes.

I'll second that vote. 🙂

There's no need to get all sanctimonious. A lot of us enjoy the presentation as much as the actual product. I like good box art, and good box art speaks to the attention to detail that a company spends on their product. Sure the primary concern is the kit (I'm not a naysayer, I've got one preordered), but part of the fun of unraveling the Tamiya kit is the box and the way everything is packed together. Don't bag on people who want to enjoy the whole experience just because the box doesn't matter to *you*. The current boxart is a secondary effort at best, and it shows. As for their

Super Tomcats launched at 100% mil power, not afterburner. The actual photo you have shown was not from a deck launch.

that RIO step paneling and the wing glove lights..... *sigh* don't follow Tamiya in their 1/32 mistake by putting that panel over the boarding step... far more airframes went without it.

Hand me my starbucks.

When he's right, he's right. I'm in the same boat as Jon, I've got a preorder, but given how amazing the engineering on the tamiya kit has been, just having an option for dropped flaps and a few more weapons I likely won't use aren't exactly selling points any more. Maybe the AMK will be better somehow, but probably not enough to overcome Tamiyas street cred. Now the price has to be competitive in order to make it marketable, and if AMK can't swing a sub-$80 price point, they're effectively cutting their own legs off.

exposure differences. Pretty sure they're the same color.

and what exactly are we looking at? If you're gonna provide a photo like that, give us some context too, please. (Especially in reference to a 12 year old thread)

Mid 80s configuration!

With the NACA vents installed, you've dated the aircraft pretty specifically, so the ECM bumps are easy. You need the one on the nose gear door, the leading edges of the intakes, and the one on the boattail. The two bumps under the glove vanes were already removed. All of those should be painted white like the rest of the jet. By this point in 157986s life, if it didn't have the dual chin pod installed, it was likely flying with the TCS pod with the bullet fairing on it. It did operate without a chin pod a lot earlier in life, but probably not by this point (Having sai

Sorta... actually they were F101 engines, hence the shorter barrel shrouds. They wouldn't be F110s until the mid 80s. I would very much like to know that article. To the best of my knowledge 986 never operated with TF-30s. The burner cans on the jet now were added after the jet was demilled and De engined for the intrepid.

986 never used the 7 hole vents. During the 1973 tests, It had the short gun nozzle and NO vents. When they pulled the jet out again in the early 1980s, the standard gunbarrel was added with the standard dual vent. When it entered into it's final test configuration (often inaccurately referred to as the F-14D prototype stage), it received the NACA gun vents. Like before, a good rule of thumb is, if you're modelling it with the dual chin pod, it's got NACA vents. Before that would be the dual vents. (As a side note, if you're building it as it was in the early 1980s, you

With respect, this was a poor choice. It is always better to leave a panel blank and let a modeler fill in the detail of their choice instead of including detail that isn't there on all aircraft. Obviously not a deal-breaker, but still an annoyance. (you didn't ask me, I know... but it was worth pointing out)

Only on paper (well, 111 anyway...) and that was before the decision was made to pare down the Tomcat fleet by half.

safe money is furball.

All Bs had the same tub as A models (for modeling purposes), then only thing that changed was when B models got the sparrowhawk combining glass HUD in the mid 2000s

I'd toss the kit, lol.... probably the single most un-fun kit I've ever built!