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1/32 Tamiya F-14A Tomcat


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Not much have been done this week as time at the workbench has been limited lately.

Anyway, I have started to detail the nose landing gear bay to be able to complete this assembly and join the bay to the cockpit - this to confirm that all components will really fit together.

f14a021.jpg

At first I was going to leave the bay alone as I figured very little can be seen of this area with the model on its landing gear, but then I decided to at least add some detail to the sidewalls.

But, those gigantic ejector pin-marks present on the bottom of the bay kept staring me in the face, so I simply had to do something to get rid of them.

So here is progress so far. More detail will certainly be needed.

After grinding away all moulded on detail and adding sheet and strip styrene. Not 100% accurate, but close enough for me.

f14a022.jpg

Still haven't started on the sidewalls.

f14a023.jpg

To be continued...

Cheers,

Anders

Edited by Anders_Isaksson
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Hi Anders,

Ah,...now this will be verrry interesting!

I shall be watching how you go about this like a hawk. You've made a good start. The ribbing looks better than the kit parts already.

Good luck with the upgrades. I'm sure they'll be a vast improvement. :worship:

:salute:

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jimz66, geedubelyer and Tyler, many thanks for your comments! :cheers:

Work has been slow lately but this week I managed to continue on the nose gear well.

Don't know how I ended up spending so much time on this area but I must say it has been rather fun so far! :thumbsup:

Rivets (from Archer transfers) have been added along with some more detailing from styrene, still lots of plumbing to add.

I have tried to keep it in subassemblies to hopefully facilitate painting later.

f14a024.jpg

Getting a few components together.

f14a025.jpg

Tried to get it all closed up to see how it looks.

f14a026.jpg

The details on the forward wall is based on pics in F-14 In Detail & Scale, rather than the DACO book.

The D&S shows an earlier (and simpler) layout, and is also portrayed by Tamiya. The DACO book shows a later configuration where this area looks a little more busy.

I figured for my build the earlier layout was more appropiate, but I am really not sure...

Also, those geardoor hinge assemblies provided by Eduard did not look to easy to work with, so I am leaning towards keeping the hinges provided by Tamiya. These are a bit on the thick side but once everything is assembled I hope this won't be too noticable.

Hopefully some plumbing to be added soon...

Cheers,

Anders

Edited by Anders_Isaksson
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Anders, great work so far. I'm building the same kit, including the Aires pit. I have the luxury of having an old Tekniks pit hanging around, so I have the canopy locking hooks covered, so you might want to try and track down the Tekniks brass bits to fill in this gap. Too bad Aires didn't include this part, since it's so important.

Other Aires pit comments are as follows:

  • The pit itself is awesome, but I agree that the packing could have been better. I also have a few broken bits, but not that many.
  • Fit to the Tamiya kit is far easier to accomplish than the Black Box one, which I found to be very difficult. Although the Black Box pit has the canopy hooks for the bottom, there's nothing for the canopy itself, which is naked without them.
  • I'll be interested to see how you deal with the Aires canopy frame. Although it looks great, I found the removal of the resin and fit to the canopy to be horrible. It was so bad for me, that I had to splice parts of it to the kit frame just to make it work. I'm hoping it's just me, because I'd like this Aires frame to work with a future build.

I look forward to future pics and info!

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Thanks rom, Youngtiger1, TaiidanTomcat and chuck540z3! <_<

Anders, great work so far. I'm building the same kit, including the Aires pit. I have the luxury of having an old Tekniks pit hanging around, so I have the canopy locking hooks covered, so you might want to try and track down the Tekniks brass bits to fill in this gap. Too bad Aires didn't include this part, since it's so important.

Other Aires pit comments are as follows:

  • The pit itself is awesome, but I agree that the packing could have been better. I also have a few broken bits, but not that many.
  • Fit to the Tamiya kit is far easier to accomplish than the Black Box one, which I found to be very difficult. Although the Black Box pit has the canopy hooks for the bottom, there's nothing for the canopy itself, which is naked without them.
  • I'll be interested to see how you deal with the Aires canopy frame. Although it looks great, I found the removal of the resin and fit to the canopy to be horrible. It was so bad for me, that I had to splice parts of it to the kit frame just to make it work. I'm hoping it's just me, because I'd like this Aires frame to work with a future build.

I look forward to future pics and info!

Thanks for your input on the Aires set. I have yet not had a second look at the canopy frame, but I will have to investigate to see if my set has the same problem soon.

About those Tekniks canopy locking hooks; when you say they are made of brass, does it mean they are photoetched? This sounds interesting, I may have to see what I can find.

I noticed that Eduard offers some detail for the cockpit sill in their F-14 interior set, but I am a bit hesitant to pay for the entire set if I am only going to use that single part. For some reason I bought the Waldron set for the canopy sills, but this seem to be completely fictious so nothing of use there.

As an alternative I have been searching old kits in hope of finding a set of identical parts (all 12 of them!) that can be used to represent those hooks but so far no luck...

On a sidenote I emailed Aires regarding exhaust nozzles for this kit, and they replied that such a set is in their plan for later in 2009. First they will wait for more info on the Trumpeter kit.

Great news! This means I will not attach those kit nozzles permanently and wait for the Aires items to be released. On the other hand I may still not have gotten that far on this build by then... :)

Cheers,

Anders

Edited by Anders_Isaksson
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Thanks for your input on the Aires set. I have yet not had a second look at the canopy frame, but I will have to investigate to see if my set has the same problem soon.

About those Tekniks canopy locking hooks; when you say they are made of brass, does it mean they are photoetched?

Cheers,

Anders

Here is a pic of a quick dry fit of the Aires pit and the Teknics brass that goes onto the sill. You can't see it from the pic very well, but there are resin rails right underneath the brass that receive the cockpit hooks, which are also brass. Since I plan on masking the entire pit, I'll leave these off until the end when they can be slipped in at the last minute...

Aires5.jpg

Edited by chuck540z3
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Thanks for posting the picture, looks like a more complete set for this area.

Your Tomcat looks great so far, BTW! :)

With apologies if I have missed the obvious, but do you have an in progress-thread for your build here on ARC?

Cheers,

Anders

Edited by Anders_Isaksson
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Thanks for posting the picture, looks like a more complete set for this area.

Your Tomcat looks great so far, BTW! :worship:

With apologies if I have missed the obvious, but do you have an in progress-thread for your build here on ARC?

Cheers,

Anders

I've never done an "in-progress" thread, mostly because I don't want any more pressure than I give myself already to get things done. I might give this one a try, mostly because I've built one of these suckers already and I kinda know what to expect- and what to fix. An in-progress thread, like yours, might give me some valuable tips too.

Edited by chuck540z3
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Here's a pic of my last F-14, which I made into a "D". Not accurate for the decals, but I like it anyway.

I like it too, Chuck! Great work on that one - correct markings or not. :whistle:

Ok, I am done adding detail to the nose gear well.

Things went a bit overboard, but I sure had fun adding all that detail and in the end I guess that's what counts. As said before, the D&S title was a good companion to the DACO book here as the former title captures a few details that differ between early and late Tomcats. And again, the detail added is not totally correct but close enough for me.

I found the main problem with the kit wheel well was that it is a bit shallow, making it difficult to fit all details. I suppose it could be about 1/3rd deeper to better reflect the real thing. On the other hand, me adding a rather thick styrene sheet to the bottom (or rather roof) of the well sure didn't help the situation... :wacko:

These pics are not that great but here goes:

f14a027.jpg

f14a028.jpg

f14a029.jpg

f14a032.jpg

f14a030.jpg

f14a031.jpg

Dealing with those main gear wells sure will have to wait a while...

Cheers,

Anders

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Dealing with those main gear wells sure will have to wait a while...

Cheers,

Anders

Holy Cow, that's amazing! A simple confession: I love the fact that you're ahead of me because you're gving me so many great detailing tips. Maybe I can return the favor when it's time to weather- especially salt weathering. I've become pretty good at it if I say so myself, because I've made every mistake possible. :whistle:

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Dealing with those main gear wells sure will have to wait a while...

I'm with you on that one Anders! I just finished up my nose wheel well also, and am not looking forward to more countless hours straining at the Daco book detailing the MGB's. Looks great so far...I'm looking forward to more progress shots!

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Thanks Kristian, Chuck, Mike, geedubelyer, r0t0rdr1ver, TomcatFanatic123 and TaiidanTomcat for the replies, very much appreciated and I am happy you like the progress so far!

Holy Cow, that's amazing! A simple confession: I love the fact that you're ahead of me because you're gving me so many great detailing tips. Maybe I can return the favor when it's time to weather- especially salt weathering. I've become pretty good at it if I say so myself, because I've made every mistake possible. :crying2:

Interesting that you mention salt weathering, I have made some very limited trials with this method on a few AFV builds and achieved rather mixed results, but I might have to try it again on this one. I suppose US Navy aircraft could really be a good subject for using this technique and done right it can produce some amazing results!

As for detailing tips and if you haven't already seen this one, be sure to check out geedubelyer's Tomcat build over at the in progress-forum. Excellent detailing with loads of info! :)

I'm with you on that one Anders! I just finished up my nose wheel well also, and am not looking forward to more countless hours straining at the Daco book detailing the MGB's. Looks great so far...I'm looking forward to more progress shots!
I'm with you on that one. I've seen less complicated looking plates of spaghetti! :wacko:

:woot.gif:

:cheers:

Yes, those MGB's definately will have to wait a little longer. I haven't even began to look at what's involved to make this area look better, and to think there are two of them also...

Well, I went ahead and started painting the nose gear bay.

So far the base white is on, and while trying to figure out the detail painting I ran into a problem that I hope someone can help me with.

It might be a longshot but I throw the question out here anyway; can anyone possibly tell what these pipes are?

f14a026a.jpg

The pipes in question can be seen in the DACO book at pages 112-113.

Could they be there for heating the nose gear bay? (Does the gear bay even need to be heated...?)

From the pics it looks like the pipes are showing slight discoloration in a way that I associate with exhaust pipes and the like, but I am really only guessing here...

While the pipes in some pics are painted white I would rather represent them the other way in order to achieve some variation.

Any info that helps me decide on a suitable color would be most welcome!

Cheers,

Anders

Edited by Anders_Isaksson
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