Steve F.'s Revell F-14B

[Thunderchief105]

Steve,

Is that the ol clear red tooth brush handle trick for the nav lights? Just wondering, have never seen an in-progress pic of it being done.

Thanks,

Matt

[Steve Filak]

Steve,

Is that the ol clear red tooth brush handle trick for the nav lights? Just wondering, have never seen an in-progress pic of it being done.

Sure is, Matt, and it works great. The only probelm is that they look a little pink when finished, so I may have to go back over them with Tamiya Clear Red. If I had it to do over again, I would have used the clear toothbrush handle, and painted the inside of the light Clear Red before attaching it.

You ganna rescribe the panel lines? nice job so far i take it its the 1/48 kit? Gonna be Jolly roger or going for something else?

Rescribing is already done (which was the most time-consuming part of the project thus far). It's the Revell 1/48 F-14D, backdated to a B, and you are correct - it'll be a current VF-103 line bird. Could you really imagine me doing a Tomcat in any other markings? :D ;) :(

[Don Harrison]

Steve,

If you remember I am in progress of the same mods, maybe we can talk. I was going to do the current 103 marking but I was not aware of any commercially avaliable, u know something I don't... I am updating an A model, redoing the pit, and recasting it in resin. along with the rescribe these are the toughest things I have done as fare as consumption of time...

Don Harrison

[Steve Filak]

Hi Don-

There isn't anything available commercially - yet. Brian Marbrey and I are trying to lobby for a sheet to be produced, but if that goes south, I'm preparing to make my own decals. I'm really hoping that someone will decide to do a sheet before that happens, but we'll see.

If there's anything else you need, please feel free to get a hold of me, and I'll do whatever I can to help out. ;)

[TomcatFanatic123]

Steve,

Beautiful job on that engine fairing ;) . I'm in the process of converting my 1/32nd Tamiya from an A to a B, so I'm going to be doing this job myself here pretty soon. May I please print these out to use as reference pics? :(

[raptor22]

Could you really imagine me doing a Tomcat in any other markings? :D  :lol:  ;)

Honestly....................................................

no.

Dude, I can't wait to see the finished product!!!

[Steve Filak]

May I please print these out to use as reference pics? :lol:

Absolutely! The reason that I do in-progress photos is to try to help people out, so please feel free.

[SpiritZeroThree]

Steve,

I'm currently doing the same thing with my revell -14D, albeit in VF-32 markings (nobody's perfect.. ) I've got pretty much everything figured out, but where i get lost is how i am going to do the chin pod for the B, any suggestions?

-Nick

[Steve Filak]

Nick-

I may be wrong on this, but I thought that the B chinpod was included in the D kit. However, if it isn't, you could either try to wrangle a trade for one, or you could cut apart the D chinpod and re-assemble it with only the TCS pod in place. Might take a little bit of scratchbuilding, but it's certainly do-able.

If there isn't one in the kit already, I'm going to use the leftover one from the last Academy kit that I did. I'll have to look through the box tomorrow, and see what's what.

albeit in VF-32 markings (nobody's perfect..  )

I won't hold it against you.........

[Steve Filak]

Looking good so far Steve! Great job on the fairing, and the racks look good so far too.

Thanks, Colin! I still have a way to go, but it's getting there.

You not building a Jolly Rogers Tomcat is like Tilt building a 416 jet for himself...it aint gonna happen

The very thought of it just smacks of heresy! :lol:

  But, for some, I guess one is not enough, eh???

You are correct, sir. I will not rest until I have the entire Jolly Rogers Tomcat history on my display shelves. It's going to take a long time, but I think it'll be worth it in the end.

Please post more pics soon!

You betcha!

[Tilt]

You not building a Jolly Rogers Tomcat is like Tilt building a 416 jet for himself...it aint gonna happen :lol:Ahhhh

Awwwww....

But I always wanted a Hornet model with a little 'screaming ***** cat' on the tail!!

:lol:

NOT!!!!

;) :D :P

It's CHECKERS all the way baby!!!

Cheers,

Tilt

[GEORGEMATOSARTA]

Good work on cat Steve.

This is the cat you gonna make?

[Steve Filak]

Pretty close, George. Actually, the one I'm going to do is the 105 bird. There are a few minor updates to the markings, but for the most part, it's the same markings as the one you posted above.

[GEORGEMATOSARTA]

I new it.I have allready print the decal sheet you created about this colour scheme of VF-103 and im gonna make it in a 72 Hasegawa cat.But thats a future project.Im gonna finnish my VF-41 Black Aces -Hasegawa 1/72- and my next project is a Revell Superdetailed F-14 with Hasegawa,Academy and Verlinden parts.and the finished rsult gonna be the CAG a/c of VF-84 above USS Theodore Roosevelt as i had seen it ten years ago when the Rosevelt stayed 4 days in Greece.Something like this

[Marcin Witkowski, Poland]

Hello Gents!!!

I'm going to paint my superdetailed F-14A like this one below. This is VF-84 AJ-202 BuNo 160390 cat which has shot down libian SU-22 as AJ-107 VF-41 Blac Aces. This CAT have quite interesting story. It crashed with first navy female pilot in 1994 (VF-213)

[GEORGEMATOSARTA]

thank god Marcin Superscale release again this decal sheet (72-814) about a month ago.I have already bought two.

[Steve Filak]

And the completed scratchbuilt bombracks, installed in the forward Phoenix pylons:

Initial test fit:

Side view:

And a head-on view:

Note that the only thing that is important here is that the basic shapes are correct - most, if not all of the detail will be obscured once I hand bombs off of the racks, both on the bombracks, and the undersides of the pylons. They're not perfect, but once they're painted and weathered, I think they'll look OK.

Next up - BOL rails and LANTIRN 'T' adapter. Stay tuned.

[Andy Mullen]

Looking good there Steve. Scratchbuildings never been my strong point, but you got it down to a fine art

[Steve Filak]

Thanks, Andy! I don't know about fine art - I consider myself a hack when I see some of the amazing scratchbuilding that I see here, but I do what I can. Overall, it looks pretty good, and I think that once it gets a coat of paint, I'll be happier with it.

Thanks again for the kind words.

[Steve Filak]

Thanks, Colin! I'll have to go downstairs later and check the size on the Evergreen strip...........I can't remember it off the top of my head, but I think it's about the largest rectangular strip that they make.

As you can see, I did cut the holes a little too large, and then had to go back and wall the recesses back in with .010 strip. No big deal (it only added about 15 minutes of work, but if I was being more careful, I would have measured it first. I only plan on doing this once anyway - all future projects will either be beefed up with Steel Beach or Black Box conversion sets. I'm not going through this with another Revell kit again - I just had to do it once to say that I did it!

Might have to copy your technique when I do my F-14B.

Copy away - that's why I do the in progress stuff. Thanks again for the kind words.

Cheers,

Steve

[Steve Filak]

Wow....it's been a long time since I posted in this thread. Worse yet, it shows me that it's been a ridiculously long time since I finished a model. I hope to change all that in the next few weeks or so, as I've gotten back on the horse, so to speak.

Anyway, back to the build.

One of the biggest annoyances of the kit is the exhausts. I struggled with these for a while before I came up with a system for assembling them that gave me much less hassle. I decided to build the exhausts in halves, clean up the seams, and then glue the halves together. This only leaves you with two seams to clean up per exhaust, rather than all six.

Also, if you want to hide some of those seams inside the exhausts, some styrene strip will make your life a lot easier. Simply set them in place and glue them in with liquid cement (I like Testors for stuff like this because it's not as hot as Ambroid, and gives you more working time):

When you've got them all in place, and they're all straight, simply go back and trim the strips off once the liquid cement has set up for a while:

[Steve Filak]

That brings us to the landing gear. While they're not all that bad, the main gear legs in the R/M kit leave a bit to be desired. Some of the details are over-simplified, and could use a bit of extra detail. Here's the one of the unmodified main gear legs from the kit:

In addition to wanting to replace that coil spring, one of the other things that kind of bothered me about the main gear is that piston on the upper gear leg. It probably should have been a separate part, but R/M molded the whole thing as one part. and you can see where there should be some extra detail there. So, armed with some fine wire, metal rod and tubing, and some stretched sprue, I got to work:

First, I replaced the coil spring with one that I made from wire wrapped around a fine metal rod. It definitely looks a bit better, and when the wash is applied, the detail should pop a lot better. You'll also notice that I added some of the small hydraulic lines behind the coil spring using stretched sprue. This is actually a good way to replicate the smaller lines, because you can stretch sprue an awful lot thinner than most wire that you can find in the shop. Also, once you've got it in place, you can get it to conform to the shape of the gear leg with a couple of swipes of Testors Liquid Cement and a fine brush.

Here's a side by side of the stock parts, and what I did with them:

All of the landing gear and doors then got a fresh coat of Floquil Reefer White:

And it's off to masking the windscreen and scratchbuilding a canopy frame while the paint dries on the landing gear. Next, I'll gloss the parts up with Future, edge the gear doors with a red Sharpie, and take care of the wash/detail painting. It's nice to finally move this project toward a coat of paint and some decals......it's been a long time, too long in fact.

[CW4 Erick Swanberg]

smokin Steve keep us posted Erick

[Steve Filak]

Thanks, Erick. It feels good to finally get something accomplished with this project. I don't get a lot of free time these days due to my work schedule, so I have to make hay while the sun shines.

[Jamie Cheslo]

Wow, Steve, I had no idea you were into scratch building with such detail! Those gear look a heck of a lot better after you doctored 'em up! ;) It's amazing what you can accomplish with a little bit of wire, and some stretched sprue, eh? :o By the way, what method do you use for stretching sprue? I have used the candle method, but I can never seem to get it to come out evenly......

;)

J.C.