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8 hours ago, dehowie said:

Looks like the mad trencher has been at work at AMK....

They look significantly deeper and wider than the Mig-31 which was already to prominent with regard to panel lines.

Ouch...

Off to a buy a couple more of Darrens F-14D conversions looking at those photos.

 

I rather have the panel lines a bit more pronounced then too fine. Some Hasegawa birds have such thin lines that after a layer of primer and final sanding they are gone. Sanding down is a lot easier then re-scribing ;-)

 

cheers

Uwe

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1 hour ago, anj4de said:

 

I rather have the panel lines a bit more pronounced then too fine. Some Hasegawa birds have such thin lines that after a layer of primer and final sanding they are gone.

Uwe

 

totally agree.

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Deep panel lines are good, even nice and useful.
But those panel lines on those pictures not even looks shallow, but very wide, and this could be a problem.
It could be difficult to keep wash inside it, and of course such wide lines look not good on whole model.
AMK makes just perfect, beautiful details on their models, that is fact, but for iknown reasons they can not make nice, deep and narrow lines.
Too bad.

 

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16 hours ago, Darren Roberts said:

I'm curious why they made the slime light panels on the wing tips separate pieces. They aren't clear glass.

I can't see any reason to have the wing tip formation lights separate either.

 

I hope they dropped the idea of the multi piece canopy as well. Might work in 1/32 or larger but at 1/48, keep the canopy 1 piece.

 

Cheers,

 

John

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16 hours ago, Darren Roberts said:

I'm curious why they made the slime light panels on the wing tips separate pieces. They aren't clear glass.

 

They are clear.

It is always much easier to paint and glue such parts then make it on grey plastic as one part of whole wing.

 

f-14a_161134_12_of_93.jpg

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51 minutes ago, Solo said:

 

They are clear.

It is always much easier to paint and glue such parts then make it on grey plastic as one part of whole wing.

 

 

 

Definitely not clear. The formation light is an electroluminescent panel. The panel itself is a solid surface with a material impregnated with an active component that glows when voltage is passed through it. The material is then epoxy coated to improve environmental exposure. Some lights have an almost fiberglass appearance while others have a bit more gloss from the protective coating.

 

Although it may have a glossy appearance, it is not clear.

 

Cheers,

 

John

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After thinking about it a bit more, there are 2 different styles of wingtip formation lights on the Tomcat. The early style has 2 panels with 4 segments each and the late ones have just the 2 panels with no segments. This might be what AMK are doing.

 

Cheers,

 

John

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1 hour ago, Solo said:

I have just realized I confused those formatlion lights with position lights.
I meant of course those green/red light on corners of wingtips.
They are of course glass, I hope? :)

 

Yes, the position lights are tinted glass.

 

Here's a good shot showing the wingtip formation light.This might be where AMK got the idea from.

 

US_Navy_040705-N-6433N-024_Aviation_Stru

 

 

Cheers,

 

John

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8 hours ago, kaz said:

The wings do look nice; but as an update on progress with the kit, they aren't exactly something we've never seen before. AMK showed shots of the wings and munitions just a few months prior.

 

The clean wings are new.  They showed off the opened wings in early February, but the clean ones haven't been posted before.

 

Which should also answer the question as to whether the kit will be released on April 10.  (it will not)

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1 hour ago, GW8345 said:

The position lights were actually colored plastic, not glass.

 

The two types of formations were; early - regular non NVG light, late - NVG light and regular light.

 

Must have been a high temp resistant acrylic. I know the limiting speed on the F-104 was due to the acrylic canopy but this was a conservative number. 

 

I didn't know that the F-14 was set up for NVG compatible formation lights. NVG lighting must have been very late in their service life. I do know that the F/A-18E/F are equipped with this functionality. This is evident by the offset light/dark look of their formation lights.

 

Ciao,

 

John

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15 hours ago, GW8345 said:

NVG's were introduced into the fleet around 95/96, about the same time LANTRIN Pods were.

GW

 

Although NVG's were introduced to the fleet at that time, I'm pretty sure the exterior lighting of the F-14 was never modified to be NVG compatible. According to the NAVAIR 01−F14AAD−1, F-14D NATOPS FLIGHT MANUAL(2004), only the cockpits were equipped with NVG lighting.

 

Cheers,

 

John

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I was a F-14 Ordnanceman, Ordnance and Plane Captain Intructor, and Full Systems QAR from 87 to 2001, the formations lights were modified for NVG, that's what those black stripes are, NVG lighting.:thumbsup:

Edited by GW8345
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On 3/20/2018 at 5:20 PM, B.Sin said:

What makes you think that the rest of this Tomcat kit will not be better than the Tamiya kit?

I know it won't be.  It will have more features and will probably fit okay but it won't be the Tamiya Tomcat.  In the area of surface rendition alone I already know the Tamiya  Tomcat is ahead.  That's not to say that the AMK Tomcat won't be nice.  Just not as nice as the Tamiya Tomcat.

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2 hours ago, GW8345 said:

I was a F-14 Ordnanceman, Ordnance and Plane Captain Intructor, and Full Systems QAR from 87 to 2001, the formations lights were modified for NVG, that's what those black stripes are, NVG lighting.:thumbsup:

 

The black stripes in the photo look like sealant to me and the light panel only has 2 wires going to it. This along with no NVIS switch for the formation lights makes me doubtful. 

 

Hard to argue with someone who's been there.  Guess we'll agree to disagree.

 

Cheers,

 

John

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47 minutes ago, galileo1 said:

I know it won't be.  It will have more features and will probably fit okay but it won't be the Tamiya Tomcat.  In the area of surface rendition alone I already know the Tamiya  Tomcat is ahead.  That's not to say that the AMK Tomcat won't be nice.  Just not as nice as the Tamiya Tomcat.

How do you already know the Tamiya come Tomcat is ahead? Have you seen the tooling or test shots?

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