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45 minutes ago, ridinshotgun said:

 

Careful!  You'll be accused of being a rival model company and personal insults will follow!  :wmsmiley-poop-hits-the-fan:

 

Can't wait to see your thoughts and judgement!

 

263

 

Keep up the good job.

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5 hours ago, Zactoman said:

This.

I'm looking over the kit right now and so far all of the errors pointed out seem validated (, IMHO).

As time permits, I'm going to do some digging and see if I can't figure this thing out.

 

:cheers:

 

Glad you decided to give it a closer look. I will admit, there is a lot to like about the kit. The level of detailing is very nice, approaching what GWH has done with their Su-35 kits.  I am looking forward to discovering what the root causes of these issues are. Somewhere in the fuselage they made some fundamental error that has propagated into the rear of the airframe and caused the problems we are seeing.

I agree with you that trying to create a fix would likely turn into an expensive affair. In the end its all just a shame, as this kit could have been much more. Oh well... :dontknow:

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This is good time for GWH to release their Tomcat: people are a little bitr dissapointed with AMK's F-14, and still looking for good quality kit with all option possible (including moving wing surfaces). If GWH could make Tomcat with such top quality as they did Su-35... it could be market bullseye.

 

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To throw out an opinion of someone that's primarily a lurker: this kit's a hard pass. For me it's up there with Kinetic's droopy nose F-16 as a never buy. I can't un-see the misshapen aft sides and to be specific it's the slope outboard of the vertical tails that makes the sides look pinched to me. I don't see the problem in the top view some have brought up, I think it may be a symptom of the slope issues. 

 

I only build 1/48 Korean War and newer. I have a stash of a couple hundred kits ranging from full resin and old Esci with plenty of modern plastic. There's way more than I'll probably ever finish, so I'm a bit selective about adding kits to the pile. I have a finished Monogram F-14 on the shelf with Tamiya and Hasegawa F-14s in the stash, so buying another for the stash should blow away what I already have. If shape errors are significant enough that I see them (and I'm no F-14 expert) without red lines all over photos that's a deal breaker.

 

For anyone at AMK that may read this: I've bought a couple of your kits that haven't been kitted recently or ever by someone else (L-29, Fouga Magister) just because they were unique. I opted for the Kinetic Kfir over the AMK because of shape issues. If you want to sell kits to someone like me, produce something no one else has produced, not something everyone seems to make like another F-104. If you are going to be 2nd or 10th to market with a plane it better be right.

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3 hours ago, Solo said:

This is good time for GWH to release their Tomcat: people are a little bitr dissapointed with AMK's F-14, and still looking for good quality kit with all option possible (including moving wing surfaces). If GWH could make Tomcat with such top quality as they did Su-35... it could be market bullseye.

 

 

Commercially, it's a smarter move to let the dust settle, the market relax, and present a better product 6 months/one year later.

And IMHO, 2020 will be a very good year for scale modelling in general,  in particular aviation modelling, bc Top Gun 2 tsunami is coming.

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43 minutes ago, Solo said:

GWH didn't announced their F-14 officially, so I don't think we will get it earier then during next 6-8 months.

When it is announced  lets hope they start with second letter of the alphabet. Bravo, Bravo

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On 10/30/2019 at 8:46 PM, dryguy said:

Hmmm....had a bunch of posts deleted...don't really understand why. I think the pictures with tape comparing cross sections of the hip area with tamiya were quite helpful...

 

The posts about AMK's Indiegogo debacle were deleted.

 

That's okay. I was an Indiegogo backer. It's been almost three weeks (Oct 15th 2019) after Sio emailed me and promised my kit would be sent out "in just a few days" because they were too busy to mail it out, I emailed him today and told him to keep my money and not send me the kit I paid for. I'll take the hit and learn from my mistake.

 

It's not just the panel lines and shapes AMK messed up on.

 

This will probably be deleted too since it doesn't discuss the plastic.

 

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1 hour ago, Solo said:

GWH didn't announced their F-14 officially, so I don't think we will get it earier then during next 6-8 months.

 

Great Wall has officially announced their 1/48 F-14. It will have dirty wings too!

 

Looks like it will be nice and won't require a 300 post thread:rofl:

 

Here's a write up on DNModels page

https://dnmodels.com/all/f-14a-from-great-wall-hobby/

 

F-14A Tomcat, Great Wall Hobby L4823 (2019)

 

f-14 tomcat great wall hobby new tooling dn models 1/48

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1 hour ago, masanissa said:

 

The posts about AMK's Indiegogo debacle were deleted.

 

FWIW, they weren't deleted, specifically.  There was an error with the board's software and it had to be reset to a version that was saved a couple of days earlier.  Everything that was posted from the 28th to the 30th was lost.  It sucks, but there really wasn't any other option.

 

So no, your (very valid) complaints weren't targeted by the mods for not being about the plastic.

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1 hour ago, F-16 said:

For some reason I can't find the pre-order for the kit (or the weapons set) on the Victory Models site.

 

Maybe they removed it?

Just a WAG, but perhaps they removed it from preorders and are putting it in the "just arrived" category? Although it doesn't show up at all on their page under any category.

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The photos shown by Haneto confirm what we know- the slope is too great particularly where the engine nacelle meets the wing bags. I do also think that the planview is ever so slightly too curved- the pictures that solo provided seem to show that. Zactoman- you will be doing us a great service if you can point out the shape issues and possible fixes. On the plus side, at least most of the issues seem to be fixable with putty/resin and sanding. One of the things that put me off fixing the Academy kit was the canopy-no putty can fix that. I do like the details on this kit. I also believe that there is still room in the market for a cheaper and more basic but essentially accurate F 14- something like the academy kit without the Quasimodo nose.

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21 hours ago, haneto said:

 

k3IcCyV.jpg

 

Well, the hips on the AMK Tomcat kit suddenly remind me of those in my Tamiya 1/48 F-16C upper fuselage half kit that my wife melt down after placing them over the heater while she was dusting... :hmmm:

Looking at the slope from the side, could the depression be corrected if filled with Milliput and levelled out with the rest of the surface?

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Not to be picky but I noticed this the first time this photo comparison was made back, oh what, 50 pages ago?

 

Anyway does it make a difference that the two model kits are comparing the port side while the photo of the VF-32 aircraft is of the starboard side? I mean if your going to compare wouldn't you want to do it on all the same sides?

 

23 hours ago, haneto said:

Obvious or not, judge by yourself.

 

k3IcCyV.jpg

 

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Going over the kits myself one other detail missed by Amk was the partial down angle on the spoilers.

The spoilers have a slightly down angle in the retracted position to allow them to fair into the flap when deployed which Tamiya picked up.

Amk’s are flat topped ie they have no downward angle when stowed.

A quick look at the Tamiya upper wing makes it very clear.

Never noticed it until comparing the two side by side and the upper wing is very obvious with Tamiya captured that unique feature beautifully.

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1 hour ago, Hubbie Marsten said:

Looking at the slope from the side, could the depression be corrected if filled with Milliput and levelled out with the rest of the surface?

 

Of course it could. 

 

With enough Milliput (and effort) you could make any kit “perfect”. You just have to put in the research and work to fix the errors made by the kit manufacturer. 

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2 hours ago, Hubbie Marsten said:

Looking at the slope from the side, could the depression be corrected if filled with Milliput and levelled out with the rest of the surface?

 

I think there is more going on than just a depression to be filled in. There is the issue of too steep a slope from that edge back to the tail. I have a feeling the problem starts further forward, else how is there room for this slope? No, there is some error somewhere that is propagating back and allowing for the strange configuration of the rear end. I'm hoping that Zactoman will be able to figure this out. He seems to have a knack for this kind of thing (no pressure Zactoman, just the hopes and desires of thousands of crazed scale modelers obsessed with the minutia of this F-14 kit).

 

P.S. Looking at the AMK kit, if you were to fill in the depression with putty to level it out more, it would make the side panels too high. That's why I think there is something else going on here. The side panels on the Tamiya and AMK kits and the photo of the real thing are all about the same height. Adding more material to the AMK kit throws off the proportions of the side panels.

Edited by Mstor
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The curvature of the the horizontal stabilizer will have to be corrected as well after fixing the hips.  By how much will probably be different for everyone, depending on how much correction you do on the hips.

 

49007598947_e4e6baecc0.jpg

Edited by crackerjazz
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2 hours ago, Whiskey said:

Anyway does it make a difference that the two model kits are comparing the port side while the photo of the VF-32 aircraft is of the starboard side? I mean if your going to compare wouldn't you want to do it on all the same sides?

 

:doh:Oh, Zach! Those blond moments, I think... Obviously, Yufei mirrored that picture and inverted it 'cause the angle in the original take matched exactly those angles he wanted to compare the Tamiya and AMK kits with. After all, both sides are exactly the same on the real thing. 

2 hours ago, habu2 said:

With enough Milliput (and effort) you could make any kit “perfect”. You just have to put in the research and work to fix the errors made by the kit manufacturer. 

 

Any kit "perfect", Habster...? :hmmm:I'd understand doing that in an old, poorly researched kit, not on one that's just been released.

 

1 hour ago, Mstor said:

I think there is more going on than just a depression to be filled in.

P.S. Looking at the AMK kit, if you were to fill in the depression with putty to level it out more, it would make the side panels too high. That's why I think there is something else going on here. The side panels on the Tamiya and AMK kits and the photo of the real thing are all about the same height. Adding more material to the AMK kit throws off the proportions of the side panels.

 

Hi, Mark! Yes, I ought to have supposed that the fix couldn't be so darn easy.

 

57 minutes ago, crackerjazz said:

The curvature of the the horizontal stabilizer will have to be corrected as well after fixing the hips.  By how much will probably be different for everyone, depending on how much correction you do on the hips.

 

49007598947_e4e6baecc0.jpg

 

Has anybody ever compared the curvature on the Tamiya and AMK Tomcat kits yet, crackerjazz?

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