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Hobby Boss 1/48 F-14


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The F-14 is one of my favorite jets. I have never owned a Hasegawa kit as I have heard they are a real bear to put together and you get no weapons, pods, etc. So I was excited to see another company release tomcat kits but I have heard they are no better than the Hasegawa tomcats, I have read the main big issue is the shape of the intakes so I say toss some steel beach intake covers on them.

Does anyone know are their other issues with the Hobby Boss F-14 kits?

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Avantgarde (AMK) has just officially announced the F-14 family that they've been working on. Having worked with Sio/AMK now for some months, I can tell you that his commitment to realism and accuracy is second to none. The previous AMK kits have been outstanding, and their soon to be released MiG-31 Foxhound is looking spectacular. If I had even the slightest interest in the F-14 in 1/48, I'd ditch every other kit and eagerly await the AMK kits next year.

Hobby Loss simply scaled down the Trumpeter 1/32 CAD, with all the same problems. The intakes are positively horrible (among other things).

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They're not awful. The 3 biggest complaints as I recall them are...

1. Intake shape: the bottom intake lip should be roughly parallel to the top...it's not.

2. Surface details: apparently the Trumpeter riveter was looking for a job

3. Phoenix pallets: too flap and narrow up front

All in all, it seems to me they look like a Tomcat once built. I see the intake problem and believe it's "real", but is not all that noticeable except and a few choice angles. The surface detail is a double edge sword. It is awfully heavy, but on these heavily weathered TPS schemes it could be nice. To me, I feel like it would fail on an early Gloss Gull Gray over White scheme, but help a TPS. The phoenix pallets I only kind of appreciate.

Probably the biggest plus is that if built OOB, they are an easier build than the Hasegawa birds. However, I ultimately gave up my kit for a Hasegawa bird. There are a handful of little things like the position of the intake ramps that were easier for me to fix on the Hasegawa kits than the Hobby Boss (both kits depict them in the supersonic state OOB, but it's easy to stow the ramps on the Hasegawa). I couldn't fault anyone for choosing the HB kits, but picked Hasegawa myself.

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They're not awful. The 3 biggest complaints as I recall them are...

1. Intake shape: the bottom intake lip should be roughly parallel to the top...it's not.

2. Surface details: apparently the Trumpeter riveter was looking for a job

3. Phoenix pallets: too flap and narrow up front

4. Position of fuel tanks - they are moved forward by approx 6 mm. On the real F-14, tank's tips are flush with bottom lip of air intake. Easy to fix - see post #34

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=281162&st=20

Edited by BJ Blazkowicz
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Okay, they're not awful. They're horrid, but not awful. They feature the same very basic, bone-headed mistakes as the 1/32 Trumpeter kit, all of which could easily have been avoided with a tiny bit of basic research.

I know for a fact that AMK is doing their homework on the airplane.

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If you don't want to wait 1 year and then see how AMK kit will turn out then there is no reason not to buy HobbyBoss kit. It has some issues as listed but they are minor.

Here two reviews with lots of pictures:

http://www.hyperscale.com/2013/reviews/kits/hobbyboss80368reviewme_1.htm

http://www.cybermodeler.com/hobby/kits/hb/kit_hb_80366.shtml

I am more in line with the first reviewer, second reviewer has a price issue with the kit but it is not as expensive as he says, they are around $60-65.

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The Hasegawa kit isn't that bad if you take some time to read up on some builds online and get some pointers on how to handle the tricky parts. Anyone with some patients can do it with a small amount of effort. Also you can usually find them for cheaper and more readily in second hand markets than the Hobby Boss kit. I've yet to find a Hobby Boss kit for less than $50, but routinely see Hasegawa for under $40 (I've even got one I'd sell you, PM me if your interested).

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With hearing the announcement of the AMK Tomcats it does not make sense to stock up on Has or HB kits and wait for the AMK as sounds very nice indeed. I would think for now if I want to work on a F-14 I guess I will pick up a HB as I think I will have to purchase less AM for it:

Hasegawa

- Decals

- Aires pit

- Aires exhaust

- Royal Resin wheels

- Weapons

- Pods

- Wolfpack update set with rails/lunchers

HB

- everything above minus weapons, pods, and cockpit (just buy seats) as I have read the HB is one of the best OOB cockpits.

Anyone disagree?

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The Hobby Boss cockpit is fairly nice oob. If the accuracy things aren't an issue to you and you don't need to placate the RIVET COUNTERS I'd recommend it over the Hasegawa for ease of build. You're right the Hasegawa does benifit from a lot of AM. I'm building one now and I'm sinking about $250 into the build in all.

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As others have said the HobbybBoss kits are very good.

Far better detail oob and the only issue as such is so small few care and those that do fix it in 10 minutes. As it saves them 20 hours worth of building issues you have with the more poorly detailed Hasegawa kit.

The Hasegawa kit has its own "accuracy" issues the anti Chinese brigade conveniently forget wing cough flaps cough...

If you want a "perfect kit" out of box keep waiting and hope Avant do a better job of the Tomcat than the Kfir which was far from perfect.

Soft cockpit detail, heavy panel lines etc.

If they can pull it off fabulous but it's there third kit the second one still not released and a big complicated aircraft with many nuances etc.

If you bought a HB kit now you certainly would not be wasting your money. It is far more refined far sharper product than the Kfir..in fact it's far superior to the AVG Kfir.

Talk is one thing results are another.

Good luck to AVG on the Cat but I am not holding my breath based off the Kfir.

It was so good I bought 3 Kinetic Kfirs after buying the AVG kit.

Expectations vs reality but hopefully the F-14 will be ok.

Edited by dehowie
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As others have said the HobbybBoss kits are very good.

Far better detail oob and the only issue as such is so small few care and those that do fix it in 10 minutes. As it saves them 20 hours worth of building issues you have with the more poorly detailed Hasegawa kit.

The Hasegawa kit has its own "accuracy" issues the anti Chinese brigade conveniently forget wing cough flaps cough...

If you want a "perfect kit" out of box keep waiting and hope Avant do a better job of the Tomcat than the Kfir which was far from perfect.

Soft cockpit detail, heavy panel lines etc.

If they can pull it off fabulous but it's there third kit the second one still not released and a big complicated aircraft with many nuances etc.

If you bought a HB kit now you certainly would not be wasting your money. It is far more refined far sharper product than the Kfir..in fact it's far superior to the AVG Kfir.

Talk is one thing results are another.

Good luck to AVG on the Cat but I am not holding my breath based off the Kfir.

It was so good I bought 3 Kinetic Kfirs after buying the AVG kit.

Expectations vs reality but hopefully the F-14 will be ok.

The 1/48th scale and also considering the size the beast is a little too big for space at my house. So I went the 1/72 scale route, but do plan on doing one 1/48th scale kit on down the road. It'll be an early F14a, and nothing else will work for me. I first bought the Hasegawa kit, and it didn't take me long to get rid of it, but still have one left. I went the Fujimi route even though I own two or three Hobby Boss kits (all F14a's). I picked up the Fujimi's at shows for less than $15 a piece (one was nine dollars). Now all the talk is the new Fine Molds kit. Don't mean a lot here as they don't exist. Anyway I still like the Hobby Boss kit a lot better than the Hasegawa, but trust me the Fujimi is where it's at in my house.

Back to 1/48th kits. The H.B. is pretty much nothing but a scaled up 1/72 kit, or a scaled down 1/32 kit. I had the Trumpeter F14d in 1/32, and traded it to another forum member. Thing was huge, and I had a couple issues with it. The error with the intakes is noticeable in 1/32, but not nearly as noticeable in 1/48th. Barely noticeable in 1/72 I might add here. Now we've been hear all the "crowing" about the up and coming Tamiya Tomcat in 1/48th. It's out there as I've seen it a half dozen times rotting away on the shelf. Bingo! It's a Tamiya re-box of an Italeri Tomcat. So much for that lemon. I think I'm with you, and will just wait till all these guys pick the kit into a gazillion pieces.

gary

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HB came after the hasegawa does, so they wasted the chance to make the best Tomcat out there.

Ugly Phoenix, Sparrows.

And just a few nice details...

Just waiting for AMK F-14

call it what you want, but it's buildable. Can't say that for Hasegawa. I don't know what a 1/48th kit cost, but it's probably half the cost and yet looks better out of the box. Weapons??? I wouldn't exactly say the Hasegawa stuff is state of the art. Their cockpit is nice, but really no better than the H.B. Plus most folks don't want to think about the wings! Too bad Fujimi didn't scale up their 1/72 kit as it's better than either one.

gary

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Agree about waiting on the Avant Garde kits but it really depends on what you want out of the kit. Do you want a massively accurate replica? If so, HB isn't the way to go but it does look like a Tomcat. Hasegawas shape is more accurate but you do deal with fit issues and old tool moulds. AVG kits are superb but they are not perfect. The Kfir suffers from a lack of an area ruled fuselage and it is quite noticeable. Kinetic got that part right but suffers from detail and fit compared to AVG.

If you want to do a Tomcat in the short term then waiting on AVG may not be your answer.

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HB or Hasegawa are very high priced here in Canada. Average for either one is $100 plus tax. I was at my LHS today and they had one Hasegawa F-14D, it was $110 marked down to $60.00 in the clearance section, got all excited until I realized it was the F-14D black tomcat molded in black plastic.

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