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I'd like to join the GB with this entry. I will be building the 1/72 Hobbyboss F-14D as Vandy 1, the VX-9 Tomcat famous for its overall black scheme. I've always wanted to build a model of it, so I guess now's a good opportunity. I hope I can finish it before the deadline.

The decals will be from Modelkasten/Fine Molds. I believe that they were designed to fit the Fine Molds F-14, but I doubt there will be any major issues with the possible exception of the tail stripes. Ignore the bit of masking tape at the bottom, I put it there after the plastic flap got torn off.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I did the cockpit with a mixture of painting and decals. Hobbyboss's decals for the main instrument panels are useless because they're completely different in shape to the plastic parts. I carefully cut off what I could use from the decals and painted the rest. The other parts as well as the seats will be installed right before the canopy goes on, to prevent them from dropping out during the build.

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The cockpit has been set in place between the nose halves. I found that the spine didn't fit very well.

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Modifying the wings so they can be installed after painting. I cut off a bit of the circular portion that Hobbyboss wants you to put in a fuselage pivot before closing up the two halves. Don't cut off too much because you still need some "lip" to make the wing stay on without falling out.

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After that, it's a simple matter of slotting the wings in from an angle (not perpendicular to the fuselage, the pressure generated when inserting this way can pry the wing glove vane area apart) and wriggling them about until the angles match.

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Good work! Are you planning on adding a crew? If so, be aware that the seats need to be raised. I raised the front seat by 2mm and the back seat by 1,5mm to have the guyss sitting in see more that just their canopy mainframe...

HAJO

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Good work! Are you planning on adding a crew? If so, be aware that the seats need to be raised. I raised the front seat by 2mm and the back seat by 1,5mm to have the guyss sitting in see more that just their canopy mainframe...

HAJO

Nah, I don't have any spare pilot figures that I don't plan to use so I'm just going to leave it as it is.

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A small update today. To install the nose gear later in the build (much easier), you need to cut a portion of the main pin. Again, don't cut off too much because you'll want to have something to guide the alignment later.

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You'll also need to drill a hole in the nose gear bay.

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After that you can install the nose gear whenever you like in the build.

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Next comes the part which a lot of people dread about modern jet kits, the intakes. The fit of the intakes are quite bad in the front part, and you can see an ugly seam right in the middle of the intake. Not sure how I'll fix that one, but I'm going to try to use some plastic card sanded to shape to fill in the other places.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Time for an overdue update, life got in the way.

I filled in the gaps in the intake trunking using card and filler. It won't win a place at a contest for sure, but good enough to put in my display case. The intake pieces themselves fit very well onto the fuselage.

The exhaust shrouds are another part of the kit that doesn't fit well. Lots of filling and sanding needed here. Other problem areas are the nose and the front/rear fuselage joint but only some light sanding was necessary.

The main body is now finished and ready for priming and touching up. Will post some pics later.

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Hobbyboss puts the holes for the fuel tanks in the wrong place on the intake. If the default locations are drilled out, the tanks would be too far forward and too much to the center. To get new drilling points, I put a little black paint on the pins of the fuel tank before placing it on the intake, then I drilled it from the outside in.

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Canopy masked up and ready for priming.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The fuselage and wings have been painted and decals have been applied. Before I applied primer, I sanded off one of the antennas on the spine. For some reason Hobbyboss has two of them here, after checking some references I decided the antenna closest to the GPS dome was the one to sand off.

The Modelkasten decals were a mixed bag. They came off the sheet with no problems and went on okay, but the red is more of an orange and they're missing lots of stencils that should have been there. I used the Hobbyboss decals for the anti-slip areas and the formation lights.

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The black cat looks great! Your right on time to finish this bugger.

Thanks dude. I did the fuel tanks today and I don't plan on adding many weapons to it (a LANTIRN and ACMI pod, maybe an AIM-9 too) so I should be able to finish by the end of this month.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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