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My First 1/48 Hasegawa F-14 Tomcat


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Hi all!

So usually I just do completed build threads, but this time I thought I would share some pics I have taken along the way. This project was started as part of a buddy build with TomcatTweeker from here on this forum. He has built many Hasegawa Tomcats, so he lent me his extensive knowledge of the subject to help me shake my fears of starting this beast and to offer construction hints and tips. Thanks David, your help has been invaluable!

I am not gonna lie, before this project began I was pretty much petrified of the Hasegawa F-14. I had heard way too many horror stories about trashing the kit or putting it on the shelf of doom for years of dust collecting. But, as I have gone along, I have learned that it is not the monster I made it out to be in my own mind. Don't get me wrong, this is a very challenging kit, by FAR the most challenging of the 12 I have undertaken so far. But there are tips and tricks out there to counter every trouble spot on the kit, and with patience they can be overcome. I did not get everything perfect (and still have a ways to go), but I am pretty happy how I managed the many challenges on my first try. I will get better on the next one, to be sure!

So at this point I am actually pretty close to completion. But I thought I would share some pics I took along the way. Unfortunately I did not take many pics of actual construction and most are pretty much closer to completion than the beginning.

So here we go! I normally build OOB with AM decals, but this time I went with a lot of AM stuff. QuickBoost bang seats, Master pitot and aoa, Eduard F-14A PE set (full), Eduard mask, Steel beach Feisty Felines Part 1 decals, Afterburner Victory Cats decals for the light gray stencils, Furball Bombcat Sheet for the weapons markings, and Hasegawa Weapons sets B and C for the Sidewinders, Sparrows, and Phoenix.

Here is the obligatory kit box and AM picture (minus much of the AM stuff I ended up using LOL)

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More pics to come shortly!

-Michael

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I love me some Tomcat building. I look forward to what you do with this one.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope my little thread here provides ya with some entertainment, and I hope you approve!

So, I did not take any pics of the cockpit before I put it in the forward fuselage. At this point I was still shaking in my boots a bit building this, hanging on every word from David about what to do. LOL In the cockpit is the Eduard PE set, and since I am using QB seats they were not yet installed (and still are not, one of the things I still have to do). I will say the Hasegawa cockpit, as supplied by the kit, is definitely a pain in the butt to put together and install correctly. Add in the PE, and it adds a new dimension. I am still not sure I have everything in there just right, but eh, looks good to me. Another pain I encountered early was the gun panels. They fit like doodoo. Alot of work here to get it looking decent. These pics below are definitely "before" pics of that area. LOL

You might also note that I removed much of the rear bulkhead of the forward cockpit section. That was so I could add alignment tabs to help with the front to rear fitment, as per David's recommendation (sorry, no pics of this). Seems to have worked well enough for me!

So here are a few pics of the assembled forward fuselage and cockpit.

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That looks great. I had nothing but frustrations with my cockpit section. You seem to have really done a great job.

Thanks! I would have to agree with you there. The cockpit section has been the most difficult to deal with for me. I just realized last night I made a major booboo, all the way back to before these pics were taken. Yes, I somehow managed to put the nosegear wheel well in wrong. I swapped the right and left sides, so the part where the nose gear is supposed to sit is now at the front of the gear bay, not the rear. Still not sure how I am gonna manage that one lol.

So I have learned that I really love painting with Alclad and enjoy trying to replicate heat stressed metal. After studying many pictures of F-14As and using some liberal artistic license, this is what I came up with for the burner cans. I am really happy with how these turned out!

right after painting:

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After some finishing touches. I have since added a wash to these once they were install into the kit:

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Great progress and gorgeous cans :D/>

Thanks Janne, I appreciate the kind words!!!

I love a good set of cans.

Hahaha, I see what you did there! LOL I too, can appreciate a nice pair of cans. :woot.gif:

Hello Michael, it's really great to see familiar plastic in the hands of other builders and learn how they overcome the obstacles of the kit - so I'm following along closely. That's a beautiful cockpit!

Thanks cj! I have been following your thread here too, it is amazing to see TWO of these being built! One is hard enough haha. While we are talking about that, I gotta say I love how you handled the pilots in yours. They look amazingly lifelike and dynamic in those poses. Thanks for the compliment on the cockpit, it is def not as nice as yours though! Cockpits are really not my strong suit. Neither is construction and seam filling. LOL Painting seems to be what I am naturally good at.

BTW, I will be using your horizontal stab slip on ring idea!

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So at this point I had the major parts of construction completed, however I still had a ways to go to deal with the front and rear fuselage join. The intake areas that come to a point on the wing glove were a bit of a pain to get looking ok. Lots of putty and sanding here, and I am not entirely sure I got that properly sorted. As I said in my previous post, construction and filling is not my strong suit yet.

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I wish I'd known you were starting this. Steel Beach has a NACA gun vent piece that fits right in and avoids the pain of trying to get the kit NACA gun vent parts closed up. Nice start so far!

Edited by Darren Roberts
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I wish I'd known you were starting this. Steel Beach has a NACA gun vent piece that fits right in and avoids the pain of trying to get the kit NACA gun vent parts closed up. Nice start so far!

Yeah, I realized that after I had already put the mofo in and gone through the trouble of making it work. That will be the last time I do that! I will be getting the SB NACA vents from here on out. (I had to rob a Has F-14D kit for the NACA vents anyway, so that kit is missing one)

For this build I wanted to try something new. I usually prime in Tamiya Liquid White primer and pre-shade with black or dark brown. It gives decent results that way, but for a Navy jet I wanted to do something to give the paint a more mottled look. So I had been seeing some guys singing the praises of "black basing", wherein you use black primer and using a gray or white stippling effect on top. I was impressed with the results they achieved by this process.

So I bought some Gunze Mr Surfacer Black 1500, thinned it about 1:1, and let 'er rip. The F-14 looks pretty cool in all black, btw. LOL On top of that I started spraying spots and doodles of white primer. I chose the white because I wanted the stippling effect to be a little more prominent, as my subject seemed to have some serious mottling and tonal variation. See below:

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So here are some pics of the technique in progress. The fuselage part was photographed after I had only done a portion of white stippling, but I did not take any pics of it finished. But you get the idea...

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So anyone else tried this technique? Thoughts? I think this might be my new go-to, especially for Navy jets.

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Applied Future with a brush for a nice gloss base for the decal application, and applied the SB Decals. As pointed out by Darren Roberts, the SB sheet was incorrectly printed with the "202" in light gray. It should be black. So I sourced black 202s from an unused Revell F-14D decal sheet. Also, since this particular bird had light gray stencils, I used the ones provided in the Afterburner Victory Cats sheet. None of the other sheets I have had light gray stencils, since so few schemes used them. They were slightly darker than the SB Decals light gray, but not terrible. The SB decals were great to work with, although I did have a problem with both of the vagabond strips on the forward fuselage. I am thinking that was my issue, I seem to have a problem with large decals on all of my projects. I think using future as a setting solution is not such a good idea for large decals.

OK, I know what you are thinking. "Oh, great, another Jolly Rogers Tomcat". I am sure you can tell by my screename that I am a JR fanboy. Unapologetically so, and this goes back to my childhood and seeing "The Final Countdown" as an 8 year old and falling in love with Military Aircraft, the F-14 Tomcat, and the Bones. It set off a lifetime aviation passion for me, so that is why I am "Fighting Eighty-Four".

With that being said, this is actually the very first Bones jet I have built. I chose this particular scheme because it is one I have not yet seen done and is very unique. This is my 2nd favorite of all JR schemes.

So here are the pics with Decals applied...

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Oh, great, another Jolly Rogers Tomcat

yahoo.gif

Build is coming along great mate, dont care which one, Tomcat never gets old on my eyes.

Hahaha thanks! See, I know people are thinking it! :whistle:

I am the same way, my eyes light up when I see any F-14 thread. LOL

It looks so beautiful already!

Thanks bud, I appreciate the kind words!

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So up until this point, on all previous models, I used a homemade oil wash using Abteilung oils and odorless turpentine. That worked pretty well for me, but as I was working on this I realized I had a MIG US NAVY Weathering set I had never used. So I thought what the heck, I will try it out on this build. The set comes with a light gray, medium gray, and dark wash. I used the dark gray wash for everything except the vertical tails, I used the light gray on those.

It is an enamel wash, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Well, I must say, I am quite impressed. It really gave me a nice dirt effect without being too overpowering, and seemed to "stick" in the panel lines much better than my homemade brews did. Just what I was looking for!

I couldn't be happier with how this wash on top of the black-based basecoat turned out.

As for the landing gear, I used my homemade wash on them. I think I went a little heavy on them, but had a hard time getting it all off since I had the Eduard PE on them and was afraid to start ripping all that stuff off that too me FOREVER to put on. (Just a fun fact... this build was the first time I have every used photo-etch. I am not sure if I love it or hate it right now. LOL)

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LOVE the scheme you choose,

and looks great now.

where can I find the decals?

Thanks AK!!!

I know of only two sheets that include these markings, and the are both long since OOP and VERY hard to find. One is the Afterburner "Victory Cats" sheet. That one is prized and often goes on ebay for $100 or more!

The one I used was from the SB (Steel Beach) Decals Feisty Felines, Part 1 sheet. This is a really cool sheet, it covers one particular BuNo (160390) F-14 throughout it's life in three different squadrons. In fact, it's life in VF-84 was rather short lived and pretty uneventful. In the other two squadrons, it actually was involved in 2 very famous incidents. As part of VF-41 Black Aces, it was "Fast Eagle 107" with Cdr. Hank Kleeman and RIO Lt. Dave Venlet and was involved in the Gulf of Sidra Incident as one of the two that shot down a Libyan Su-22 Fitter. Then, after a stint in VF-84, this aircraft was transferred to VF-213 Black Lions. In another famous (but tragic) incident, this plane earned the headlines again on Oct. 25, 1994 when, piloted by Lt. Kara “Revlon” Hultgreen, U.S. Navy’s first female F-14 pilot, crashed into the sea while landing aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, off San Diego. While her RIO, Lt. Matthew P. Klemish, ejected safely she didn’t survive the ejection.

So, sorry for the history lesson, but I think that is a really cool little background on the jet I am building.

Sure thing, Michael! Wow, you and your airbrush are a dangerous combination :)/> I'm studying the pictures intently. And what kind of camera are you using? It captures everything so nicely.

Thanks cj, I guess if I am going to be good at something, that is the one thing I would choose. LOL

Funny you ask about the camera. Previous pics I had taken of finished builds I used my old Samsung Galaxy S5, and the pics were kinda crappy. But a month or so ago I got a new phone, a Nexus 6P, and whoooo boy does that mofo take some nice pics! Yes, you heard me right, those are cell phone pics! Crazy, eh?

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So more pics time!

I got the missiles mostly done here. They are from Hasegawa Weapons sets 2 and 3 (why the Phoenix missiles are in a bomb and rocked pod set is beyond me!), and the decals are from the Furball Bombcat Weapons set. Man, are those decals nice! They really snazzy up the missiles and make them a point of interest as opposed to an afterthought. Decalling those SOBs was like doing a whole kit in of itself. Took me a whole night just to do the missiles!

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I also added the flat coat to the entire model, really changes the look nicely from the glossy state it was in before! I used a mixture of Future and Tamiya Flat Base (about 6:1 ratio) for the flat and airbrushed it on. It is nice, I can control the amount of flatness I get by how thick of coats I put on.

I also blue-tacked on the vertical tails to get an idea of what she was going to look like... Woot!

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So with this update this thread will be caught up with where I actually am in my build. I actually hope to finish tonight, all I have left to do is paint and install the Ejection Seats, Canopy, and play around with some streaking and corrosion control weathering.

Last night I attached the probes, antennae, and steps and ladder. That was fun. I spent more time looking for the THREE different probes I lost to the carpet monster than I did trying to put the little buggers on the damn model. I even lost the Master Model AOA probe, still haven't figured out what I will do about that yet.

I also painted two dark spots to the upper right and lower left of the skull and bones on the tails. The reason for this is before they moved the "AJ" to the insides of the tails, they were in these positions (see pic of actual jet I posted a few posts above). Might not be in the exact correct spot or the exact shape, but the effect is kinda cool.

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Anyway, here are some pics of where I am right now:

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WOW. Thats your first one? Unreal! Couple tips, if you haven't already, sand the point at the base of the vertical tails to be shorter so they do not touch the glove sealing bags.Will take you about 30 seconds each one. Also push your wings in a bit more and they will click in place and the big gap between wing and glove will vanish. Lovely building and painting, you got the join between forward fuse and fuselage PERFECT. That is always my least favourite bit! Keep it up.

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Thank you for telling us so much info about the scheme you choose,

you did a really good job on this cat, and quite fast!!

can't wait to see you finish this bad cat!

and you make me wanna do my own one in this scheme, too LOL

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