1/72 1/72 GWH F-14D VF-31 Diorama /w tractor and figures

[habu2]

Amazing work on the model and excellent photography. What can you share about your photo setup & lighting?

[Eric B.]

Hello, 

 

That's a very nice build indeed... Really inspiring job.

 

Eric B.

[The Underdog]

Viperbite,

I had to do a double-take, because usually we see this kind of details in a 1/48 scale

model. Nothing wrong with modeling a clean version of the iconic Tomcat, but these

aircraft just didn't look like that on operational status and combat. Your skills used in

modeling this kit are exceptional, and you did a wonderful job in elevating the project

to a new level. The Tomcat on its own is a masterpiece, but displaying it with the Dio'

really completes the package. Too many good things about the model, pushes all the

right buttons - the "Laundry List" would be huge. Needless to say, congratulations on

a task very well done. In 1/72 scale, "one of the best looking Tomcats I've seen!"

[ChernayaAkula]

On 4/9/2020 at 2:57 PM, The Underdog said:

<...> In 1/72 scale, "one of the best looking Tomcats I've seen!"

 

^ ^ ^ This! Really hard to believe we're looking at 1/72. Could easily pass for 1/48. It really is that good.

[viperbite]

Thank you guys

[chuck540z3]

As a 1/32 guy, I rarely look at 1/48 models and never 1/72.  I'm, glad I did this time.  This Tomcat is fantastic at any scale, but at 1/72 even more so.  Big time "Wow! -and Congrat's for the close up pics to reveal any flaws, which are minimal.  You should be very proud of this F-14 and you should be.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[viperbite]

The diorama is just finished, so I re-shoot some photos of the completed set.

 

Finally I've to say TOMCAT RULES!

 

DSC_2350 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2352 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2354 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2359 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2361 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2363 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2364 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2370 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2371 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2376 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2383 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2384 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

 

DSC_2385 by Brent Jin, 於 Flickr

[viperbite]

On 4/18/2020 at 9:36 AM, chuck540z3 said:

As a 1/32 guy, I rarely look at 1/48 models and never 1/72.  I'm, glad I did this time.  This Tomcat is fantastic at any scale, but at 1/72 even more so.  Big time "Wow! -and Congrat's for the close up pics to reveal any flaws, which are minimal.  You should be very proud of this F-14 and you should be.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Thank you for the warm comment.

 

Regards,

Jin

[SQLModeller]

Wow! Love the detail on the figures! Well done!

[Qian]

This is amazing Jin!

 

太美了！

[su27rules]

Great!!

[viperbite]

1 hour ago, Qian said:

This is amazing Jin!

 

太美了！

Thanks bro, long time no see~

[delayar]

Wow! Fantastic!

 

Markus

[Nikoliy]

WOW!!!

Some parts I would have a hard time telling apart the real thing from your model...

 

I was working in the troubleshooters during that cruise and worked on that aircraft. It is hard to find anything to pick at 🙂

Those chains are too loose, someone would have said something and the rear rails were not used because we had to have room to load a tarps pod. We brought a few out with us on cruise but nobody used them.

 

This is 2003 March, its easy to identify. One of our jets had an incident were the cone of the refueler got caught up on the door of the refueling probe. The cone went down the starboard engine. It had so much damage that we could see light through the engine because so many blades were broken. I dont remember the pilot that brought it back but from what I remember the engine kept cutting out and he was advised to ditch the aircraft. He said he wanted to try to bring it back and he did. If the engine cut out during the landing he probably would not have made it. Our maintenance decided to just remove all the doors and I removed a few 🙂

Edited May 15, 2020 by Nikoliy
Image host

[jesTer]

Brilliant on so many levels.

[Captain Mark]

Now that is outstanding, very well done sir! 👊 Every aspect of it seems picture perfect!!

[Moses_pl]

Outstanding !

[The Underdog]

 

Viperbite,

ABSOLUTELY STUNNING!!!

[Darren Roberts]

If only I could be that artistic! Absolutely gorgeous.

[viperbite]

8 hours ago, Nikoliy said:

WOW!!!

Some parts I would have a hard time telling apart the real thing from your model...

 

I was working in the troubleshooters during that cruise and worked on that aircraft. It is hard to find anything to pick at 🙂

Those chains are too loose, someone would have said something and the rear rails were not used because we had to have room to load a tarps pod. We brought a few out with us on cruise but nobody used them.

 

This is 2003 March, its easy to identify. One of our jets had an incident were the cone of the refuter got caught up on the door of the refueling probe. The cone went down the starboard engine. It had so much damage that we could see light through the engine because so many blades were broken. I dont remember the pilot that brought it back but from what I remember the engine kept cutting out and he was advised to ditch the aircraft. He said he wanted to try to bring it back and he did. If the engine cut out during the landing he probably would not have made it. Our maintenance decided to just remove all the doors and I removed a few 🙂

Thank you sir. Yes, some chains are too loose, especially on the main gears. About the rear weapon rails, thank you so much, I had some info about the TARPS pod was carried by the squadron but I didn't know the rails were never there even when the pod was loaded, great info. I'm always curious about the mission marks, did you paint them between combat missions? I know this was real in WWII, but current time? Or they were not painted until the deployment was about to finish? Thank you~

 

Best regards,

[Nikoliy]

18 hours ago, viperbite said:

Thank you sir. Yes, some chains are too loose, especially on the main gears. About the rear weapon rails, thank you so much, I had some info about the TARPS pod was carried by the squadron but I didn't know the rails were never there even when the pod was loaded, great info. I'm always curious about the mission marks, did you paint them between combat missions? I know this was real in WWII, but current time? Or they were not painted until the deployment was about to finish? Thank you~

 

Best regards,

 

"I didn't know the rails were never there even when the pod was loaded"

Tarps pod attached directly to the aircraft.

The rails are just too much trouble to install and remove. Most of our jets were adopted for tarps, that means that a cooling air duct was routed from the front of the jet to the pod down the center right above were the recess for AIM-7 is located. The jets broke down all the time, our AEs and ATs were always working. Dont know how many tarps pods we had but it was probably 2-3 at most. So it was important to be able to swap the pods onto jets that were able to fly. Im pretty sure that also prevented AIM-7 from being carried down the center. Originally the rails were for AIM-57. We only rarely loaded up one or maybe two AIM-57s, always on the wings and of course never used them. So we had no need for the extra rails. I think they were mostly used to balance the jet when we had a lantern pod on the other side. 

 

Mission marks: They would paint them usually on no fly days, they would happen every week or so.

However when we were returning we did paint them for homecoming and applied new mission marks. 

 It was more for morale benefit, because we worked a lot...

 

Our wing included VFA-115, they were the first to employ FA-18E (the jets were pre production) and their maintenance had literally nothing to do. Regular hornets need 30-50 maintenance hours per flight hour, brand new super hornets need as little as 3-7 hours, F-14D need as much as 80-120 hours. I was an AME (mechanic safety equipment) and our shop was in the same space with VFA-115 AMEs and were always working while they were watching movies 🙂.

 

Anyway when we went back to the gulf to start the war we managed to get 9 F-14s ready for flight, that is almost impossible to do under normal circumstances. Usually 6 jets is good, with 1-2 of them not 100% if they have some issues that would stop them from performing certain missions. Here  we had about a month to get ready (going to Perth and back) and we had parts allocated to our squadron for this. 

 

When combat operations actualy started we had almost 10 times the combat flights compared to VFA-115 with brand new jets. So the bomb markings or really combat mission markings, were to show our squadron crew and the ships crew that we were accomplishing stuff.  Actually our CO came by once with a recording of a mission. They were flying FAC missions, RIO was in direct contact with soldiers on the ground. So this recording was a group that was ambushed inside a city and called in airstrikes in several building right next to the building they were in. So RIO guided some air force jets to drop bombs and in the end the ground controller called in and thanked them, said they had some wounded but did not loose anyone.

 

These are all from late 2002. Wish I had some pics from March 2003 but my camera was stolen... I would have given them the camera if they only left the memory card 🙂

 

enjoy

Later.

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Nikoliy
Image host

[viperbite]

2 hours ago, Nikoliy said:

 

"I didn't know the rails were never there even when the pod was loaded"

Tarps pod attached directly to the aircraft.

The rails are just too much trouble to install and remove. Most of our jets were adopted for tarps, that means that a cooling air duct was routed from the front of the jet to the pod down the center right above were the recess for AIM-7 is located. The jets broke down all the time, our AEs and ATs were always working. Dont know how many tarps pods we had but it was probably 2-3 at most. So it was important to be able to swap the pods onto jets that were able to fly. Im pretty sure that also prevented AIM-7 from being carried down the center. Originally the rails were for AIM-57. We only rarely loaded up one or maybe two AIM-57s, always on the wings and of course never used them. So we had no need for the extra rails. I think they were mostly used to balance the jet when we had a lantern pod on the other side. 

 

Mission marks: They would paint them usually on no fly days, they would happen every week or so.

However when we were returning we did paint them for homecoming and applied new mission marks. 

 It was more for morale benefit, because we worked a lot...

 

Our wing included VFA-115, they were the first to employ FA-18E (the jets were pre production) and their maintenance had literally nothing to do. Regular hornets need 30-50 maintenance hours per flight hour, brand new super hornets need as little as 3-7 hours, F-14D need as much as 80-120 hours. I was an AME (mechanic safety equipment) and our shop was in the same space with VFA-115 AMEs and were always working while they were watching movies 🙂.

 

Anyway when we went back to the gulf to start the war we managed to get 9 F-14s ready for flight, that is almost impossible to do under normal circumstances. Usually 6 jets is good, with 1-2 of them not 100% if they have some issues that would stop them from performing certain missions. Here  we had about a month to get ready (going to Perth and back) and we had parts allocated to our squadron for this. 

 

When combat operations actualy started we had almost 10 times the combat flights compared to VFA-115 with brand new jets. So the bomb markings or really combat mission markings, were to show our squadron crew and the ships crew that we were accomplishing stuff.  Actually our CO came by once with a recording of a mission. They were flying FAC missions, RIO was in direct contact with soldiers on the ground. So this recording was a group that was ambushed inside a city and called in airstrikes in several building right next to the building they were in. So RIO guided some air force jets to drop bombs and in the end the ground controller called in and thanked them, said they had some wounded but did not loose anyone.

 

These are all from late 2002. Wish I had some pics from March 2003 but my camera was stolen... I would have given them the camera if they only left the memory card 🙂

 

enjoy

Later.

 

Thank you sir for all those first-hand info for us modellers to study, back what we made or what we about to make. Those stories sometimes show why and how somethings we would notice when we check from some reference photos. 

 

I'm so flattered that someone like you who work on or fly the real thing like the work I've done, especially the exact one that my model was try to replicate, to be honest, I'm so happy right now, and I guess that is joy for me to make the scale model, as best as I can do, to scribe the real feel of the real thing.

 

Thank you sir for your numerous work on those beauties, and that's why they could fly above the sky. you have my salute.

 

Best regards,

 

P.S. I don't know if it's me, but those pictures you shared can't be seen...

[Loach Driver]

You can't beat a good diorama. Congrats on this scene.

 

LD. 

[jonf45]

That is an absolutely incredible build! The detail is superb, weathering is so good, looks far more real than the real things! Any Tomcat is a winner, but my god that is sublime!!!!

[viperbite]

On 6/22/2020 at 6:41 AM, Loach Driver said:

You can't beat a good diorama. Congrats on this scene.

 

LD. 

 

On 6/22/2020 at 3:38 PM, jonf45 said:

That is an absolutely incredible build! The detail is superb, weathering is so good, looks far more real than the real things! Any Tomcat is a winner, but my god that is sublime!!!!

 

 

Thank you. Planning to do another in 48th scale too