Quarantine F-14A Jolly Rogers trivia

Petarvu · April 21, 2020

As I am working from home and 'avoiding social contact' ,as a modeller - I was all set to live my finest hour :-)

At this moment I am pushing through 3 Hasegawa F-14s and 6 (!) Hase F-104s all in 1/48

Hasegawa Tomcats are lots of work,(the flash?!?) but kit is detailed and demands respect .Obviously this is first time I am building them. I also own 3 Tamiya Tomcats (for now) but I wanted to have Hase kit under my belt as it was holy grail in 90ties when I was a teenager.

First kit I am building is F-14B Diamondbacks 1/48, late B with Fightertown decals from Afghanistan. I added AIRES cockpit and squeezed PTID display in RIOs cockpit from Black box conversion I own for more than decade. This one is not the topic of this post.

Now.. 2nd and 3rd kit I planed to do as early VF-84 birds F-14A ,no NACA vents and no AN/ALR-45 antennae. Other squadrons (I own min. dozen Tomcat sheets) will be built from Tamiya kits. I am proud owner of Afterburner decals Victory Cats sheet and I planned the following from it

One will be overall Gull Gray (no white) with small star and bar under the cockpit and typical black/yellow tail with skull and bones. This one is in Hase 'Atlantic sq'box and has correct yellow-AfDecals are too orange for this example. This one is not clasiical gull gray over white JR so I like it
We finally come to my main dillema. Second one should be low vis VF-84 F-14A i can weather to death. Currently there are no VF-84 Tomcat decal sheets on sale or production, you can only get second hand stuff and I planned to rely on mentioned Victory cats sheet I have,but:

-F-14A modex 160655 it is presented as standard TPS with engine gray tails and light gray skull and bones-total awesomness:-). My first pick when I bought the sheet light years ago. When I searched the inet by modex no turns out this example is overall ghost gray , it has black tail and white skull and bones, total dissapointment. This example is from last year of VF-84 existence,has comemorrative writing on tail so no way I am wrong, and it was well worn so I guess where idea for engine gray tail came, but other mistakes are unforgivable.

-Ok ,I switched to other example from this sheet F-14A modex 160480 Overall dark ghost gray with light grey chevron ,stenciling ,star and bars and skull. Pretty unusual low vis JR Tomcat with lighter contrasting markings, was used during Deny flight operation. It is also depicted on SB Decals Feisty Felines pt. 1 sheet I unfortunately do not own. Turns out decals are bit too dark ,so when I add scale effect there will almost be no contrast and it won't look ok. Also skull and bones are white not gray as on sheet.Bummer.

-I do not want to do Jolly Rogers with non standard low vis,two colour, camo with Medium grey going to tip of the radome from top of the intakes. Somehow breaks the silhouette. There are many photos of a/c with this paintjob.

-There is standard TPS on the sheet (I would build it) F-14A modex 160393 ,light g.grey tails darker skull and bones.But I can't find any photos of it and considering above mentioned I am not sure I should risk it. My head will explode:-)

Does anybody have some low vis VF--84 photos, in standard TPS scheme? I am in dead end,not knowing which one to build.

Thnx

P

Edited April 21, 2020 by Petarvu

Darren Roberts · April 21, 2020

I have one picture of a VF-84 jet in a non-standard scheme. It's overall Dark Ghost Gray, with Engine Gray skull and bones and A J on the tail. The skull and letters are the original style on the outside of the tails. This is where it gets interesting. The rest of the markings are in Light Gray, even the Modex/Side numbers. I don't have a hosting service to post the photo, so I'm going to PM you with my email address and I'll email it to you.