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1/72 Hasegawa F-14D VF-31 Sunset: Final pics


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After months of painstaking work and exhaustion, I finally finished this model. 72nd is not my usual scale, but I started this as a practice model for a couple of 48th scale Tomcats. It turned into a major project in itself.

I think Hasegawa Tomcats are generally demanding but with careful cleaning, dry fitting, and online research of other modelers' builds, it is not that bad. Certainly deviating from the instruction steps in a few places helps quite a bit (see WIP below).

Work in progress

Hi-res final pics

I made many arbitrary decisions along the way, so careful eyes will notice a lot of inaccuracies with the colors, weathering and decals. Also, there are several issues I am not too happy with (places that I thought won't be visible are very visible :)/> ). As always, I am open to all your critiques.

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Edited by Janissary
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Good Built, interessting Methode of Weathering :thumbsup:/>/>/>/>

But - where are the fine Paneellines from this beautiful Kit ? - these Paneellines are too strong and too dark... :o - it looks like the Revell-Kit...

Edited by Arne
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Thank you very much all. I too see that the panel lines are over emphasized (deep and wide). I had to rescribe the whole kit and the tools I use are too big for 1/72 I think. Maybe I should've rescribed only the parts lost to sanding but I always fear the wash being inconsistent in that case.

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The build and the level of your skill is amazing !

I just feel that the patchy works is too uniform on a Tomcat. It's more like a painted camouflage than patchy colors due to maintenance works.

Other than that, I admire your modeling skill...

Regards,

Edited by Alex Sidharta
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Beautiful work. As a "warm up" build, it's an excellent start. When you are working on your 1/48 scale builds, I recommend examining photos of the area around the cockpit steps, upper pancake, the wings and the underbody in preparation for more detailed weathering.

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Hi

I am Tomcat fan and the Hasegawa Tomcat is one of the models I prefer!

Not an easy kit but a good base for beautiful result : what you achieved here.

I love your Tomcat very much, you seldom see such a weathered result on US Navy 1/72 models.

Congratulations really.

Cheers

Eric B.

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Just an exceptional over all build, especially when one considers it's a 1/72 scale F-14. Your loads out are very well done, and expertly painted, as they add quite a bit to the overall presentation.. As others have already alluded to, your weathering looks more like a precise and repeatable camo scheme then what you intended it to represent. One other thing looks a little out of place to me, and that's all the red wing inner surfaces for the flaps and slats. They don't seem to have been weathered, or is it just how it appears on my screen.

Joel

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Steve, Rob, Eric, Joel, thank you all for your feedback, I really appreciate it. Great observations too. I think early on my goal was to have a blotchy base followed by some spot weathering. But I was too restrained with my spot weathering so it admittedly came out too uniform. This particular aircraft was notably strange (very dirty around certain areas while super clean elsewhere) but I did not remain true to the real thing. Most of it was preping for a 1/48 Alpha TPS version and try a few things here and there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've taken a good long 2nd look at your weathering, as it's one of my weakest areas of painting. 1st off it's so much harder to get a representative weathering effect on a single color paint scheme as one just tends to carry the same pattern all the way around the aircraft. Your technique really isn't that far off of what I've seen of the real aircraft, it's just too tight. Larger and more irregular fading on upper surfaces that gets beat by the sun and salt, and a gradual lessening as you go down the sides. The bottom actually looks better then the top as your weathering is more natural with larger blotches, at least it does to me.

Panel lines in smaller scales need to be almost the same tone as the base color for scale effect. I don't think that your rescribing was an issue, I think it really helped.

As I said, before, overall, it's an excellent build of a very difficult kit.

Joel

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  • 5 years later...

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