James G

Sad to hear of David's passing. Nice tribute to him.

Perfect, I was leaving towards white.... thanks for the confirmation!

Afternoon all. Work on this build continues steadily and it's actually starting to look like a Tomcat! Integrating the Aires resin nozzles required some fit adjustment and a little sanding and rescribing of the kit parts - all worth it in the end as the detail is excellent. I tried to replicate the light colour of the nozzle interiors and the soot streaking which you may just be able to see in the photos. I did quite a bit of work on the wing seal bags, there are some raised parts and depressions near the wing root that I saw on reference photos, but the kit pieces are just flat and have a strange texture. I sanded this of, and created the raised and lowered portions with my Proxxon Micromot grinding tool and some epoxy putty. I blended everything in with some thinned brush coats of Mr Surfacer 500 grey, with some light sanding in between to even everything out. Again, a bit more work but should hopefully look more realistic on the finished model. Last pic is everything coming together. I'm going to paint, decal and weather the wings separately before adding them in the final assembly. I'm working on stores at the moment, including the four Reskit AIM-54A Phoenix missiles, will also add 2 x AIM-9, 2 x AIM-7 and 2 x fuel tanks. Can anyone please confirm if in 1979 the US Navy were using all-white Sidewinders are had they moved to grey? Ditto for the Sparrows. Last assembly tasks after that are the u/c legs and gear doors, then on to painting. Thanks, hope you like the pics.

Great job! First non-Op Granby one I've seen built and the camouflage looks fantastic.

Nice, thanks for the link. I've seen some clips of the Final Countdown but must watch the whole thing at some point.

Afternoon all, it's been a while but some small progress has been made on this diorama. Painting, filling, fitting rescribing etc. has seemed to take for ever, but I have finally got the main fuselage together. the intakes in particular took a lot of work. The painted and weathered undercarriage bays look quite good in situ. I used some gorilla glue to force them to sit properly in place when the top and bottom fuselage parts were brought together, and some seeped through causing some problems; however these were corrected and they look OK in situ. This thing should start to look more like a Tomcat soon with the fitting of the exhaust nozzles (I got the Aires set and the details are awesome!). Then the completed nose section with go on wings, etc. and then we are in business! I will paint and weather the wing seal bags separately to avoid problems fitting the wings (electing to paint and weather these separately too). Hope you like the photos:

Thank you Sir! I hope to see your pictures of your F14A dio on here at some point. I'd quite like to do a landing dio at some point as well, but with a different aircraft, possibly an F-8 Crusader or an S-3 Viking.

Indeed, not the best or easiest fit but the surface details are lovely. I'd like to do an F-14D one day and would be interested to see how the Academy kit compares - their F/A-18C was very nice.

Afternoon all, I've got a little more done in some snatched minutes here and there. I spent some time detailing 3 sides of the main wheel well which were curiously devoid of any moulded detail. The rest of the main gear bay has some nice moulded detail which should come out well with painting and weathering. I also did a little detailing work on the nose gear bay, but have some more to add so will save pictures of it for later! Next steps are to paint up and weather the gear bays, and the inside of the intakes along with the intake compressor faces. I will then be able to join the upper and lower fuselage halves, which have benefited from a few extra rivets which I noticed in the DACO book pictures. The beaver tail had already been added and I had to swap out the original part added for an alternate kit part as the aircraft that I am modelling did not have the AN/ALR-67 Mid- and High-Band ECM antenna on the beaver tail next to the fuel dump pipe. Pics are of the details in the wheel bay, hope you like them.

Hi all, it's been a while but here's a small update. I spent quite a while painting and weathering the resin pilot figures and cockpit and was happy with how they turned out. I had some decals for the warning placards for the ejection seats printed as part of a previous project (with an eye looking forward to this one), and they looked good on. The chevrons on the helmets were originally for VF-14 'Tophatters' which I had the decals for before deciding to do VF-84. I managed to re-paint them in the correct yellow and black design for the VF-84 helmets. I used the instrument panel decals on most of the cockpit parts, one or two would just not conform to the surface, so I just painted those bits. The cockpit details were quite nice straight out of the box. The forward gear bay details was pretty good too, with just a few small scratchbuilt details added. Hope you like the pics.

Some small progress has been made, when I have managed snatch a few minutes here and there between work & kids! The cockpit and nose gear bay are made up, and I've added some extra details with lead wire, plastic stock and 2 part epoxy putty (useful for sculpting the canvas covers on the cockpit sidewalls). Nothing major, as the detail from the Hasegawa PE parts will suffice for me through a closed canopy. The Aires pilots have had their heads turned to the starboard side of the aircraft as that is where my cat shooter and operator will be. One has an arm from a Preiser plastic figure as it 'sat' better with his pose. I made a throttle quadrant which fits under the pilots left hand, as curiously none was included in the kit. Looking forward to getting from black primer and paint on these soon(ish).

Superb, excellent Intruder and diorama setting! I am planning my own Trumpeter Intruder carrier diorama so will use this for reference. Do you have any in-progress photos/notes please?

Nice... Great job on the paint fade/weathering!

Great Tonka, thanks for sharing!

Thanks Greg. It kinda worked, and I quite like the in-flight 'attitude' of the final build. There's a few more pics of the nearly finished build in the link in-progress article but will see if I can take some more pics at some point.