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Hello everybody! After months of procrastination, I finally completed this model I had started on in August of last year. Details added: Scratch built Ejection Seat detail Full hydraulic lines on landing gear using stretched sprue closely matched landing gear bays (hydraulic lines and additional detail) scratch built ventral fins Scratch build Sub-sonic ramps in the intakes (missing in the kit) Riveting where ever appropriate (around cockpit and on the upper surfaces of the fuselage Improvement to the chin pod TVSU Drilled out a hole in the fuel dump pipe scratch built carrier deck base (with liberal dose of creative liberty in design) wheel chocks from styrene card Boo-boos include: Fogged up canopy due to improper future application Cockpit Instrument panel PE print lifted off the brass due to water damage during salt weathering Salt weathering was a MESS. Fortunately it was salvageable with spraying on the weathering again through a thin slice of dish scrubber as mask Spilled Alclad on a completed exhaust corroding away the plastic (again salvageable fortunately) Omitted AoA sensors on fuselage side (it would have been lost to the carpet monster anyways) "100" decal applied in reverse on starboard side Additional PE and accessories include: Dream Model cockpit PE detail set Dream Model Pitot Tube Infiniti Carrier Tie-down point PE set (including the chain) Pilot and RIO from Revell NATO Pilot set The model was a joy to build, and the option to pose the wings extended or retracted provides a lot of flexibility to displaying it. It also had a perfect blend of detail v/s ease of build. Kudos to HB for that. A special thanks to Parabat, Tony Oliver, Navy Bird and Ratmigs for all their inputs during the build process. Tony Oliver's experience with the kit helped mitigate a lot of problems I would have otherwise run into. The wooden pedestal was made by a colleague skilled in woodwork. Much appreciated guys! On to the pictures! The reason I was excited about this particular scheme was this die-cast model of the F/A-18F in the same Bounty Hunters CAG scheme. Do they look beautiful together or what! Ejection seat detailing with stretched sprue and Dream Model PE set Cockpit detailing with Dream Model PE set and tissue paper to simulate the canvas covers on the IP cowls Nose Gear bay detailing Nose gear Detailing... Everything eventually disappeared into the dark recesses of the aircraft Sub-Sonic Air ramp scratch-building. Hardly seen in the shadows, but good to know it's there Scratch built the ventral fins to recreate the prominent NACA vents Scratch build a carrier base using the Infiniti Tie Down PE set. There were a 44 tie-down points included, thus I had to keep the base to a small size despite increasing the distance between points slightly A parting shot taken from the balcony of our apartment during a glorious sunset. Thanks for watching! Cheers, Alex.

A superbly engineered and detailed kit and a thoroughly enjoyable build. The only problems I had were my own making. The front cockpit coaming sits a little high due to a misaligned instrument panel and I struggled to get the main landing gear legs to sit properly but apart from that no problems at all. Anyway, here it is, finished in the markings of VF-2 as deployed on USS Enterprise in 1977. With the wings fully aft. With the F-4B and F-8E I built earlier.

Hasegawa 1/72 F-14D Tomcat VF-2 Last Cruise. A tenious and did a lot of screw-ups during this build for a local Challenge/Group Build. Basically OOB, apart from several tiny details which were scratch-built. Figures are mix-matched and modified Hasegawa, Zvesda, Fujimi and Italeri figures. Photographed using my cellphone. Cheers, Mario