Jabba Posted January 8, 2012 Posted January 8, 2012 I will hopefully be building a 1/72nd Hasegawa F-14A from VF-14 around the time of the American Bicentennial in 1976. I am wanting to use the decals from Modeldecal sheet 49 which I bought sometime in the 1980s, but if these fail I have a back up plan by using the Hasegawa set from their Bicentennial kit. Both schemes are slightly different, with the Modeldecal one being a touch more colourful but not really showing mush in the way of Bicentennial stuff, such as the stripey hat and sylised 76 that appears on the Hasegawa sheet. Both colour schemes are grey over white, but unusually have a white radome. The box. The contents. The Modeldecal markings. The back up plan.
Giorgio N Posted January 8, 2012 Posted January 8, 2012 Glad to see an early tomcat being built ! And in a very good looking colour scheme too. The VF-14 bicentennial aircraft did have a white radome. It was not the only VF-14 bird, although most had the more common white/cream radomes
RNoAF Aerobatic Team Posted January 8, 2012 Posted January 8, 2012 As Giorgio said. Great to see an early bird! Looking forward to follow this!
Jabba Posted January 9, 2012 Author Posted January 9, 2012 Great to see an early bird! Thanks for that as I have just noticed that I have made a slight mistake with the kit that I have chosen. I chose it mainly for the smaller decals and stencilling without looking at the boat tail The rear fuselage area between the jet exhausts). This kit only includes the Beaver (initial) boat tail where as the model that I am making is a Block 75 aircraft and requires the boat tail from a later variant model. So it will be a short trip into the loft to find the relevent sprue and add to this build. I will show photos when I have got the said sprue so you can see what I have been going on about.
Jabba Posted January 10, 2012 Author Posted January 10, 2012 Here are the photos promised showing the two types of boat tails mentioned earlier. Incorrect type. Correct type. Nice choice of scheme! Thanks. Don't know why but I have been waiting several years to do this model.
Jabba Posted January 15, 2012 Author Posted January 15, 2012 Been a bit of a nana with this one the other day. I have for some reason glued the two larger parts and smaller parts of the intake trunking together. I only noticed this when I started to paint the insides of them. Will now have to chop in two and hopefully glue together again. I have also noticed on the Modeldecal instructions a picture of one of VF-14s Tomcats with an "Uncle Sam" top hat emblem on the tail. I have this decal with the Hasegawa decals that I showed earlier, plus I can make up the Bu No and Modex No, but I can't make out the crew names on the canopy rail. My question is does this really matter?
Jabba Posted January 28, 2012 Author Posted January 28, 2012 No this one has not stalled, just been concentrating on a couple of models that need to be finished in the next week or so. Anyhow the cockpit, rear intakes and wings are now built. I will add the flaps to the wings a little later as there is no real need at the moment. I also have the forward fuselage painted so the cockpit can be fitted into that. I also should have the inside bits rear fuselage painted over the next day or so, and then progress can really start to begin.
JMChladek Posted January 29, 2012 Posted January 29, 2012 Good save on the Beavertail. As I recall the VF-14 jet had the seven hole gun gas vent on it as well (Grumman switched to the two grill/hole vent a couple jets after this one left the production line). So since that comes in the Wolfpack kit, you should be fine.
Jabba Posted January 29, 2012 Author Posted January 29, 2012 Good save on the Beavertail. As I recall the VF-14 jet had the seven hole gun gas vent on it as well (Grumman switched to the two grill/hole vent a couple jets after this one left the production line). So since that comes in the Wolfpack kit, you should be fine. Thanks for that, I did have a little look at that a bit earlier to see which one I would need.
Jabba Posted February 5, 2012 Author Posted February 5, 2012 A quick update on my progress with this model. The forward fuselage is together apart from the nose cone. I have also got the intakes ready and also glued the boat tail halves glued to their respective rear fuselage halves. I have done this as I have noticed beforehand when I have built other Hasegawa Tomcats that I have had a large step at the fuselage boat tail joint after gluing them seperately and joining them together. On the last Tomcat that I built I did what I am doing now and it came out rather successful, which it has done this time. Hopefully I shall have most of this put together over the coming week. Forward fuselage Intakes Rear fuselage halves with boat tails attached.
arnobiz Posted February 5, 2012 Posted February 5, 2012 Interesting technique, gluing the beaver tail halves to the fuselage halves first. I might try that on my next build Looking forward to seeing the whole thing assembled, Arnaud
Giorgio N Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 Good to see you're progressing ! Looks good, and I like the way you glued the beaver tails to the fuselage before joining upper and lower parts.
Bandwagon 106 Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 Nice work here, will look a very good scheme when it's done. I find adding the rear halves works well too, I tried it on my last two tomcats from Hasegawa. Joel
Jabba Posted February 6, 2012 Author Posted February 6, 2012 Thanks for the comments. A v quick small update, rear fuselage halves now together.
Jabba Posted February 19, 2012 Author Posted February 19, 2012 Here is the progress that I have with this model. I was meant to do a lot more at the Yeovilton shoe last week, but someone forgot his filler and glasses. Anyway the front and back fuselage parts are now together. I filled in the gap and smoothed down before I added the intakes as it is much easier at that stage. The intakes have now also been added, one of them was for some reason a bit of a struggle to get to fit at the front end, but a bit of brute force and ignorance got it fitted. Hopefull the rest of the kit shall start to go together now that I have finished a model that I needed to and can fully concentrate on this one. Any comments gratefully recieved
Giorgio N Posted February 20, 2012 Posted February 20, 2012 Now that you have the fuselage assembled, progress will be much faster. The model looks good until now, looking forward to see it progress !
Jabba Posted February 21, 2012 Author Posted February 21, 2012 Now that you have the fuselage assembled, progress will be much faster. Hopefully, but with 2 other models on the go, it will be probably slower than I want it to be.
Giorgio N Posted February 23, 2012 Posted February 23, 2012 Hopefully, but with 2 other models on the go, it will be probably slower than I want it to be. Simila problem here: I have a model under construction for the Mustang GB and as this will close soon the Tomcat has to wait... I should look better at the GB dates !
Jabba Posted February 23, 2012 Author Posted February 23, 2012 Simila problem here: I have a model under construction for the Mustang GB and as this will close soon the Tomcat has to wait... I should look better at the GB dates ! Unfortunately this is just normal model building, the clash of GBs is to come shortly I think with the VC-10 and F-16 following in close succession.
Jabba Posted February 26, 2012 Author Posted February 26, 2012 Another quick update of where I am with this model. The vertical tails, ventral fins and engines have been added and sanded down. I have set the engine nozzles in the classic TF-30 shut down mode with one engine nozzle fully open and the other closed. Hopefully with a little luck I will have the wing weapon pylons added and the nose cone added in the not too distant future. I have left the nose cone off at the moment too avoid a tail sitter, although I have not so far experienced this with a Hasegawa Tomcat.
Jabba Posted March 1, 2012 Author Posted March 1, 2012 All together now with just a little sanding to be done and then paint. Hopefully I will have photos shortly.
Kev1n Posted March 2, 2012 Posted March 2, 2012 Simila problem here: I have a model under construction for the Mustang GB and as this will close soon the Tomcat has to wait... errrm...yes....mmmm.......I know the feeling Your probably ahead of me Jabba
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