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F-14D Tomcat VF-213 Last Combat Tour 1/72


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The F-14 Tomcat came into my life with "The Final Countdown", and I felt quite sad to see it go a decade ago.  Therefore I decided, as a little tribute, to assemble one of the last combat cruise Tomcats.  Hasegawa issued the F-14D Last Combat Cruise in 1/72, that includes two conmemorative schemes of VF-213:  AJ 213 and AJ201.  I decided to represent AJ201 as I wanted to have a Tomcat that was closer to combat scheme, not with the shiny blue all over it.  The kit is quite accurate for a D, I used resin seats though as the seats provided lack detail, then you have to sand off some antennae around the wing roots not typical of a D, and the decals had some mistakes on them (as letters missing from some stencils...).  I had some issues with the decal sheet as they were quite old, too.  But maybe the most demanding part is getting rid of dozens and dozens of ejection pin marks.  But well, that said, the kit is very nice.  Kit provides only an AN/AAQ14 targeting pod, you have to buy some additional Hasegawa weapons sets if you want the 500pd GBUs typically used in the last missions over Iraq in 2005, or the lonely Sidewinder hanging from the left rail.  Most of the assembly is OOB, painted as per instructions excepting the dark area around the cockpit, which was Dark Sea Blue (not insignia blue) and left the canopy frame in Light Ghost Gray.  Hope that you like it.

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Marco  

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