HobbyBoss 1/48 F-14A Tomcat x 2!!

[pacificmustang]

A tale of two kitties

 

 

What's better than one Tomcat?  Two Tomcats of course!!
A workmate had asked me to build his Eduard boxing of the HobbyBoss 1/48 Tomcat as a VF84 jet about to be launched from the carrier. So that meant, wings spread, spoilers and flaps, down, canopy closed, with pilots, and the nose leg compressed.

 

As I also have a copy of this kit, I thought I might tackle my build alongside the one I was doing for Jeff. I should add, the other times I have done this has always ended badly!!  Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained I say.  MY workmate wanted his done in Jolly Rogers markings, as if about to be launched, so canopy closed, crew in place, all panels closed with wings spread and spoilers and flaps deployed, with a full weapons load.

  Mine, just to be different, would take full advantage of all the open panels HobbyBoss provide and also the full gamut of Eduard enhancements, wings on mine would also be spread with flaps and slats deployed.  So, Thats the plan, Lets crack open the boxes.
Well, theres nothing like opening a box and finding a fault with the first part you cut off the sprue. I mean, really! 
In this instance HobbyBoss had short shot the rear bulkhead on the cockpit tub, only on Jeffs kit luckily. 

 

Luckily it was easy  enough to scratch build a new one out of plasticard.  Even for me!
Rather than rebuild the whole back bulkhead, I limited myself to just replacing the affected side, knowing the seated pilot would cover the part I didn’t rebuild.

 

that mess on the floor is from me scraping out the U shaped locator for the seat. The wet look is due to me coating it with tamiya cement, hoping it would smooth out some of the gouges from the chisel.  Didn't really work at all!!

 

Speaking of pilots, I will be using Aerobonus seated pilots, which are cast in their own seats, hence the locators going.  This is what you get.

Whilst the figures are nicely cast, annoyingly the visors are up and O2 masks unclipped, alternative heads with visors down and masks in place would have been nice  Assembling the figures also revealed the pilot's hands did not grip the stick or throttle.  Very frustrating  as the figures are made especially for the HBS Tomcat, so the least Aerobonus could do is sculpt them to fit the controls.  A mate also reported the same issue with the Aerobonus A-4 Pilot.  Whist I applaud the idea of casting pilots in seats, a little more care could have seen the pilots in better poses.  As pilots about to launch would have visors down and masks in place, the first order of business was to cut away the dangling mask and the hose.  This was achieved with knife and micro chisel.  The below photo shows the start of the process.

 

 

A trawl through my stash revealed the icrew from the academy Phantom had separate heads with the required visor and mask in place.  The Academy pilot's arms were also used as they gripped the Tomcats throttle and stick without modification.  

 

As This jet was going to be canopy down and crewed, I decided to use just the kit cockpit without PE embellishment.  A friend who had built the tamiya Tomcat said you cannot see a lot of the cockpit with the lid closed. so I'll just add the more visual PE 
My jet was going to be canopy open, so I decided the cockpit on would get the whole PE treatment, as it would be more visible, so all raised detail was sanded off the instrument panels and consoles ready for the Eduard PE overlays.

Thanks for looking.  More soon

 

Bruce

 

 

[James G]

Nice work so far!

[Gorby]

Looks good so far, but it should be in WIP rather than the RFI.

[pacificmustang]

12 hours ago, Gorby said:

Looks good so far, but it should be in WIP rather than the RFI.

Yes, I'll need to get thatchanged

 

Cheers

 

Bruce

[roginoz]

Ooooh !! A Bruce build !!

 

This'll be good, I'll hang around and poach ideas !

 

Rog

[pacificmustang]

Well , seeing as  I never seem to get to many meetings😀

Great to see you here Rog, now how about putting up some of your amazing builds.? I need rigging ideas 

Bruce 

Edited March 5, 2018 by pacificmustang

[matteo44]

Nice project... 

[Wafu]

Very nice, 'fear da bones'.

 

Ill be watching this closely as I have the F14 to build. I feel your pain with the pilots and agree with your comments, it's a great step that the aftermarket guys provide us with such items, however with the final touches of accuracy, all our dreams would be granted. Still it's just a hobby😉

[pacificmustang]

I agree entirely WAFU.  Good to have such items, but would have been even nicer if they went the extra step.

Work on the two Tomcats has continued with the cockpits being completed, one with the added PE, and the other stock. 

I know some people say PE is too flat, but in this scale, I think it looks fine, and you cant beat that printing!

Dry brushing still has its place though, as you can also  see.  This cockpit will be closed up with crew in place raedy for launch, so I feel justified in not using the PE

With the cockpits done I could assemble the forward fuselage halves  around them

Whilst the glue dried, I turned my attention to the landing gear, adding some detail with copper wire and punched discs.

Next the intake ramps were tackled.  OOB, HobbyBoss has the ramps in the lowered position for supersonic flight.  I wanted them raised in the jet that was about to launch, so it meant leaving out the forward actuators and sanding the locators for them off the reverse sides of the forward ramps

The actuators for the rearmost ramps were cut in half and the rear ramps added in the slightly lowered position.

HobbyBoss have not added the inner sidewall to the intakes as this would normally be hidden if you built the kit as HB intended

Lazy engineering, in my opinion

Therefore sides had to be added from plastic card so the open side would not be seen when peering down the opening

next up will be adding the intake tunnels. Thanks for continuing to tune in

Bruce

Edited March 13, 2018 by pacificmustang

[Calum]

Looking good so far Bruce. Looking forward to seeing more

[pacificmustang]

With the "danger Zone" boxing, Eduard have you not use the original Hobbyboss engines at all, instead replacing them with some nice resin engine faces

once painted they were added to the rear of the intake trunks

Hobby boss ( I'll refer to the kit as HB as it is their plastic) also provide separate workable glove vanes should you be building an early F-14A.  There is a pin on them that fits in the elongated channel shown below, and you need to open up a flashed over opening. I was going to highlight it with arrows in photoshop, but gave up after an hour of trying to work out how

so you just get the photo

As the two jets I am modelling had them wired closed, I didnt bother, I simply mention it as I had not seen it mentioned in any of the other builds I looked at.

The two fuselage halves were now brought together

Fit was good until it came time to fit the belly panel, where I was left with a gap that needed shimming

I have no idea how I introduced it as previous dry fits had shown no problem, but it wasd easily fixed.  On the other jet, I transferred it to the front

So, at end of day's play. I now have these sitting on my cutting mat.

 

[pacificmustang]

Attention now turned to the wings with the first order being to fill in all this rivets as photos showed no such detail on the real wings

Weapon of choice being Mr Surfacer 500.  Sanding down revealed the rivets are still there, but they certainly are not as prominent as before, which I can live with.  The tailplanes also got the same treatment 

I also decided to attach the extended slats at this stage, mainly to stop me knocking off the little slat actuators you can see in the above pic, which I manage to do one every kit with this feature I build.

Another reason was to provide a stronger glue joint .

HobbyBoss provide one piece parts for the flap eyelid doors which seal up the rear of the wing when the flaps are deployed, I found the fit a bit wanting to replaced them with plastic card.  You can also see the attached slat 

Honbbyboss mould a small ECM blister underneath the wing gloves but all photos I have seen of hets fitted with these blisters show a pair each side with larger one also being fitted to the intake sides

I wasted about a half hour trying to make them out of off cuts of sanded sprue before realising they are actually provide in the kit, but not called out in the instructions!

 

parts E26 and 27 are what i needed, a strange omission by HobbyBoss and Eduard.  Anyway, it saved me scratcbuilding them, and sanding my fingers to nubs in the process.

 

[Calum]

Moving along nicely Bruce.. 

 

[pacificmustang]

It was here whilst preparing fuselages for priming I realised I had made a mistake as I now had to describe the wing glove vanes back in.  I should have added them as although they were wired shut, photos still show they were quite prominent, so I scribed new vanes in.

 

That done, I also made new canvas coverings for the instrument coamings out of rolled milliput.

These were black in colour when fitted, but quickly faded to a dark leather colour through to tan.  The rear covering was made in two halves and the port one got replaced more often due to wear and tear through crew and ground staff accessing from that side of the jet.  Here, the covering took on a purplish colour due to heavy staining from hydraulic fluid and jet fuel.  I mixed  tiny bit of vallejo red and grey in with vallejo Leather brown to represent this colour.

With the airframe together, all parts were preshaded along panel lines with german grey and then various random squiggles of dark grey and white sprayed across the whole airframe

In the above photo, you can also see Ive scratch built an ECM blister on the beaver tail out of plastic strip.

Next Mr Colour Gull Grey was laid down in multiple thinned coats leaving a mottled faded look

over this thinned white and a medium grey were again squiggled before another thinned blending coat was applied

Although this was a C.Os jet, photos I have of the actual jet show it decidedly battered with many touch ups in various greys.

 

Next, the wings were masked so the red areas could be sprayed

but wait!  Even more masking for the tail fins and skunk strip around the cockpit as soon as the Humbrol yellow dries. Its only been on for 36 hours The tin has gone in the bin now, and will be replaced with Mr Colour or Mr paint, as are all my enamels as they get used

 

[Azgaron]

Very nice work so far! Looks great!

 

Håkan

 

[Nikolay Polyakov]

Beautiful work @pacificmustang, especially the cockpits!

I will follow your build with an interest 😯

[CJP]

Really informative techniques in this build - I like the rolled Milliput for the canvas covers

CJP

[pacificmustang]

but wait!!!  There's more masking to be done

the underside wheel wells were masked off to be painted white.  Also the intake lips needed painting in silver

as you can see, only a thin lip needed to be painted silver on the intakes so rather than airbrush it as that would mean EVERYTHING would need to be masked to avoid overspray, I used AK Real Metal applied with a cotton bud.  It worked a treat.  If you have not seen this product, its sort of like Rub n Buff.

 

Finally.......finally.!!!! I could remove the masking to reveal the painted fuselage.

Ive started applying the wash before the decals these days as it means one less clear coat to fill details, I was happily applying MIG deep grey panel wash, until this happened

Thank goodness I did not have any parts sitting on the bench. Surprisingly (to me) the stuff iis brown, but marked "Deep Grey" on the lid, so not sure if that related to the colour you use it on, or the colour of the wash

With that cleaned up, I could commence decalling

Theres a reason everyone does the VF-84 scheme Ive decided, and thats because it just looks GOOD

Could not resist a dry fit of the wings to see how its coming along

To make the wear marks on the wings, I applied some 40mm tamiya masking tape to the wing top and bottoms, then pushed the wings into the fuselage in the swept back position.

A pencil was then run around the wing glove, the wings removed and a scalpel run over the pencil line.  Pull the cut tape off and theres your mask!

Neat black oil paint was then applied in arcs and blended with a dry brush.  Mine are probably a little bit heavy to be honest.  You can see anything on the real jets from a hint of wear  through  to badly stained

To Be Continued

[Frank083]

Very great Tomcat! My favorite scheme on top of that!

 

keep going

 

Frank

[Azgaron]

Very nice work! Looks nice with decals on!

Lucky it didn't get worse with the wash accident!

 

Håkan

 

[exdraken]

Great work!

And yes, it looks good!

[Nikolay Polyakov]

17 hours ago, pacificmustang said:

I could remove the masking to reveal the painted fuselage.

Looks wonderful, Class A work! 

[matteo44]

Wowww!!!

Well done!

Very very nice

Edited May 23, 2018 by matteo44

[CJP]

Nice work - Very interesting to see you explain the mottled painting technique on your Tomcat

CJP

[dnl42]

Nice! I've got these in the stash, so it's good to see what I'll need to do...