Academy F14A 1/72

[Uncle Pete]

Having just beaten a confession out of a Tomcat, it's time to give it an airing.  Dodgy kit, I must say.  I believe I can even lay half the blame for the dodgy build on the kit.  The other half, however, belongs squarely in my backyard.  Upon opening the box and seeing the size of the fuze halves I had to have a look at the box top to see if I'd picked up a 1/48 by mistake.  It's big, innit!  Fit was dicey all over the place and the usual Academy decal headaches prevailed but I went with the OOB sheet anyway.. The kit was never going to be built well enough for aftermarket decoration.  You'll notice the paint job is a bit (ahem) "non-standard" but I allowed myself a bit of artistic licence (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) for the squadron on the USS Uncle Pete.  There were four things that looked like little pitots but were the size of a caterpillar's kneecap that never got installed... There was no way I was going to get them on cleanly at my skill level (or should that be "lack of skill level"?)

 

The kit came with glove vanes that deploy automatically when the wings are swept back which I'd first considered gluing in place for simplicity since I gather they were eventually found to be unnecessary and discarded.  I decided, though, since Academy had gone to the trouble of designing them to work it would be unsporting of me not to give it a whack.  I'm happy to report they work as intended despite my "gluing" one in place when applying floor wax.  A bit of gentle persuasion with the old Xacto cleared the problem and the wax scraped off without any damage.  How long they'll hold up is another matter.  I don't think they'll take many sweep-unsweep cycles before giving up the ghost.

 

There was no provision for showing it with the glasshouse up so i did a bit of surgery and, somehow, after cutting the crewmen's names for the bottom frame off the decal sheet, managed to lose them so it's being flown anonymously).  Can't say I like the low-viz stars and bars, though.

 

All in all, I'm not displeased with the outcome.  A bit squint here and there, some dodgy paintwork in places but I'll take it.  Not good enough to warrant building a display case for it but certainly okay to put on my "Air Force Shelf" in the workshop.  Now for the obligatory, "Come on, then, if ya fink yer 'ard enuff!" picture...

 

Thanks for looking.

[Parabat]

Always got time for Tomcats, looks well enough, post more pics! 

[Uncle Pete]

2 minutes ago, Parabat said:

post more pics!

Cheers, mate, but I'm not convinced that's such a good idea... More pics, more flaws!  It's not false modesty, just knowing my limitations but I feel funny putting pics up on here anyway when I see the stuff that all you hot doggers put out but I figure, this is the only place I can show my kits without people thinking I'm slightly, if not completely, deranged.

[Thud4444]

Looks pretty good to me.