1:72 Fine Molds Grumman F-14D Tomcat "Anytime, Baby!"

[Col.]

If you hadn't told us the insulation was painted paper towel I'd not know or guess it was paper towel Bill. Looks perfectly effective.

[Navy Bird]

2 hours ago, Col. said:

If you hadn't told us the insulation was painted paper towel I'd not know or guess it was paper towel Bill. Looks perfectly effective.

 

In that case, it's not painted paper towel. It's actual canvas insulation that I ran through the shrink-er-ator machine.    

 

*****

 

As I vowed, some greeblies have been added to the sidewalls. Looking at the photos in the Daco book, it seems some of these controls/levers protrude through holes in the insulation so I accurately reproduced everything faked it as best I could. I added more circuit breakers in the aft port sidewall using PE from the Hasegawa F-14 kit. It doesn't look that good (compared to what Fine Mold provide) but you can't really see it anyway.

 

 

 

As you can see, the lower portion of the forward fuselage was also added. The fit was almost perfect - I think a smidge of Mr. Surfacer in one spot will take care of it. I'll add the ejection seats later in the build since that will make it easier to mask the cockpit. Here they are posing for a test fit:

 

 

Earlier, I mentioned the canopy sill being a separate piece. It looks like this:

 

 

The rear instrument panel coaming attaches to the sill, and it pops right on. I believe I can leave this off until later in the build as well.

 

 

The HUD will go on at the same time as the windscreen in order to protect it. The PE from Eduard (for the Revell kit) looks like it will work great. I didn't realise it until I was perusing the Daco book, but the F-14D has two combining glasses. The Eduard PE captures that nicely.

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the instructions from Magazine number 1. Therefore, I must be 33% done with the build. Ha! Magazine number 2 coming up! I have to say that I'm impressed with the kit so far. Everything has fit very well, and it reminds me of a Tamiya kit. Ooh, I hope I haven't jinxed it!    

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

Now I wanna buy this kit. And it's all your fault.

 

Nice proper job, BTW 

 

Ciao 

[Roberto]

Great progress, and this kit looks like a very nice one!

[Navy Bird]

6 hours ago, giemme said:

Now I wanna buy this kit. And it's all your fault.

 

Finally! I'm blamed for something I can be proud of.   

 

2 hours ago, Roberto said:

Great progress, and this kit looks like a very nice one!

 

Thanks. It is indeed a very nice kit. So nice, in fact, that @giemme is going to buy one.    

 

*****

 

So, looking into the back end of a GE110 jet propulsion monster, I see this:

 

 

What's with the blue? A protective coating? Indicative of the metal used (some kind of cobalt unobtanium)? Or perhaps a lonely guy with Photoshop having fun with me? What think you all? Can't say I've ever seen anything like this before, but then I don't get out much.

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. I have my Metallic Blue ready to go - so stop me now if I need to be stopped!   

PPS. I've found many photos online that show this blue flame ring, not only on the F110 engine but also the F135. It seems to get "sooted" up, so I'll go ahead with my Metallic Blue and then, well, soot it up.  

[Navy Bird]

Here are the ins and out of the GE F110:

 

 

Some nice moulding by Fine Molds (especially the front face at the top of the photo), although I think the flame holder vanes (at the bottom) are too thick. However, since this is buried deep inside the fuselage I'm not too worried about it.

 

I used a light grey wash on the "corrugated" inside of the exhaust tubes, but once I assembled the tubes the effect is not all that strong. Better than nothing, but perhaps I should have used a darker grey. See, even at my advanced age and decreased cognition, I can still learn something. If I remember it of course...    

 

Now it's off to the intake ramps etc. Too much fun.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[corsaircorp]

Excellent job and excellent choice Bill !!

Modelling with son or grand son is a real pleasure !!

at last, I really enjoy when one of the kids (young adults by now) take a seat and start scratching plastic with me !!

I'll follow if you don't mind it !!

I'll start another navy bird in January... Also twin tailed .... (3 in fact as usual)

Sincerely.

CC

[giemme]

11 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

Some nice moulding by Fine Molds (especially the front face at the top of the photo),

Impressive moulding indeed! 

 

Ciao

[Navy Bird]

6 hours ago, corsaircorp said:

I'll follow if you don't mind it !!

 

Welcome aboard! Did you bring some of that wonderful Belgian beer?    

 

Modelling with the grandson is interesting. His attention span is rather short and of course he wants to play with the model immediately. But then he's only 5 years old. I give him a lot of credit just for trying. I didn't start until I was 12, and I didn't even bother putting the kit together before I blew it up.   

 

5 hours ago, giemme said:

Impressive moulding indeed!

 

Yes indeed, and it makes me want to build that F-4EJ right now. As you know, those new Fine Molds Phantoms are now King of the Hill.   

 

*****

 

More intake work today - it looks like the inside of the intakes had Light Gull Gray towards the front and then white heading back to the engine face. Will be an interesting masking job. I would like some better photos though, so here I go back on the computer...

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

One down...the Roadrunner Beep Beep Dragster is finished, and Carter is quite chuffed.

 

 

Now if I can just get him to finish some of my projects that are languishing at the moment. Hey, that's not a bad idea.     

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

Hey, I actually did some work on the beastie today. Let's see...first, some very careful removal of the ejection stubs on the lower fuselage. You can see from the engineering of this piece that are are some spots that are thin and could easily break - specifically the thin bits that hold the wing glove and gear bay to the fuselage proper. Very careful clean-up is in order.

 

 

You can also see that I've drilled out the holes for mounting the pylons. I can honestly say that I've built a lot of Tomcats in my day and I've never seen one engineered this way. I assume this was done to allow for the other versions, but I don't know. One thing is quite interesting and that is how the various parts of the fuselage attach to one another. For sure, the alignment pegs are large. Then, instead of having the fuselage pieces butt up against one another, Fine Molds have designed in a "ledge" to assist in the alignment of the fuselage walls, similar to reinforcing with card stock underneath. (Note where the boat tail will attach in the above photo.) We'll see more of this later.

 

Two small pivots slip into their respective holes (they are not glued) and the wings interface with these pivots so you can swing the wings whilst you're making jet engine noises in the kitchen. The "engines" locates with very large alignment pegs. The large rectangular protrusion on the side of the engine tubes will come in quite handy in a bit.

 

 

The glove vanes are provided (for the A model) and since the D did not have them, I glued them in place and will fill the resulting seams later. But even here, you can see that the vanes are held in place and aligned with some clever moulding so that they are right where they are supposed to be.

 

 

Next up was to glue the upper and lower fuselage sections together. The alignment pegs created a near perfect fit, and other surfaces are provided to assure that the correct vertical separation is maintained between the fuselage sections. Clever. Someone put some thought into this.

 

 

I cringed a bit when I saw the rear fuselage sidewalls were separate pieces. But those big honking tabs sticking out of the sides of the engine tubes, and the "ledges" that I previously mentioned resulted in a near perfect fit. Again!   

 

 

The vents (ECS Heat Exchanger Exhaust) on top of the fuselage were separate bits, allowing for a nice thin wall thickness. The upper and lower boat-tail pieces had an extremely solid attachment and alignment points and this resulted in near perfect fit. I'm starting to sound like a broken record! The inner sidewalls of the main landing gear bays are separate pieces and were attached at this time. Need I say that the fit was perfect? Nah, I think I said that before.

 

 

How about a look up the old exhaust pipes?

 

 

I'm liking that blue, although "sooting up" is yet to come.

 

Lastly, the next steps in the instructions are the assembly of the intakes prior to adding them to the fuselage. Before adding the ramps, the inside of the intake must be painted. The Tomcat Sunset display aircraft had the typical late-life interior intake painting;

 

 

And let me tell you, this was a bear to mask in 1:72 scale! But I think I got a reasonable facsimile.

 

 

Anyway, that's the state of play today. The intake faces and tubes are ready, and the ramps have yet to be painted. Fine Molds provide actuators for one of the ramps but I'm not sure that will be seen. We'll find out soon!

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. It still boggles my mind that such large and crude looking alignment pegs, surfaces, and other features are appropriate for a 1:72 scale model. Proof is in the pudding I guess!    

[giemme]

Rather peculiar engineering there, I'll give you that. But the end result, at this stage at least, looks absolutely proper. Nice acrobatic masking and painting on those intakes, BTW   

Ciao

[Navy Bird]

7 hours ago, giemme said:

Nice acrobatic masking and painting on those intakes, BTW

 

The problem was that I couldn't get my fat fingers inside the intake. I had to maneuver the strips of tape with two sets of tweezers. And then the masking tape kept sticking to everything - jeez! It shouldn't stick until you have it in its final position, right? Somebody invent that please.  

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Terry1954]

She coming along very nicely Bill. 

 

I really liked this shot:

 

18 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

 

Why can't US Navy aircraft be gull grey and white again, that's what I want to know!

 

Terry

[Navy Bird]

2 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

Why can't US Navy aircraft be gull grey and white again, that's what I want to know!

 

Probably because the gulls have patented or trademarked the colour combinations and the USN doesn't want to pay the licensing fees.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Navy Bird]

A wee bit more work...

 

First, that's a lot of hardware just for the rear ramp actuator.   

 

 

The front ramp (not shown yet) pops right in and doesn't need any glue since it will be constrained by the intake walls and the fuselage. Once the front ramp and engine faces are added, the entire intake assembly just snaps right into the fuselage. I'll need to take care of some very minor seams, probably Mr. Surfacer will be do the job, but all told the fit is pretty good.

 

 

You may notice that I sneaked ahead in the destructions and added the nose assembly while I was at it. Now she's starting to look something like a Tomcat. And unlike a lot of Tomcat kits I've built in the past, there is no step between the nose section and the fuselage. Great engineering on the part of Fine Molds. Those eagle-eyed Britmodellers will no doubt see that I've added some photoetch to tart up two vents in the bottom - near the intake openings. The PE came from the Revell set. No one will ever see it again, so look now!   

 

 

Well, actually she's starting to look like a hacked-up hulk of a Tomcat at the Boneyard prior to being fed to the shredder. Yikes! Curb your thoughts, man!     😬

 

As it turns out, I won't be able to leave the canopy sill off until later in the build as it needs to go on now prior to the addition of the spine. By the way, the spine fits really well. Since I'm not showing off the radar, I should add the radome at this stage as well. I can also start cleaning up the few seams and minor gaps that need cleaning up. I think I can also add the fins and ventral strakes too. Oh, I almost forgot - I need to add the landing gear just to poke @giemme again. Just for fun, eh?

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

8 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

I need to add the landing gear just to poke @giemme again. Just for fun, eh?

I'm gasping already...

 

   

 

She's almost looking like a Tomcat now, neat job!  

Ciao

[Thom216]

Cool progress. You boneyard comment reminded me of the mystery jets found out West. A few F-14s and F-4 hulks found in the 'wild.'

https://sofrep.com/fightersweep/abandoned-us-military-f-14-f-4-found-field-anyone-know-got/

 

Would make an interesting dio.

[Navy Bird]

1 hour ago, Thom216 said:

You boneyard comment reminded me of the mystery jets found out West.

 

No doubt the same guys that strip copper pipes and wires out of your house while you're sleeping will be descending in droves to get at that titanium.   

 

*****

 

As you recall, the wings on the Fine Molds kit are moulded with slats and flaps in the neutral position. Which is fine, I've got Hasegawa kits a-plenty if I'd like everything hanging out. But why engineer the wing parts like this? Specifically, the extra little bit of flap:

 

 

I like that the bottom of the wing is an "insert" so that the trailing edge can be nice and thin, and the leading edge doesn't have a seam running down the middle of it. In any event, the parts fit together nicely.

 

 

I started working on the nose gear. Fine Molds have done a great job of building very precise tooling - it's difficult to see any mould parting lines. Nice, saves me some scraping. I decided to tart up the gear with some of the photoetch for the Revell kit, specifically the oleo scissors and the tie-down rings.

 

 

 

I'll do the same for the main gear, where the PE set not only has nice oleo scissors but also brake lines and other unknown (to me) greeblies. As supplied with the kit, the scissors are all solid, which even in 1:72 scale looks a bit weird.

 

The Revell PE set has a veritable truckload of microscopic bits - like this one that goes on the bottom of the forward fuselage light sabre and ion cannon:

 

 

At this point, I'm too lazy to look in my references to see if there is such a feature at this location so I just slapped it on. We can assume that Eduard did their proper homework and researched all this stuff, right? Right? I mean, none of their photoetch is fictitious, is it? Well, is it?     😬

 

And, lo and behold, we're really starting to look like a promiscuous feline now:

 

 

The inflatable bladders aft of the wings are provided in two sets - one for the wings forward (inflated) and one for wings swept (deflated). I believe that Fine Molds would have you switch depending on how you pose the wings. Although they don't include a "do not glue" statement, the bladders fit well enough that they'll stay in place without glue, unless there's some seismic event.

 

Speaking of swept wings, I've encountered my first issue with the kit. When the wings are swept back, I don't think they go quite far enough. There is just this little bit more that is necessary for the leading edge and the wing glove to form a nice straight line. You can put them in the correct position, but they bounce back that wee bit. Not a big problem, and I won't be seeing my shrink over the induced anxiety. Wait, there is no provision for over-sweep! Maybe I need the shrink after all.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

She's definitely looking feline now, Bill. I'm curious: did you glue the fins in?

 

Ciao 

[Terry1954]

This is such a great learning thread for me Bill, for when I build my own. That last picture looks so Tomcat already. Such a beautiful aircraft.

 

Terry

[Navy Bird]

1 hour ago, giemme said:

I'm curious: did you glue the fins in?

 

I did. They fit really well, and they have the 5 degree from vertical splay angle just about right. Since the Tomcat Sunset scheme has Light Gull Gray fins with White rudders, I didn't think there would be a need to hold them off until after painting the fins and adding the stickers. I think I've done all my Tomcats this way, even the all-black fins on my other VF-31 Felix bird.

 

35 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

This is such a great learning thread for me Bill, for when I build my own. That last picture looks so Tomcat already. Such a beautiful aircraft.

 

A beautiful aircraft for sure. But I've heard many times that it was a maintenance nightmare. But who cares? Helen of Troy was a maintenance nightmare, but boy was she nice to look at.   

 

I was a huge F-111 fan back in the late 60s, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Then I saw a photo of the Tomcat and my gob was truly smacked. Move to the side, Mr. F-111. And then later on I saw a photo of the new F-15 and I exclaimed: "Meh." It wasn't a Phantom. But then look what's still flying - the F-15.     👍

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. Speaking of maintenance nightmares, I read that the aircraft I'm modelling did not fly during the Tomcat Sunset event as it broke down. Instead, an aircraft with a "low-viz" version of the same markings did the flying display. Those markings are on my decal sheet too, but I insist on Light Gull Gray and White as nature intended.

[giemme]

18 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

I did. They fit really well, and they have the 5 degree from vertical splay angle just about right. Since the Tomcat Sunset scheme has Light Gull Gray fins with White rudders, I didn't think there would be a need to hold them off until after painting the fins and adding the stickers. I think I've done all my Tomcats this way, even the all-black fins on my other VF-31 Felix bird.

I was in fact wondering if FM engineered them like the F-4 fin, so that you can actually paint it separately and add it in only towards the end of the build (I don't think I'll do that in my build, but it's something FM devises)

 

GM

[Navy Bird]

6 hours ago, giemme said:

I was in fact wondering if FM engineered them like the F-4 fin, so that you can actually paint it separately and add it in only towards the end of the build

 

I think you could do that. The bottom of the fin and the top of the fin base are both flat and the fit is good (no gap to fill or seam to clean up).

 

BTW Giorgio, you win. I can't add the main gear legs now as they will interfere with the painting the wavy demarcation line between the Light Gull Gray and White. I knew that, of course, as I've built about a gazillion Tomcats. But I forgot because, well, I'm an old fogey.   

 

*****

 

I figured out how I can add the spine and then add the canopy sill later. I had to remove a peg from inside the top front of the spine (this peg mates with a hole at the rear of the sill) and then modify the "slots" on the bottom of the sill. Let me explain that last part - there are two pegs, one each inside the nose section sidewall where the spine joins. On the bottom of the sill, at the rear, are two "fingers" that form a slot that slips over the top of these pegs. I simply removed the rearmost finger, and now (in combination with the removal of the peg first discussed) the sill will slide in after the spine is in place. None of the changes I made are visible, not do they interfere with the correct location of the sill.

 

Some PE on the main gear leg:

 

 

Fiddly indeed.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Roberto]

This one looks like a great kit, and you're doing a great work on it.