A page dedicated to probably one of my favorite planes; the Grumman F-14 Tomcat.
The number one kit in my stash and planned to build a couple of A, B & D versions from different kit manufacturers.
The two 1/72 scale builds are a F-14A model from KA-models and a F-14B from Hobby Boss which is a "not that much fun" kit... nuff said.
The lovely yellow cart is from good old Verlinden and unfortunately pretty hard to get these days. =+/
In fact the KA-models F-14A is the Fujimi kit with extra's like PE & canopy masks. Although this Fujimi rendition of the F-14 is old it's still a very good kit and details and the overall fitting is very good. Used some Aires resin seats, Eduard AIM-9 Sidewnder missiles and very smooth & thin FCM VF-114 Aardvark decals. I made a scr#w up with the air intakes and covered them with mesh intake covers from Flightpath.
Started this one as a D version but made a mistake in the build and swapped halfway the build to a B version. In short I don't like this Hobby Boss kit at all due to the the lack of detail, poor fitting & engineering. Nevertheless I finished this build using PE parts from Dreammodel for the cockpit. I know VF-74 "Be-Devilers" did have B versions but they didn't have Bombcats. But hey... it's a plastic kit and I like it this way. =+) The 2 pilots in the F-14B Bombcat are from Aerobonus.
The airbrush job on this F-14B took me almost almost 8 hours. Started on a black base and build it up layer by layer finishing with some texturing mask effects using the Uschi spray masks. Most of the weathering was done using Tamiya Weathering Master and watercolor pencils. Pinwashes were done using AK-Intreractive panelliner. The VF-74 tail decals are from Hasegawa kit. Unfortunately the double nuts "100" on the nose are positioned a little bit too high... lesson learned..
© 2020 by Marcel du Long