Grumman F-14A Tomcat "Frequent Wind"

Dug up from the bottom of my stash, a very old Hasegawa F-14A in just the markings that I wanted for my Vietnam War collection. 

The box is crammed full with a daunting amount of parts... 

OMG, what am I getting into… There is even PE in there. Not the usual simple stuff I build. 

First subassemblies in progress. Had to remove al lot ejector pin marks which were all over the place. 

First spraying session with lots of white, gray and burned exhaust metallic. 

Sprayed a light buff color in the exhaust, added some of the PE and heavily stained everything based on images I found. 

More subassemblies in progress. Fit is nice but not everything drops together, care is needed to prevent steps and gaps. 

Assembling the fuselage step by step. This kit is an exercise in tricky clamping.  

The butt end kept fighting me, it was difficult to get the exhausts in later on. 

Starting on the wings. These are clearly designed for the “everything dropped” option, the clean option I want is tricky to assemble. 

Clamping the intake trunks into submission. The RH one went on OK, but could not avoid nasty steps on the LH one. 

In the meantime completed the cockpit, which is very nice, complete with PE instrument panels. 

More clamps needed, widened the rear end a bit to improve fit to the main fuselage. 

Adding the flaps to the wings. Again fiddly. One kept on popping loose... 

nstalled the nose. Despite widening I still had a step on the LH side that required filler.  

Installed the radome (including a nose weight) which did not fit very well. Probably my own doing. 

installed the gun panels, which also did not fit as well as I would have liked. Also needed filler on the lower nose insert. 

The canopy unfortunately has a prominent mold parting line along the top 

Removed the mould line and sanded and polished the canopy 

Looking great after a dip in HG51. 

Preparing for the first primer coat by masking the areas already sprayed white. Popped out an upper intake ramp, duh… Managed to reinstall it. 

Installed and sanded down the navigation lights transparencies. These are so tiny I lost a few which I replaced with clear sprue. Could have done without this level of detail and finnickyness… 

Filling the base of the fins. Quite some gaps here. 

Primer coat on, looking pretty good 

Sprayed the antiglare panel and pre-shaded 

Used some references from the Internet to help with masking the antiglare panel 

Complex masking after spraying the lower surfaces white 

Followed by the light gull grey upper surfaces. So far I have used Revell and Humbrol enamels. 

Masked the upper surfaces and sprayed the light tan radome and red fin tips and ventral strakes 

As I had no red Sharpie at hand I tried a new technique for the red door edges: tamponing. Not a great success…  

Sprayed the NMF bits such as the wing LE and exhaust areas 

Always exciting: pulling off a ton of paper and tape. Result is not perfect but not too shabby either. Good enough for me. 

After a gloss coat of HG51 we’re ready for decaling 

Oops, while decaling I noticed that I forgot to spray the spoilers white. Some judicious masking and a quick coat of white sorted that one… 

The Hasegawa decals worked fine after coating them with a decal bonder. Lot’s of stencils though… 

And decals done! Phew. Missiles came from a hasegawa missile set. 

Before another gloss coat to seal the decals I first installed the landing gear as I can no longer use the spraying handle I used earlier. 

The gloss coat didn’t go down well, no idea what went wrong. Removed most of the upper finish and ploughed on with weathering. Still practising and may have overdone it a bit. 

Followed this up with a Tamiya matt coat but evidently was not patient enough. I guess the gloss coat had not fully hardened on the bottom surface and had an argument with the matt coat. Aarghh!  

After a lot of muttering and hair-pulling I sanded down the carnage as well as possible and resprayed parts of the underside. Remarkably the decals survived the sanding. 

Used some pastel powders to blend in the new white. By now this bird is awfully dirty… 

Sitcking on wheels, gear doors and missiles. Quite fiddle and the pylons did not fit very well. 

Almost there, adding the final antennas and probes with only some detail painting to do. 

A bit of a disappointing end game but we're done!