Grumman F-14 Tomcat collection

Holger Kranich
Are you going to kit-bash them? Always good to see an F-14!

Roy McKay
I have some spare exhausts from a Hasegawa F-14D for the B, and will be bashing the Kitech to make an early A using Matchbox kit decals for VF-142! Spare A nozzles are in the Fujimi kits for the engines on stands, just need to scratch the fairings between nozzles and tailplanes.

Roy McKay
Oh, and I also used spare Hasegawa (new-tool) radomes to correct the mis-shapen ones in the Italeri -A and Kitech kits. Italeri B has a better nose, strangely!

Holger Kranich
Oh, that´ll become an interesting project for me. When will you start?

Roy McKay
At the painting stage already! Will take some photos and post them over the weekend...

Holger Kranich
Ohj yeah, do it! Do you build oob?

Holger Kranich
Ah, i just saw the you build oob!

Roy McKay
Finally going to call these finished, will post some pics as soon as I have taken them. The Italeri -A was a kit I built as a teenager many many years ago, had a lot of bits missing and was poorly painted. I stripped it and replaced lost parts from a Zhengdefu copy. Both intakes, 1 engine can, 1 fin, 1 ventral fin, both stabliators, canopy, lower cockpit fuselage, all undercarriage and missile pylons. The nose cone was a spare Hasegawa part that fixed the one major shape issue this kit had. I used the decals for VF-41 from the Airfix F-14, as it was initially painted up as a VF-41 from the original kit decals, so kept some link to it's previous life.

The Italeri -B was pretty much OOB except for some resin seats, and Hasegawa decals for the Santa Cat VF-103. The engine cans and fairings are spare Hasegawa bits; this corrects this kit's major inaccuracy but I still need to get the bits that go between engines and horizontal stabs. This kit has a better shaped nose cone than the original -A, not sure if this feature is carried over to newer released -A kits. Went together well, no fuss, ok fit and looks good when done.

The Zhengdefu kit I built just because I had it, bought a few of these in a discount shop a few years back. They are a good supply of spare parts, being an almost identical copy of the Italeri kit, except with engraved panel lines instead of raised. You would think this would be the dream tomcat model for a decal mule, but it's not all that easy to go together. The plastic is cheap and nasty, like there is not enough oil in it; (I'm also not convinced that the paint reaction I got under the wings from a spray can was unrelated to the plastic), lots of flash on some parts and pitting -as though the moulds are rusty- on others. While the Zhengdefu intakes fitted well on the italeri kit, they didn't fit at all on the Zhengdefu kit. Cockpit fuse upper and lower fit is also poor, as is the fit of cockpit fuse to the main fuse section. Canopy is clear enough, and sharply moulded (unlike their EA-6B) but is still inferior to the Italeri kit. Decals are rubbish. Small parts are ok though, and the U/c parts are quite decent and look good under the Airfix kit!
Still, it can be built, and does make a worthwhile decal mule or spare part source. Just don't pay more than a couple of euros for one.