F-14A Decal Testbed

Patrick Hagelstein
Looking at your cover picture, that would actually be cool to do. A sparkling new and unweathered Tomcat prototype. Gets me thinking...

Martin von Schreckenstein
well yes, my fascination with early block alphas will probably never allow me to get to a TPS build.. also, the vf-1s will be brand new, more decals though..

Patrick Hagelstein
Nice, bring it on! In the meantime I ponder about that prototype idea...... 😉

Ekki
Following.

Martin von Schreckenstein
actually the aircraft in the picture is a later production alpha. It has new beaver tail, gun vents and alpha probe. these three details by themselves are fairly easy to find even in 1/72 but the first six(?) prototypes had different, rectangular wing glove sealing plates and larger wing glove fences on top of the fuselage. These details are available in 1/48 for the Tamiya kit (at least I saw them somewhere) but would have to be scratchbuilt in 1/72. also, welcome gentlemen🙂

Patrick Hagelstein
Yes, now I see it. 👍 Well, liking that picture as such with the spotless paint job, no markings and only some dirt from the wing gloves, I think I should be able to build it only using an FP30 or a Hasegawa one. I only need to find/build those finned drop tanks.

Martin von Schreckenstein
I will be looking forward to that 👍