Interesting.
I didnt know anything about after market kits until yesterday. I took a 15 year break and am now waiting on all my mail order goodies to get here so I can dive back into it.
After reading this forum, you guys really got me jonesing to start right away, so I rummaged through my closet and found a 1/32 Revell F-14 Kit that wasn't touched.
I started searching the net for reviews, how to's and such. I have never had the ability to use the net for modelling, so it was a new experience. I found about 4 pages of different people that have done the kit in different ways. I learned SO much from reading those pages it was crazy.
Although the pages did not have direct links to each product, I gathered from what they said.. did a search and found the companies that offered them. It was really weird. I found all kinds of things for the model that I can add on to it. After market Ejection seats, int and ext detail sets... and the thing I really really liked..... Decals!!! It was crazy.. I would have never thought of it... but I found a decal set that I really enjoyed, so I plan on buying it next week or so. It even had the colors for the paint job, decal scheme, the works... it was really great.
So instead of a slam together job for the F14, Im going to take my time with it... prime, sand, the works... buy the new decal set.. order the exact color paints... and get the ejection seats. It will be the most intense model I have ever built, :)
Then after searching and checking my shopping cart on Squadron for a few hours, I saw there are detail kits for most of the big models out there.. and came here to ask what they were.. they looked like metal, but wasn't sure exactly how they are used.