F-14 Tomcat Group Build idea...

I heard acetone might work but you might want to keep asking. Those cockpit shots look great though. Very nice work on the knobs, fine detail etc. Yesterday was limited at the bench due to some anti-mousing in the kitchen (of all places!) Hopefully today will yield some quality bench moments. Anyone in the northeast? Lucky folks are getting some snow! We merely got dusted,again.

Lucky? I wouldn't want to be in the northeast or upper midwest. Read this from Foxnews.com.....

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145169,00.html

Jon, Asheville sounds great compared to Cincinnati, at least right now. It was 1 deg. F overnight, it has warmed up to 10 F at noon.

And this is warm compared to places such as Minneapolis, Fargo, etc.

Well since I last posted on here, I was not able to prime the cockpit that night because I got too busy with other things,and before I could get a chance to do it, a cold front came through with 30-40 MPH winds. I have had to wait until today for the wind to die down enough to be able to spray outside.( I desperately need a spray booth)So I will try to have completed cockpit photos posted within the week.

Later on....

yeah, it's pretty cold. I saw that thread you posted Mitchell and I don't wish it on anyone. I just like a good snow every once in a while. I like to ski and a nice snow storm with power and cable makes for a nice quiet 'desk' day. Last night it was -14 with windchill, 10 without. Stay warm and it's a perfect day for the bench. I am pretty much done with the cockpit, time to finish the lower fus so I can stick them together. I'll post pics when I have that done. How's progress with everyone else?

MACooke, acetone will work but go easy on it as it will also eat your plastic if you're not careful! If you painted the fuselage sides before gluing in the pit, you might be able to gently break the bond because maybe you were lucky and bonded it to the paint and not the bare plastic.
I picked up some more supplies from the LHS yesterday. Hopefully, today I'll have the weapons and gear wells painted on my F-14A and the fuselage assembly complete on my F-14B. That' the plan anyway!

Hi everyone. I am happy to report that I have successfully disassembled, modified, and re-installed my Black Box cockpit into the fuselage.

Fortunately, I think the cockpit tub was glued to the interior paint, it came out fairly easily. I sanded down the bottom of the tub, and when I re-installed it, I used a couple of shims, made from .015" sheet styrene. Look at the first two photos; the first is the original installation, I put a green arrow to show the gap, that cockpit tub was seriously out of kilter. The second is a photo of the re-installed cockpit, MUCH BETTER!

(Oh yeah, I broke the front side panels during painting...D'oah!)





And I think filling in that huge abyss in front of the instrument panel hood just got a bit easier, I again used .015" styrene sheet and made a "support", spanning from one fuselage half to the other, onto which a muthuh-load of putty will now be applied.



Whew! I think I really dodged a bullet on this one!

Ok it's been awhile since this little endeavour has begun. So at this point I am again building the Fujimi 72nd scale F-14A, cockpit has been installed as well as the gear bay. The engineering is a little different compared to the Hase version.

The engine nacelles are separate LH/RH halves and are added as separate parts to the lower fuselage section. No detail set will be used as the short ending date of this Group build will negate the use of any. I don't get much time to build only on weekends. And I like to take my time.

Isn't it rather inconvenient when you run out of a certain color. Like White for instance. Fortunately I had enough to at least get most of the airframe together.
There is a nasty little step that will need to be worked on where the forward fuselage joins the rear half of the main body. This will be a Desert Storm bird and at this moment could be a VF-32 Swordsman or a VF-41 Tomcatter with nose art. Built the VF-84 Jolly Roger companion F-14A a few years ago. I may go with this set in the end.

One more week left in January, progress is steady as I juggle a few other builds that are in work. At this point is to build and install the engine nacelles and then do some seamwork. The wings have already been built and will be painted next weekend. So in a nutshell my Tomcat is in it's raw state before any seamwork will be done.


Everyone else seems to be doing fine. Keep up the good work gang. Some real fine images coming across the boards here.

Y'all have a Fine Navy Day!!!

Chuck
Fly Navy

Chuck: that cockpit is looking good; you say that's 1/72 scale? Wow, I don't know that I've ever seen 1/72 cockpit detailing look that good. At least not anything that I've ever built. Trying to detail a cockpit in that scale scares me, so I usually end up closing the canopies.

Interesting the way Fujimi has done the bottom fuselage, with the engine nacelles. That may be a lot of fun to build.

I was reading the thread about the acrobatic teams GB, and they've included "theoretical and what if's". So, I got this wild idea to do an F-14 in Blue Angels colors...well, there IS that F-14A currently in "maintenance", awaiting a new body. Ha ha. Or imagine the Canadian Snowbirds flying F-18's. I know, I'll do a Thunderbirds B-1B, yeah!

OK that's it now, I've given up on the Hasegawa, I'm gonna find myself another 1/48 Cat A, any recomendation ???

Great looking progress MACooke and uscusn. It's looking like some very impressive birds will be built.

QUOTE: OK that's it now, I've given up on the Hasegawa, I'm gonna find myself another 1/48 Cat A, any recomendation ???

Mate, it depends on what you like doing most. If you enjoy un-complicated kits and alot of filling and sanding, choose the Academy kit. If you like fiddling with alot of parts and some filling and sanding, choose the hasegawa kit. Overall, it sounds like the Hase kit is more accurate, but more expensive. It also has alot more options, but you don't get many weapons. The Academy kit has got alot of fit problems, don't know what the Hase kit is like on that front.

I haven't heard what the Monogram kit is like.

hope that isn't too confusing for you.

The Monogram kit (now Revell?), if it's like their original F-14 from the early 1980's, does not fit well. There's a huge ridge along the lower front fuselage, where the piece goes with the cannon vents. The tailplanes are molded into one of the fuselage halves.

It seems that whichever way you go, building the F-14 is going to involve quite a bit of work.

I've got one of the F-14D's from Revell and it's the same kit from way back when only they updated the tail pipes and ejection seat. It's a lackluster kit with raised panel lines and iffy fit issues. I like the Academy kit because of cost and recessed lines but the Hasegawa is still the better kit.
For a 1/72 you made it look like a 1/48 with that cockpit painting, Chuck. Nice work! How is that kit compared to Hasegawa's?
Mitchell- looks like you got that trench under control.
I'll end up getting very little bench time this week. I have to go to Charlotte this weekend, but I am getting all of the supplies I need for my carrier deck. Seats are done with the exception of attaching the PE goodies. I did find out that the True Details seats are too wide for the cockpit tub. I'll have to sand down the lower part for them to fit. I am really going slow on this kit, though. Depending on next weeks progress I might have to push the finish date back to accomodate building the deck.
How is everything moving with the rest of you?

Things are progressing well, Jon. Everything went according to plan yesterday! The gear, gear wells, wheels and exhaust cans are all painted. Now it's ready for the wash. The F-14B is coming along nicely, too. The fuselage is all assembled just like I thought it would be. I love it when a plan comes together!

Thanks MaCooke,Pintang and Jon.

This is the 2nd Fujimi kit I've built. The other about 4 years ago in VF-84 markings Desert Storm. The raised details make it quite easy. Well for me and no it is not that easy. By the time I finish a console I'm blue with holding my breath for so long. The airframe does look kind of funny at this stage of the build with the nacelles not attached to the fuselage. The step is more my fault, should've been more careful. I did not have this mistake on the Jolly Roger build. I'll post more images this weekend as I progress with this one and get some more white.

Chuck
Fly Navy

MACooke, why not use the RIO's stick that came with the kit?

Chris Ishmael

Duhhh...why didn't I think of that? I'll have a look at that tomorrow.

So I've been having trouble with my airbrush for what seems like decades (OK, several years), it's a Paasche H model. So I inspect the needles and tips, after a great article on "Troubleshooting Your Airbrush" from FSM, and they're almost all bad. I bought a replacement needle and tip, a set of #3's, and I was so thrilled about being able to airbrush fine lines that aren't all spatter spatter spatter, just for kicks I painted the upper surfaces of the rear fuselage.

I had already pre-shaded the panel lines, so I started w/ dark ghost grey, Testors MM enamel. I got all of it painted, poured out most of the paint, and added several drops of black. Mixed that up, painted several panels at random. Then I added many drops of white, mixed that up, and painted several other panels at random. Then I added some midnight blue, same spiel as before. Next thing I know, I've got about 20 shades of grey on there, whoah!

So my next step is taking care of the seams on the forward fuselage, then mating that to the rear, then taking care of those seams. This paint job is definitely going on in stages!

Geez, I need to get over here more often........

I don't know if you folks are aware or not, but there has been a sort of 'parallel evolution' going on, as the Aircraft Resource Center also has a Tomcat Group Build going on right now. Last summer, a lot of interest was expressed in starting this group build, but due to a conflict with the Modern NAVAIR group build which was running at the time, I decided to hold off until January 1st to kick it off (believe me, there was no intent on causing any kind of conflict). At any rate, if any of you folks are interested in participating in both group builds (certainly not trying to take anything away from the ongoing GB here), please feel free to stop by and view the details at http://aircraftresourcecenter.com, or at http://scaleair.com/groupbuild . Everyone is welcome, and I'll be looking forward to seeing the completed builds over here as well.

Cheers,

Steve, I joined and included some progress photos! Thanks for sharing the info- I hope the rest of the guys will check out that great site as well. There are some great F-14 builds there. Thanks again!

No problem at all, Jon - the more, the merrier, I figure!

Where'd everyone go? This thread has been on the first page for weeks...

HELLO?

Well, guys, I guess I'll be back in soon. I just received word from Marleen (my LHS-owner) that a brand new 1/48 F14 A from Academy is waiting eagerly to be picked up by me. (for only 22 € as opposed to the 53 € for Hasegawa )

im here mitch, but im afraid that i havent been workin on my 'cat much...

Things are a bit slow around here lately, aren't they. I haven't been doing much work on my cat either, but we've got heaps of time left so I'm not too worried.

when is the finish date again ? im sorta not with it

Don't worry, Mitch. We haven't left ya! Ive been busy this week so I haven't been able to spend much time at the bench. Hopefully, I can get some quality time this weekend.

Hi everyone...I hadn't seen any posts for a day or so after the Great Steve Filak blessed us with his presence, I was starting to panic, you know, like a little kid does when they wander a bit to far from mom at the store...

Well, I have been busy the last part of the week, from 8 am to 5 pm...Mitch finally landed a job. Not my dream job, but I still have two more interviews coming up. After nine months, and 21 interviews, I got an offer!

So to echo the sentiments of bstrump, I hope to spend some quality time at my bench today....nay, quantity time!

(OFF SUBJECT a bit) I got a package yesterday, it was a Hasegawa 1/48 F4U-4 Corsair (my favorite WWII plane), I won it on e-Bay. A little surprise awaited me inside...a set of resin AM wheels, with the tires "weighted". That's a pleasant surprise.

Mated the front half of fuselage to rear half. I expect that maybe by tomorrow night, once filling, sanding, and panel line re-scribing is done, I may put paint on the rest of the model. OOOhhh, I'm getting excited!! It's starting to look like a jet. Yee-hah!

will i am waiting for warmer weather mitch to paint my cat. its to darn cold out side to paint. aslo i am trying to finish my helo for the helo attack gb build that is going on at the same time as the cat gb and i sould have that finished in the next few days. and i still got an a -10 to start for another gb. but remine me never to sign up for so many gb i dont know which way to go.

QUOTE: Originally posted by MACooke Hi everyone...I hadn't seen any posts for a day or so after the Great Steve Filak blessed us with his presence, I was starting to panic, you know, like a little kid does when they wander a bit to far from mom at the store...

I was starting to worry that I killed the thread.............[:0]

PS-

Mitch, I tried e-mailing you a reply, but the e-mail bounced for some reason. It mentioned something about an invalid recipient. Maybe it's a glitch with the forums? Anyway, I just didn't want you to think that I didn't reply to your e-mail, but it's not getting through for some reason...........

Oh Great One:

My e-mail account had a glitch through my ISP, so Friday 1/28 and into Saturday 1/29 it was an "invalid address". Reminds me of the Michael Douglas movie "Falling Down", there's a guy in front of a bank protesting his loss of a job, he's not "economically feasible" or something like that.

Steve (and anyone else, for that matter), if you'd care to drop me an e-mail, my address is STILL MACooke@fuse.net.

Man, Steve, that 'Cat of yours on the ARC, "Jolly Rogers Last Cruise", that is literally the "Cat's Pajamas". I've never seen a better build! I was drooling over those pics for hours, my wife said I'm one of the biggest geeks she's ever known.

Try that address again, if you would, please. Thanks.