1/72 Scale Hasegawa F-14 Tomcat Dual Kit Review

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Joe! I hope to get more done on them soon. Life has been jumping in the way lately.

[Medicman71]

Hasegawa Tomcats are notoriously over engineered, but you're doing great with them. That really sucks that they don't come with any weapons. And nice fix with the PE in the cockpit.

Couple of things that I saw though, the glove vanes on the "A" shouldn't be extended that far. And the swept wings are a little too far back.

[Duke Maddog]

Medic, thanks for the tips and I apologize for not responding sooner. I've been going through so much and hadn't even worked on these two Tomcats in quite awhile so I never came back to this thread. That being said, I finally have some progress to show.

It's been too long and far too late so it was time to hustle on these. First off, I added the P/E additions to the inside of the canopy:





These were slightly difficult to glue in place, be sure to check the bottom edge of the P/E parts to make sure they don't fall below the edge of the canopy. Also, check the instruction sheet closely to insure that you glue them in right side up.

Again, I am doing one with the full P/E workup; here are the two canopies side by side:



In my haste to close the two cockpits sections up, I neglected to paint those inserts, but they aren't that easy to see anyway. What I did remember to do was to paint the yellow stripes on the ejection seat handles:



Finally, I closed these up:



The fit of the canopy pieces was very good. Despite the gap you see in the one; these fit exceptionally well. The gap was my own mistake, not due to any lack of quality in the kit parts.

After having closed everything up, I cemented the cockpit sections to the rear fuselage assemblies. These two aircraft are now ready for masking and paint:



I do know that the wings appear to be retracted too far; they are not glued in yet. I need to find out why they keep slipping into that position and set them properly.

Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

[speedgraflex]

Mark,

First time visit, and lovely thread to read! Thank you! Subscribed for future updates. All the best!

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks for stopping in Bruce. I appreciate the compliment. I have another review Thread to start up on the A-10 as well.

BTW, I tried responding to your "1/48 scale chrome P-47" Thread and kept getting an error message saying the thread was moved or removed. Is it still there? Lyle or Thomas, maybe you can find out what's happening?

[Duke Maddog]

Okay, I managed to move forward some more on these Tomcats. I am not really doing my absolute best so these may turn out a bit 'rough' in the end, but I do hope to finish them soon.

Here is where I am right now. After having glued everything together (except the main wings), I masked off the canopies on my two F-14 Tomcats:



Next came the primer on them:

F-14A Tomcat:



F-14B Tomcat:



Later on when I had the white out again to try to improve the white on the Boeing and the Jetstream, I shot some white on the bottom of the F-14A:



After that, I was done with these two aircraft for now. Later I hope to do the actual grey on the tops of these. I also need to confirm the color scheme for the F-14B.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for more....

[Stikpusher]

Looking good Mark. But then again a Tomcat almost always looks good.

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Carlos! Now to get them masked off and painted. I think I'll leave the wings off when I do to make them easier to paint.

[CallSignOWL]

lookin good DUKE!

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Owl! I'm so thrilled to see you back!