Academy 1/48 F-14A by Steve Filak, Sr.

Feature Article 3:
F-14A Tomcat
VF-84 'Jolly Rogers': USS Nimitz 'Lo-Viz', circa mid-1980s
Academy 1/48 F-14A, Kit #1659

I won't spend a whole lot of time on the construction of this kit, as it's been covered pretty extensively in Feature 2. The kit, once again, is the Academy F-14A, which for me, is the best 'bang for the buck' F-14A kit available. The only major problems I have with the kit are the panel lines at the forward fuselage, and the fit of the intakes. Anyway, on to the build!

As usual, I started with the cockpit. This time, I went with the True Details cockpit, which is a nice addition to the kit. Not so much for the instrument panels, but the side consoles and seats are a BIG improvement over the kit parts. Once the cockpit was painted and weathered, I managed to shoe-horn it into the fuselage, and went to work on re-scribing the forward fuselage.

As you can see from this picture, the panel lines on the forward fuselage are horrible, and in dire need of re-scribing. I sanded down the existing lines, and went to work on rescribing the kit. Luckily, the panel lines on the forward fuselage are pretty shallow, so it was no problem sanding them off. When this was completed, I rescribed the panel lines using a sharp needle in a pin vise. The nose was then sanded again, primed, and polished. The end result isn't perfect, but it does look a bit better than the original panel lines!

At left, the kit's scribing, and at right, after rescribing.

Construction continued, and the rest of the kit went together fairly quickly. Since I wasn't all that happy with the fit of the wing glove vanes, I deleted the kit parts and filled the gape with Evergreen square rod. I wasn't plan on utilizing the working features of the wings and wing gloves anyway - my limited shelf space dictates that all Tomcat models are parked at near-maximum sweepback!

The most difficult part of construction is getting the intake trunking assembled with as little same work as possible. I did this by planning ahead and eliminating as much of the seam work as possible. I did this by lining the insides of the intakes with .005 sheet, with enough overlap to cover the resultant seams. The rear part of the intake trunks also needed some work, and these areas were filled with small strips of .010 sheet. They were later trimmed and sanded smooth, and the model was pretty much ready for the paint booth.

At this point, the airframe is pretty much complete, and for some reason, I decided to paint the exhausts at this point in time. I started out with a basecoat of Alclad, and airbrushed subsequent coats of Tamiya clear orange and clear blue. Finally, I used a very thin mixture of raw umber artists oil mixed with flat black and lots of lacquer thinner.

Once this was complete, I set the model aside for a while, and went to work on the landing gear. The Academy kit's gear, while not as detailed as Hasegawa's offering, still are a good accurate representation of the landing gear. However, I wanted to add some brake and hydraulic lines, This was done with some really thin copper wire and fast-cure super glue. In retrospect, the lines are a little thicker than I wanted them to be, but I think they'll look OK once the model is painted and assembled.

I masked off the exhausts, and then it was off to the paint shop! The model was primed and preshaded with MM Flat Black, and then it was off to the races. I airbrushed the two-tone Ghost Gray scheme (the first TPS scheme worn by Jolly Rogers Tomcats, Dark Ghost over Light Ghost Gray), and went to work on weathering the finish. I drew in all of the panel lines with a pencil blurred them out with an artist's blending stump. The model was then painted over in the same TPS colors, using VERY thin coats of paint, thinned down with lacquer thinner.

And this is how it looks, nearly complete, with all of the major painting completed:

From here on out, the only things left to complete were a little bit of detail painting in the cockpit, namely the instrument panels coamings, and the addition of the seats. Wheels, glass, gear doors, and wing pylons were added, and what you see below is the finished result:

Stay tuned - two more Tomcats are on the workbench as we speak. The next two will be a current VF-103 line bird, and the 60th anniversary showbird.