A
lot has been published about the Grumman F-14A Tomcat. Hence, I will refrain
from telling an old story again.
The
1/72 Italeri kit of the F-14A has been on the market for almost 20 years. For a
kit of such age it is not bad in terms of details although it sports raised
panel lines. Its fit, however, is rather poor and apart from patience, huge
amounts of filler and a lot of sanding were required when building it.
Decal
options are provided for a VF-142 plane of CVW-7 (AG/205) on USS Dwight D.
Eisenhower in overall light gull gray and an aircraft operated by VF-41 of CVW-8
(AJ/105) on the USS Nimitz in low visibility scheme. The time period covered by
the markings of both aircraft are the mid 1980’s.
The
kit comes with four AIM-54A Phoenix missiles, two AIM-7 Sparrow missiles, two
AIM-9 Sidewinders and a TARPS pod (which you may only use with the VF-142 option
as VF-41 have never operated TARPS equipped F-14As although the kit instructions
do not point to this fact).
Click on
images below to see larger images
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I
got started with it the time when I had purchased it some fifteen years ago but
it wasn’t until recently that I managed to finish it. The kit was basically
built OOB and I refrained from rescribing the raised panel lines. However, by
painting the whole aircraft black in a first step, followed by spraying coats of
light and dark compass gray and finally slightly sanding over the panel lines
resulted in an acceptable effect. For painting I used a combination of Humbrol
and Xtracolors diluted with nitrocellulose thinner for spraying. Weathering was
applied by using oil colors heavily thinned in turpentine. Kit decals were used.
Happy
modeling!
Dominik
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