1/72 F-14 Tomcat, 3 of them

Hasegawa, Academy, Revell

by Michel Koster

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This is the second on man group build that i did and the last one for about 10 years. It involved three F-14 Tomcats. The kits are:

1:72 Hasegawa F-14D Tomcat

1:72 Revell F-14D Tomcat

1:72 Academy F-14A Tomcat

Because there will be parts that will be not used, especially of the Hasegawa kit, I started changing parts of the various kits. The Revell and Academy kits got the ejections seats of the Hasegawa kit, NACES for the F-14D and GRU-17 for the F-14A. Hasegawa got True Details NACES seats. The Academy kit received the PE of the A-version for the cockpit from the HAS kit and even the PE for the TF-30 engines. On the Revell kit I reworked the engine fairings to represent the more square ones on the F-14D, the kit has them for a F-14A.

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The build was pretty straight forward, I decided to add the wings later on. After construction was done I painted them in there colours. TPS Scheme for the Revell one, old scheme with the Light Gull Gray and White for the Hasegawa and Light Gull gray all the way for the Academy. The came the painting for the different colour tails, ventral strakes and cockpit area. The Academy had to have a black with a yellow band around the cockpit, that was all masked and hand painted. After this was all done, future was applied. 

Then the markings were applied. The Hasegawa kit received decals from his own box. Representing VF-2 ,Bullet 101, with the 25th year anniversary scheme of the Cat (The reason why I bought the kit). First I wanted to use decals for the vertical tailtops but soon I decided to paint them. The Revell kit was also transferred into a VF-2 bird, a CAG bird Bullet 100. Decals came from Hasegawa. And finally the Academy F-14A. Because I don't like academy decals I bought CAM Decals for VF-33 Starfighters. I'm glad I did cause it looks awesome and the decals are really nice to apply. After this I sealed them with a Matt Coat from Xtracolor.

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I also added weapons to the birds. The Hasegawa kit became a ground attack bird. Loaded up with 4 GBU-12's all weapons came from the Hasegawa Weapons kits. The Revell F-14D became a recon bird with a TARPS pod from the Hasegawa kit. And the Air-to-Air role was for the Academy F-14A. Loaded up with 4 Phoenix missiles. Markings on this weapons were decals and some striping was hand painted, like the stripes in the Phoenix.

Hope you like them. Badge on the pics was bought at a museum in Holland.

Michel

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Photos and text © by Michel Koster