F-14B Tomcat - 1:32 Trumpeter

[Caledonia]

Thanks for your comments Lads.

Unusually for a Trumpeter 1/32 Kit, have been pulling my hair out at the instrumentation Panel Dials. Overall the mouldings for the cockpit and seats are quite good. The small dials however have a raised facia which is quite good but the Decals for the dials have been grouped together on the backing film. How these are supposed to bed into the facias I do not know. They are so small that for me, it is impossible to cut them out individually.

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What I ended up doing was paint where the decals should have gone with black gloss paint, and with a fine sewing needle scratched the dial face to represent the dial needle.

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Going to assemble and paint the Pilot figures now.

Cheers Derek

 

[Polux]

Yes....they look so small :eek:

But is an excellent work too!!!

You have many patience

 

[flyjoe180]

Nice way around those tricky decals Derek. It all looks good so far.

 

[Caledonia]

Thanks Polux and Joe.

A few shots of the finished Tub, amazing how you see the little bits you miss only when you photograph them. Cheers Derek

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[papa 695]

Looking good Derek

 

[Caledonia]

Thanks Ian,

Have been concentrating on the undercarriage and wheel bays.

In order to comply with the configuration I want, have used the short nose undercarriage strut. Have also cut-off the launch bar and repositioned it in the retracted position.

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Here's a view of all three struts

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Finally a few shots of the sub-assemblies ready for priming.

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Cheers Derek

 

[papa 695]

There's some serious detail painting to do in those Derek looking forward to seeing it

 

[tr1ckey66]

This is one monster of a kit!

The cockpit and pilots look great. Looking forward to seeing the rest of this big bird build!

Cheers P

 

[Caledonia]

Thanks Ian and Paul.

Have almost finished the nose wheel well, still to do some dirtying, but will tackle all three landing gear together once fitted.

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Have fitted the cannon, so that the muzzle is visible, have closed all of the panels, as I don't want to spoil the lines of the aircraft. Must say I am disappointed with the fit, will wait until the forward fuselage is all together before filling in and cleaning up the seams.

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I have just cemented the engine intake ramps to the intake side walls rather than trying to fit the actuators, which for me seems an impossible task.

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In order to get the ramps parallel to the intake lip means this ramp edge will be sticking out, but this is not a problem as it goes into a recess.

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Must say I am disappointed in this kit so far, a lot of poor fitting, poor assembly illustrations and a lack of painting instructions. Thank god for google.

Cheers Derek

 

[Caledonia]

I like to coat my canopies with Klear well in advance of needing them or masking them, so the Klear has plenty of time to cure. Trumpeter, as usual, have a longitudinal seam; however this canopy has two widths of seam at each position, which made me google photos, and sure enough the thicker seam is present on the actual aircraft. I have therefore only cleaned off the thinner section.

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I was planning to fully detail the engines, but unfortunately I do not have a lot of spare time at the moment, so have just painted the essentials, here you see the Intake, Trunking and Engines fitted. All quite good fits.

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The next couple of shots show the main undercarriage fitted, this was an excellent fit, they clicked together into the fuselage.

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One point to bear in mind; for me it was not clear where the cylinders Items K2 and K6 fitted, so I left them off and fitted them later, which means I will have to hand paint them later. With hindsight it is possible to fit them with the rest of the wheel bay, and paint the lot together. See grey cylinder in photo below.

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The two halves of the fuselage were brought together, this was a good fit.

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The underside stabilizers were a bad fit into the slots on the fuselage and needed a lot of filing/sanding, still to fill the gap. I am leaving off dressing up all of the joints on the model until assembly is complete.

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Cheers Derek

 

[mobear]

nice jet engine really cool looking

 

[flyjoe180]

Nice work Derek.

 

[Caledonia]

Having problems posting will try again.

 

[Caledonia]

More a RANT than an update.

Been looking at fitting the missiles. Rather than using an air-to-air combat mission, and because I bought the 'Bombcat', I wanted to fit a 'Smart Mission' set of weapons to the model.

Had I wanted to do the former then no problem as you can see below the slots on the carrier fits the missile.

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Unfortunately, the instructions give no clue as to how to fit the bombs. The box art shows a configuration, which agrees with a photo I found.

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For the kit this is the problem (square peg round hole springs to mind.)

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On Sprue sheet WY are these items not mentioned anywhere in the instructions, see bottom of photo. But removing the tabs from the carrier and some re-scribing, you can get round the problem, but it is not accurate.

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By attaching other items also found on this same sprue sheet, it is possible to mount the GBU-12 and GBU-31s

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This kit is not nearly as good as the 1:32 Trumpeter SU-27 and MIG-29M

End of RANT, apologies.

Hope you all had a good X-mas, and have a happy and prosperous New Year. Cheers Derek

 

[yak face]

I have every confidence in your abilities Derek , its going to look excellent. Very interesting to hear the kit is a bit of a "challenge" shall we say , nice work overcoming the bomb attachment , cheers tony

 

[delmonteman]

Keep it up. This is my favourite aircraft.

 

[Caledonia]

Thanks for your comments lads.

After some dry fitting I decided to fit the bottom panel aft of the nose landing gear. Quite a good fit. Spent most of the rest of my time filling seams.

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Quite pleased when I found the photo below which shows how rough the fit of the panels are on the real thing.

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Filled in the seams on the aft end, although they were all a fairly good fit.

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Avoiding joining the fuselage together until the last moment for ease of handling, will move onto the wings next.

 

[Caledonia]

Nicely detailed Wing each with 19 pieces.

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Fit is generally good; I am planning to show the slats, spoiler and flaps deployed which means that I had to remove all of the pin marks on the slats and spoiler.

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This is the wing assembled as far as I want to go at the moment, as the adjacent faces of the slat and spoiler have to be painted red, will therefore paint all of the components shown below separately.

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[mobear]

this is absolutely stunning so far,the office is fantastic and the 2 pilots are amazing

 

[Dave W]

Looking good Derek.Some years ago I built the Hasegawa 1/48 F14 which is quite big. This one must be huge.