Academy 1:48 F-14A Tomcat

[RoscoRSA]

Hi Guys, this is going to be my first SiG, wish me luck

So my entry is going to be a Academy 1:48 F-14A Tomcat



When I saw this model in my local hobby store I just had to jump on it, I have always had good luck building and painting Academy models but the decals have always turned out a right disaster. But along comes this model with Cartograf Decals and I am all for it.


My only problem is I have limited access to paint verities, as in I can get any Tamiya color and humbrol if I really have to (though humbrol is about double the price for half the amount) so matching the color callouts is going to be a mission of its own (I may have to settle for "close enough", not that that's a problem)


My current Paint call out looks like this:


If anyone has any ideas/alternatives that may work better, I am all ears.

[RoscoRSA]

After some thaught I am thinking of using XF-55 (Deck Tan) instead of XF-20 (Medium Grey) for the fuselage because in all the images of the F-14 that I have seen the plane looks more brownish grey than blueish grey.

But I have some ways to go before I need to paint this bird so plenty of time to decide.

[UKguyInUSA]

That's a sweet looking it with a ton of stencils to apply! Have fun building her mate!

[Gwalke]

Looks good

[nero]

Great kit! I don't envy you for all those stencils though. I would lose half and have the other half stuck to my fingers lol...

I will be following this build !

[RoscoRSA]

Great kit! I don't envy you for all those stencils though. I would lose half and have the other half stuck to my fingers lol...

I will be following this build !

Thanks, I am not sure why but I always liked doing decal work, and stencils in particular. It just ties the model together somehow...

[RoscoRSA]

Update #1




Today I started out by giving all the plastic a nice bath in warm soapy water just to prep the surface a little.


I have never really liked putting the pilots in the cockpits (Mostly because I never seem to get them to look right ) but that does not meen that I am not gonna try to get them right...


Both Pilots ready for paint.


Assembling and prepping the front wheel well.


A nice coat of flat white goes onto most of the parts


Masked off the digital screens with humbrol Maskol, I am going to scratch create the lenses, not sure why there was no instrument panel decals included in this kit...


"interior" grey went down on the cockpit tub and the instrument panels.


Prepping the seats for painting.


Seats painted and decals applied, some of these were pretty fiddely (the helmet decals in particular) but with a little micro sol and set they went down pretty good.

That should be it for today, going to leave the components to dry and set for a while, might assemble the seats later tonight

[Nige201980]

Great start mate.

[RoscoRSA]

Update #2

I started today off by assembling the seats and painting the clear sections of the instrument panel. I created the colored lenses for the instrument panel by keeping the backround painted white and covering that with some Mikro Kristal Clear to form the lens and then I painted over that with Tamiya clear green and blue (I based my decision on what would look the best as there were no official paint call outs)




Finished up the seats

I was planning on using the pilots because this time they did not turn out half bad (mist be the helmet decals that did it) but while I was dry fitting the cockpit, the pilots just would not work, not without some serious modification and rework. So I decided not to use them. (btw I should have seen this omen.....)

Started prepping the front fuselage section

I built and attached the radar array even though I wont see it i'll know that its there

I then proceeded to paint the cockpit exterior and add some weathering to the cockpit tub (I used Tamiya XF-1 thinned 1:15 iesh)


Skip ahead quite a bit and I have finished building the landing gear assemblies, one thing to note for anyone building a similar model, I glues the rear landing gear together by using the actual fuselage mounts as sort of a jig. Helps align everything propperly.



Skip ahead again, I have finished painting the landing gear and wheel hubs white, I am going to hand paint the tiers.


I also managed to complete the front fuselage assembly today, I say managed because ,as the previous omen should have warned me, this kit has some significant fit issues and it took a few hours of dry fitting and sanding to get everything to fit without significant gaps.


The more observant ones would already have picked up that the front lower fuselage I build earlier is not the same one that is fitted to the model, that's because: 1. this kit has allot of double components and 2. because the first fuselage bottom would have given me a 1mm gap to fill , this one "should" have no gap. The only downside to the chosen component is that it has less detail than the first one, but I prefer a good fit to nice detail, particularly because I have no experience using a gap filler and, probably more importantly, I don't have any filler at the moment.

Lets hope the rest of the build can go at least as smooth as today....

[Nige201980]

Looking good mate.

[JediBoer]

Great subject! Looks like a nice kit and you have it all figured out! Love what you did with the pilots and the helmets! Stunning work!

[Homerlovesbeer]

Hi my friend, nice work! Progressing very well, good stuff!

[RoscoRSA]

Great subject! Looks like a nice kit and you have it all figured out! Love what you did with the pilots and the helmets! Stunning work!

Thanks, it's a shame that they did not "fit" as nicely.

Hi my friend, nice work! Progressing very well, good stuff!

Thanks, I should have some more progress to show tomorrow

[martin57]

Ni ce work so far well done

[corpsman23k2]

looks great so far realy like the squadron of the sundowners on the helment

[RoscoRSA]

Update #3

So this is going to be quite a big update as it spans over multiple days, I just didn't have time to do a update post....

I finally decided that I will go with a closed canopy, unfortunately I couldn't get the pilots to fit so its going to be an unoccupied cockpit.

I glued the canopy in place with mikro krystal clear, I have to say it fit perfectly, no gaps to worry about

I proceeded to paint the intakes the same grey as the body (for some reason the paint call out is the same so that's what I am going with )


It took a while to get these glued in place, the fit was not the best so there was allot of holding and pressing and waiting for glue to dry to get them to fit without any real gaps (of which there are none )

I them gathered some of the less intrusive hard-points and small items that need to be glued onto the bottom of the body



And them the real work started
I built and prepped all(most) of the ordinance that I am going to be using on the model.



There are actually 6 of these when only 4 will be used but its okay, I will use the best looking 4 even though the instructions only indicate that 2 needs to be used there are enough hard-points for 4 so 4 it will be

Ready to be painted white


Done putting down the white

I them proceeded to paint the air brake inside bright red


At this point I had already painted the wings (forgot to take pictures ) and started prepping for the "silver" leading edge


I then prepped the "noses" of all the missiles for paining the dark grey.


I then assembled the landing gear (glued the wheels) and started the clear coating process


Wings are ready to be clear coated. (I used Tamiya X-10 gun metal for the leading edge as there was no paint call out for it)

At this point the clear coating is done, and I am leaving it to cure properly before I assemble the body.



I may start to glue the body together before the weekend as I will have to do it in staged because of the "not so ideal fit, I will try to remember to take pictures to show my frustration better

[Homerlovesbeer]

Missiles galore! Nice!

[RoscoRSA]

Update #4

So this is going to be a small update in preparation for allot of work tomorrow. Basically all I did today was tape the upper and lower fuselage sections together and glue the front part together.

To give everyone an idea of the nasty (not bad) fit:

and this is after taping all the other sections together so that the only poor fit is this part.

After about 2 hours of holding and pressing I can finally let it "rest" like this:


The extent of how much I could reduce the gap resulted like this:


I could not get rid of all the gaps I may have to use the superglue gap filling method seeing as the gap is small enough but we shall see.

I am going to leave it like this for the front section to fry properly before I attempt to do the rest. On a side note I had to do allot of sanding on the main wing areas of the upper and lower fuselages so that it does not take of all the paint on the wings when the folding mechanism is used, but it seems like I am winning...

[RoscoRSA]

Update #5

This is going to be a slightly bigger update.

I started by gluing the rest of the fuselage halves together




While that was setting I started to put on the decals on the ordinants








Decals are done and dusted and setting with a healthy coat of Mikro Sol


Haha, the "extra" ordinants


This is how they will be laid out when they are on the plane

Two of the AIM 54's will not be decaled (technically they are not supposed to be fitted but I want this bird to be fully loaded)

So this is what the bird looks like at the moment,, the vertical tails are only dry fitted at the moment as is the air brake to help the painting process



First step tomorrow will be painting the rear cans.

[Nige201980]

She is really starting to come together mate. Looking forward to the next update.

[UKguyInUSA]

Wow, you flew through this build and you've made a cracking job of her so far! The missiles look gorgeous and great job on the cockpit tub, pity about the Pilots not fitting?

Cheers

Martin

[RoscoRSA]

pity about the Pilots not fitting

The thing was, the navigator fit nice and snugly but the pilot would fit but not if along with the joystick, so I decided that I would like to see the instrument panels more that seeing the pilots

[UKguyInUSA]

pity about the Pilots not fitting

The thing was, the navigator fit nice and snugly but the pilot would fit but not if along with the joystick, so I decided that I would like to see the instrument panels more that seeing the pilots

Understandable...after all the hard work that goes into detailing the cockpit, it's nice to be able to see it!

[martin57]

Great work so far thats going to look great when its finished

[RoscoRSA]

Update #6

This is going to be a shortish update, though it took a long time to get together....

I started by getting the rear cans painted


The actual nozzles were only dry fitted during painting so that they can be removed for the main body painting.

While I waited for that to dry I gathered the remaining items that needed to be painted white

The tips of the tails and the two bottom ribs were sprayed red after the white was put down.

I them proceeded to liquid mask off some of the more difficult areas.


I glued the tail sections in place after the cans were masked off, however I did not add the bottom ribs as it whould be easier to fix them later, after the decals have been added

At this point I have finished with my first coat, I will need to add another because I know I missed a few spots


Had to hold the fuel tanks someware



This bird is allot more work to paint than I originally thought
But I seem to be "winning"

[Nige201980]

Looking good mate

[qeialto]

what do you use to liquid mask?
Thanks

[RoscoRSA]

what do you use to liquid mask?
Thanks

Humbrol Maskol and a brush I don't care for anymore

[Homerlovesbeer]

Nice update. Why did u paint the cans on the plane and not separately? I'm curious as I'm new back to the hobby so I'm interested in techniques.

Cheers

[RoscoRSA]

Nice update. Why did u paint the cans on the plane and not separately? I'm curious as I'm new back to the hobby so I'm interested in techniques.

Cheers

On this model the cans are two pieces, when I get home I will take a few pictures to better explain it, but the jist of it is, there is a section of the fuselage that needs to be painted the same color as the cans/engine nozzles, and for consistency sake I temporarily fixed the them to the fuselage so that the "shading" matches,

[RoscoRSA]

Update #7

Another shortish update, I started today by "fixing" the areas on the body that I missed in my initial pass with the top coat. I then proceeded to mask off the darker grey sections that are under the wings when folded.


While I was doing this my fingernails managed to scrape off some of the paint from the body (man this stuff is fragile without a clear coat) I managed to fix it easy enough, didn't take any pictures though.

I then proceeded to detail the wheel wells and the landing gear bay doors with red.

I have to say, hand painting the red details required more focus than I expected

The final thing I did today was complete the top clear coat.



That's it for today, tomorrow is decals

[RoscoRSA]

Update #8



So today I basically finished the model, I only need to do the final clear coat and last bits of assembly and it will be done. I have to say the decals were both amasing and a great disappointment (mainly because of my lack of experience with them) as they fit almost perfectly but left allot of visible wrinkled after drying. So because of these wrinkles I decided that I am going to keep this bird as clean as possible (so no weathering ) to try and augment the impact that the wrinkles will have on the final look of the plane. So here are a few sneak peek pics of what the kit will end up looking like,
enjoy




Btw this bird really was huge, this is it next to my P-51 that needed a couple of repairs

[Nige201980]

Looking good mate.

[JonMW]

Looking good! This build really makes me want to start mine.

[Andreas]

damn. That went together quickly. Looking great

[Lego]

Oooo that's coming along rather nicely. Lots more detail compared to the 1/72 which it should have anyway.



Great job