To 14D Tomcat experts,
I have a Hasegawa 14D that is ready to be painted and I need help.
What I would like to now is what are the FS colors to us on the underside, side and top?
Also is the landing gear and bays Flat white or Gloss White?
As always I appreciate everyones help.
Teach a child how to model,
Marc
i can help u but which squadron are u deciding on ? as far as gear wells go definately go with flat white. nose and main gear should also be flat white. let me know on which f-14d scheme you wish to do. i have nearly every f-14 model from tamiya and hasegawa a/b/d variants.
I am building the old Monogra F-14A Kit at the moment. It has the following Federal Standard colour numbers in the painting guide:
Satin White FS 17875 Underside, ailerons, Nose, rear control surface topside
Gray FS 36440 Topside, and fuselage sides
Dark grey FS36231 Walkway panel near cockpit
Light gray FS 36373 a panel on each side of the wing roots
Light brown FS 33613 nose cone
There are a lot more generic colours but the FS number is not listed. Hope this helps
Wirraway, the Monogram paint guide is inaccurate, so don’t go by that.
This link shows the standard layout of the Tomcat TPS, along with the correct colors: http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-detail-colours.htm (second one down).
Thanks for that. I was on that site the other day, looking up VF-142 Ghostriders, for the current F14 Group Build. I’ve bookmarked that page for future reference.
Sure thing. Only problem with that guide is that I don’t think the shaded boxes in the reference guide (at the top right) match the diagram all that well, making it a little hard to figure which color goes where. For the record, topside surfaces should be 35237, vertical surfaces (tails and the sides of the nose) 36320, and underside 36375. To me, it almost looks like they got the boxes for 35237 and 36320 mixed up. Otherwise, it’s a handy reference.
I am not sure about the flat white paint on the gear and gear wells. Every modern naval aircraft’s wells and gear I’ve ever seen up close were a satin or glossy white. It makes detection and cleanup of hydraulic leaks easier.
Every aircraft I have seen has gloss white in the LDG wells. They are painted with an epoxy gloss white so they will clean up easy.
Marc,here are your colors to use on a F-14 D they are FS 36320 Dark ghost grey,FS36375 light ghost grey these colors are the standards for all milatry aircarft in the U.S. arsenal.You will notice the there are some dark areas on the F-14 this is the dark grey.The majority of the aircarft is done in the light grey.
The F-14 A in its early years was painted,underside FS 37875 flat white,topside was FS 36231 dark gull grey.Digger
I forgot the radome tan FS33613
VF-142 never flew the D model. They flew the A and B. If you are modeling a low viz jet it depends on the timeframe for that model. The early A’s for VF-142 used a white and Gloss Gull Grey scheme. Again it depends on what timeframe you are going for.
Check out the page listed below. I think all these are A models, but I am not sure.
http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-photo-09.htm
These photos may or may not help. You need to use your references and go from there. Good luck and keep researching. Again 142 never flew the D model. But if you have the Hasegawa 1/48 scale D kit use the other ejection seats and the late A model chin pod and you have yourself a B kit anyway. Good luck.
Again color scheme depends on timeframe and aircraft number so be careful and check your references.
Sorry, but that’s not quite right. The early Tomcats were Gloss Light Gull Gray FS 16440 over Gloss White FS 17875. The insides of the cockpits were Dark Gull Gray. I got to see some of the first fleet Tomcats back around 1975. The gloss gull gray weathered to become more of a semi-gloss pretty quickly, but they were nice and shiney when they first came out of the paint shop.
Mark
Great to know that FSM keeps all these old posts for when totally clueless wingbats like me are trying to do an airplane model! Great info here!!!
No kidding! That paint info will sure come in handy someday when I build a Tomcat.[B]
Gary
Really!? I don’t think i’ve seen you build a plane before Doog - i hope you post some pics when she’s done.
Well there was a Stuka once upon a time…
This is right, and in the late 70s, the Tomcat went to overall 16440 without the white underside. The movie “The Final Countdown” shows the transition period for the two schemes pretty clearly. VF-84 in gray/white, VF-41 in overall gray on the Nimitz in 1980.
The overall gray scheme seems to have hung around on some birds into the late 80s (even in Desert Storm, some CAG birds at least were still overall 16440)
BTW, just to throw this out there, 36440 is flat, 16440 is gloss but the same color. If you can’t find 16440 in your favorite brand, 36440 with a gloss clear top coat such as Future or Glosscote will work just fine.
TPS gets more complicated. Wasn’t there something like three different TPS schemes for the F-14?
I have not yet come across any F-14s in the TPS with the 36495 bottom like on the early TPS for the A-7 and F-18. But there was some variety seen with the Gray Blue 35237 being used or not.
“36440 is flat, 16440 is gloss but the same color.”
this line is what Dana Bell politely calls “a common misconception”
The truth is that until the 1984 GSA incident, 16440 and 36440 were actually different colors. After the GSA made a unilateral decision to simplify the colors, from 1984 on up, those colors got merged.
Right up until then, though, and for quite a while afterwards, the colors remained separate.
This internet Meme is so entrenched, and supported by an IPMS pub (in error), that I don’t think it is possible to get modelers to actually use the colors that applied during the time period being modeled, though.
Simple logic says the FS colors were at one time different from each other,for over a decade, the old ANA system and the FS system existed side by side, with ANA colors cross-referencing fairly close to the FS colors
Just take a look at the Munsell numbers at the back of Monogram USN Color Guide Volume III or IV,for any color you see that has a 1, 2, or 3 shade, you will see that the Munsell company themselves tested Elliot’s cards and found a difference.
Rex
That’s interesting. I was always under the impression that an FS starting with 1 meant gloss , starting with 3 meant flat, and the numbers after that signified the actual color.
I guess that’s what I get for assuming that a govt specification would actually be specific.
Dave, it IS safe to assume that the government specification is actually more specific.
It is only the model industry that is using a less specific method, by saying that 16440, 26440 and 36440 are the same color. This IS true from 1984 on up,but is NOT true before 1984.
before 1984, the colors were grouped on the same line as if they were houses, their addresses might match up as 6440 on each street in the same position on that street,with 1, 2, and 3 being the street names. In that example, it is easy to see that each house might be different, but, all be house number 6440.
The GSA, all by themselves, decided that all three of those houses would be the same from then on,with the small exception that everyone on 1 street are now Glossy, everyone on 2 street being Semi-Glossy, and everyone 3 street being Non-Specular.
here is an example of the only site I know that uses the system as it existed before 1984
www.simmerspaintshop.com/page-RGB-colors-FS595B3.html
just go to Color Swatches on the left side, for the 1’s and 2’s of the FS colors
let’s work with “X6081” for illustration purposes
16081 is hex color 555856
26081 is hex color 585B5B
36081 is hex color 5B5E5F
now, it is well known that a different Hex Color number means a different color,those three also have different Munsel numbers, and different RGB color codes,they have different CIE-Lab numbers (the numbers used to MAKE military paints),and lastly, different ANA numbers and color names
ALL sites that slam the colors together are based on the IPMS Guide’s erroneous statement**, made by the GSA in 1984 that combined the colors. (** or based on another site that previously followed the IPMS Guide, all those sites are tied together)
This works perfectly fine for any aircraft painted with new paints acquired after the 1984 error, and continues to this day.
But, it is Not correct for any aircraft painted before the 1984 wash-together of the colors. They were already painted and served in the previous “address system” colors,not the current system.
So, yes, in summary,at one time, the FS specifications were more strict than today,not washed out like they are now.
This causes weird things like having to use modern 35045 for ANA 607 NS Sea Blue (taken right off the IPMS guide pages) when in realty, in the fifties and sixties, the color was 35042, which shared the last 4 digits of the “color address” with 15042, even though they were different colors. This happens because “everyone can see” that those two colors were different, so in 595B and C, they “must” have been different numbers,even though you can see the difference in the three on the same x5042 line in a real 1968 FS 595A booklet.
Rex