Hello, does anyone have advise regarding the R/M 1/48 F-14? My searches have only brought up how it’s a bear of a kit, but not much else. I did find a FSM article which helped but wanted to see what tricks you folks had who built it.
Mike
I’ve built over 80 of them. I also wrote the FSM article if it’s the Tomcat 20+ one. You will, I repeat, will obliterate all detail on the forward fuselage. I’ve tried to get it to fit where I saved the detail, and it’s just not worth the effort. I hate rescribing, which is why I used the pen to draw back in the lines. Steel Beach has quite a few things to enhance the kit, as well as wheels and external fuel tanks from Royale Resin. Using the tricks from the article will make life much, much easier. One tip I’ve seen since that article is that a guy used sprue pieces to push the bottom fuselage apart. This seems to make the fit better to the top fuselage under the cockpit around where the intakes go. Good luck with it. It’s a great little kit. BTW, I’m in the middle of the Hasegawa kit, and that’s no walk in the park either!
To paraphrase the movie Patton:
Roberts… you magnificent b@$*@rd, I read your book!
Thanks for your help!
Mike
The directions aren’t clear on this. But if you want to have the ladder open you HAVE to cut the opening before assembling the fuselage halves. I had to build like 4 of these things before I finally figured that little detail out
The Hasegawa kit is a little nicer, but for the money there isn’t much I can complain about with the Revell kit. I am in the middle of building 3 of them right now (A, B, D)
The beaver tail is for the early block F-14’s. If you want to build a later block some reshaping or modification will have to be done. At one time a resin beaver tail was available for the RM kit but, I don’t know if you would be able to get one.
Actually, the beaver tail on the Monogram kit is the standard one. If you have an early Monogram release, it doesn’t have the ECM blister on it. When they redid the molds for the F-14D and released it under the Revell label, they added the ECM blister to the beaver tail area. Steel Beach has a resin piece with the ECM blister if you have the earlier Monogram release. There was an original style beaver tail that you can only get in the Hasegawa kit. Steel Beach has one, but it fits the Hasegawa Tomcat. I have shoehorned an SB early beaver tail onto a Monogram kit, but the R/M kit is wider between the engine bays. You need to fill the gaps with two part epoxy. With that, you can get the resin piece to fit in reasonably well.
Not a problem. Let me know if you have any more questions. I’d be happy to help out.