This is Hasegawa’s beautiful F-14B Tomcat. After building so many R/M kits, this was a good change of pace, and the detail just can’t be beat. But this kit is not without its difficulties. The fit of the front cockpit section to the rear fuselage required some work as well as the wheel wells. To make life easier for myself, I added Steel Beach Accessories vinyl intake covers and resin corrected GE F110 nozzles with covers. The rest was built out of the box.

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The model was painted using Model Master Acryl paints. It was weathered with a number of shades of gray to get a nice tonal variation and then a light wash of Lamp Black oil paint was run through the panel lines. I tried doing this on the paint itself with no gloss coat. I didn’t let the wash dry for very long before wiping it off with Turpenoid. I was quite please with the results.

Decals were from Twobobs, which went on with no problems at all. For armament, I used the Steel Beach Accessories Lantirn update set along with some GBU’s from Hasegawa’s Weapons Set D. In all, this is an impressive kit when finished. The difficulties experienced during the build can be easily overcome with a bit of patience. It’s well worth the effort.

Darren