MechaEd

Hi, I have also received mine. All intact after the trip across the Pacific

A write-up of my build and more pictures can be found here.

I messed up the engines/feet so all other comments welcome!

Wow... a one year plus 'adventure'... hmmm.. i'm challenged. What's his email?

Pardon my ignorance, but where can I get a hold of a set?

Can't keep a good thread down

Anyway, I dun think it's gonna be that easy to make the wings swing. I for one, wouldn't go through the trouble <_<

http://www.1999hobbysearch.com/dbimages/us.../10023350z3.jpg

http://www.1999hobbysearch.com/dbimages/us.../10023350z4.jpg

MechaEd....is that the 1/100 scale strike gundam?

Yes it is. I might just stop work on it since the MG Strike is coming out and it had much better proportions. Saw the parts breakdown from the latest Dengeki, it'll be much easier to paint too <_<

I seem to have kits of all genres. Even bikes (altho I bought it only because it had a cool shark-mouht marking ). I have a LOT more aircraft kits than anything else tho.

Suffering from AMS burnout from aircraft modeling, so I've switched to Gundam modeling for awhile.

Didn't know that the Hase kit's wings can't swing.....that kind of sucks.  Does anyone know if the Revel/Monogram or Academy kits wings can swing? (for a F-14D?)

Most pics I see of stationary 'Cats have their wings swept anyway, so allowing it to swing is simply a gimmick. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong (since I've never served on a carrier ), on a carrier deck, the only time the wings will be swept out will be during launch, with landing gear down, flaps + slats extended, rear stabilizers up... the whole shebang.

IIRC, one of the Option Decals sheets has markings for an Aggressor Valk. Need ot check my sheets later to be sure

I have a VF-1D in my stash to be done as an aggressor. Just dunno when I'll actually do it tho hehe.

I'm curious. Why don't you just scan the 3 views from the instruction manuals? BTW, what sort of schemes are you thinking of doing that will need all 3 views? Splinter pattern?

Hey MechaEd,

Absolutely beautiful F-14 there - definitely something to be proud of. I would love to see more pictures especially how you did the weathering - it looks great in the pictures. I picked up a 1/72 scale Hasegawa kit (the complex one) with the Jolly Rogers squad decals too - hoping to one day put it next to my Valks. I still can't decide to build it with the wings out showing all the nifty forward slats and flaps or show off the sleekness of the Cat with them swept back - any way to modify it so they can still swing?

Excellent work!!

Hi!

Thanx for the compliments, esp coming from you. Your kits are a total inspiration for me. For the weathering... I used an oil paint wash thinned with turpentine. It dries to a semi gloss and best of all, any mistakes or if I overdid the weathering, I can just earse it with an eraser and do it all over again.

I also make sure I weather it according to how air flows on the aircraft... so top and bottom surfaces would be front to back, side fuselages will be up and down. One thing though, I do preshades so the weathering enhances the panels... without preshades, the oil wash would be pretty subtle.

As for the 72 'Cat... I haven't seen many built... I have 12 boxes of them lying around in my stash and I haven't dared to start one yet haha... so i can't tell you offhand whether it can be made to swing... interesting question though, I'll look at the instructions tonight. One thing that I am sure of is that if you want to show slats and flaps down, you can NEVER sweep the wings. The way they molded it, unless you can make hinges so that slats and flaps can slide in and out, there won't be a way to be able to swing the wings in and out and STILL have slats and flaps down. Pity. <_<

You can probably tell I'm a Tomcat phreak hahahaha

Hase had two toolings for the F-14 which I will call the 'ancient' and the 'complex'. The ancient is the one in the M0 box. It has raised lines, but it builds easily into a pretty nice 'Cat. The wings can swing. Comes with weapons too: Sparrows, Sidewinders and Phoenixs. The complex is a piece of art. It has metal parts and has easily more parts than the 1/48 version. Wings can only be posed one way only tho. I've read somewhere that the 72 is actually a literal downsizing of the 48 mold. If that's true, then the problems faced with constructing the 48 applies to the 72. i.e. it'll be a REAL pain (I've built a 48 'Cat, you can read about my 'adventure' HERE. BUT, for the amount of work you have to put in, it does build up into a VERY nice 'Cat.

BTW, all the Hase 72 Bs and Ds are the new molds. In fact, all the latest releases except for the M0 is the new mold. Good luck finding the Fujimi 'Cats. They are very rare nowadays.

The Revell-Monogram tooling of the F-14D is pretty good. But the recessed lines are pretty deep. Makes it more toy-like than many would like. If you want a decent A, I'd suggest the Academy kit. It's cheap, simple to build and looks pretty good.

Sorry. Kinda new here so I might have missed someone mentioning this. There is no accurate kit out there for the F-14 period. Not Revell. Not Hasegawa (altho their new tooling one comes close). To fully accurize it will require one to be BEYOND anal retentive. You'll need to see where the GPS humps are. Where there are extra sensor arrays, which operational year you want to model the 'Cat in... etc etc.

Oh... and did anyone mention that the F-14s in Mac0 fired AMRAAMs which they don't in real life? <_< If we consider the timeframe (1999), the F-14s they fly would be equivalent to a current real-world F-14D.. i.e. it WON'T be able to fire an AMRAAM.

Take my word for it... with a 1/72 kit, you won't be able to tell much of a difference, the details are too small. If I ever go about doing one (I'm taking a break from aircraft modeling, AMS burnout), I'd use the following:

- 1 Hasegawa Mac0 F-14 kit (for the decals)

- 1 Hasegawa F-14D kit (for the kit, the engines and the seats and the chin pod.. the most obvious of all the differences)

- 1 Hasegawa weapon set that has the AMRAAMs

As far as the paint scheme goes, they were trying to simulate the VERY dirty TPS scheme that the current Tomcats have. CGI couldn't really reflect it properly so they ended up looking patchy and blotchy instead.

All the other small details are, like I said, too small to bother me.