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GROUP BUILD ENTRY no.71
Raffle no. 62

Hasegawa 1/72 F-14A, VF-154 Black Knights
by Ming Ho  (raptor22)
San Francisco, CA USA

This is my first entry for the ARC Tomcat GB. Oddly enough, I chose to submit an Alpha instead of a Bravo or Delta Tomcat (F-14A instead of a F-14B/D), because I always preferred the GE nozzles to the poor performance TF nozzles. However, the tail art of the VF-154 Black Knights CO bird from the OIF era really caught the attention of my eye and I just HAD TO build this F-14A. The kit is derived from the Hasegawa F-14A VF-154 Black Knights History kit, which came with this huge sheet of decals that covered the Black Knights from the 1990s to the millennium special marking up to the very last markings (the OIF era bird) before it was chopped up upon returning to the States from Japan.

The entire jet is painted up by Model Master acrylics and it was my very time experimenting with weathering and shading techniques offered by Brian Marbrey. I am very pleased with results! Hats off to Brian! I decided to go with a "full package" loadout consisting of 2x AIM-9 Sidewinders, a AIM-7 Sparrow in the back of the "tunnel", a LANTIRN pod hanging on the right glove and a AIM-54 Phoenix hanging on the left glove and a pair of GBU-12s loaded on the bomb racks.

Hasegawa Tomcats are not the easiest subjects to build. As a matter of fact, they're actually and probably one of the hardest to build because of the distinctive shape of the jet and how certain parts of the mode has lots of fit issues. However, after building about 4 of them consecutively (the first 3 which I consider not worthy of putting it here on the GB), I kind of got the hang of it and pretty much found most if not all of the traps to avoid. But all in all, I had a great time building this beautiful and magnificent bird that is soon to be laid to rest from the US military services. Long live the Tomcats!

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