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GROUP BUILD ENTRY no.122
Raffle no. 110

Academy 1/72 F-14A, VF-31 Tomcatters
by Tom Choy (Supertom)

This is the Academy 1/72 kit, out of the box, with a few minor modifications to help get the kit to fit together. Building the kit was fairly easy, but you need to watch out for a two things:

1) The canopy seems to be too narrow for the canopy frame. I corrected this by gluing stripes of sheet styrene on the inside rims of the canopy frame, then blending them into the frame. The canopy was then glued on top of the extended edges. Don't try to heat the canopy outwards - this will only warp and shrink the plastic. Academy is quite accommodating with replacement parts - just contact MRC.

2) The wing root vanes are a neat feature as they pop out when you swing the wings in, but the hinges on which the vanes rotate tend to stick out. When the fuselage is closed up, allow the glue to cure, then blend the wing roots in by carefully sanding the parts of the hinge that stick out. If you are building them with the vanes shut in (as in the later modifications) you'll have to replace the vanes with sheet plastic of a similar thickness, or cut away the part of the wing mechanism that pushes the vanes out.

The decals were from an old Superscale sheet that I no longer have the number for. They were quite badly out of register and I had to cut each decal out to trim off the excess white. For the tail insignia I ended up painting the tail red and putting the letter code decals on individually. This not only corrected the poor register but also looks a lot better. There is not Felix on the markings as this was a very early VF-31 scheme (I believe this was the first VF-31 scheme applied on F-14s shortly after they converted from F-4s), though there is a tiny Felix on the side of the nose. The paint scheme is overall glossy light gull gray, though after a while they tend to get a little dirty. Weathering was done by "patching" the paint with lightened or darkened light gull gray, and panel lines and streaks were made using oil paints thinned with mineral spirits.

For the landing gear I tried using foil for the metal surfaces, instead of chrome paint. It looks a lot better, though it was quite a pain to cut them out and blend them in.

I had quite a bit of fun on this kit (except for correcting the decals), and getting to do a scheme with my favorite cat has been a hoot. I hope you like it!

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