1/48 Revell F-14D Tomcat  

by Aaron C. Rhodes

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Hello Fellow Modelers. This is my first submission to the ARC website. A lot has been said about the Revell F-14D, so I will not go into much detail about it, except for to say that I was pretty pleased with the way it went together for me. The only trouble I had was filling in the intake seams on the bottom of the plane. As you can see in the picture, I did not do so well at this, but it was my first time doing any seam work, so I am not too upset about it. The kit was built Out of Box, with the small exception of the weapons load-out and the decals.

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For the weapons load-out, I decided to load my Tom for a bombing mission, as the Bombcat and fighter are not too different in appearance, I left the exterior alone. I could not find too much on-line data for accurate loads, so I decided to come up with my own. It is loaded with four GBU-12 LGB's and a LANTIRN pod from the Hasegawa weapons sets,  as well as two Sidewinders and a Pheonix for self-protection.

I have not been modeling for very long, and this is my first attempt at weathering, filling and at using aftermarket decals. I used a set from Yellowhammer Productions entitled "F-14's of the Pacific Fleet" modeling a line bird from VF-31. I was very impressed with the decals, and the only trouble I had was the Felix decal on the vertical stabs, something easily fixed with a little Testors Decal Set. I was worried about the over-doing the weathering, until I re-watched "Top Gun" and "Flight of the Intruder", and realized just how dirty these Navy planes get. Weathering was done with chalk pastels smeared around with my finger. All and all, I loved this kit, and look forward to building more in the future. My next project is a Hasegawa F-16 from the Fresno Air National Guard using a decal set from Two Bobs. Any comments or suggestions are welcome! I can be contacted at StrikeEagle801@yahoo.com. Thank you for looking, and good luck fellow modelers! Thank you Steve for creating such a wonderful and informative site!

Aaron

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Photos and text © by Aaron C. Rhodes