1/48 Hasegawa F-14B 

VF-103 Final Tomcat Cruise

by David Bey

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Built this as a commission build for a friend.  Used the perennial favourite of the Hasegawa kit, with some resin to convert it into a F-14B: A Black Box F-14B pit, Steel Beach LANTIRN set, http://www.drpepperresins.com/ DrPepperResins GE-F110 Nozzles, DrPepperResins F-14 Wheels (so that the Vinyl wheels don't melt in the future). Decals came from Twobobs.  http://twobobs.net/

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Having built a few Hasegawa F-14s, I knew what to expect. As usual, the problem area was the joint between the front and the rear fuselage, so I used some extra sprue to align the two pieces together, then filled the gap on top with sheet styrene and putty

TPS weathering was achieved with the way it has always been done - many, many layers of paint. A thin basecoat was sprayed on, followed by preshading of panel lines, then another layer of basecoat. Brown was spotted on, with some darker grey spots, sprayed randomly. Another round of basecoat to blend it all together, then lightened basecoat was sprayed in the middle of the panels for sun-fading effects. Some panel lines, handles were randomly darkened with basecoat+black, finally one more layer of basecoat to bring it all together, bearing in mind that a round of future and flat also serves to blend the colours together more.

The final product was mounted with epoxy on a wooden base and a patch was also attached. A set of dogtags with the feller's name was also glued on (not seen in the pictures).

Hope you enjoy the photos.

David

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Photos and text © by David Bey