F-14 Super Tomcat

Ron Garcia
Other than the nose pitot tube, decals, and paint job, this kit is pretty much the same as all the other Hasegawa F-14A models. Sources show the the leading edges of the wings and vertical stabilators in light grey, silver, or white so pick and choose.

The fuselage decal stripe is too long so it interferes with the section behind the intake both on the top and bottom. Slice a bit of the blue top stripe and then the red and blue bottom half of the stripe for a good fit. You can add the sections you sliced off after the long stripe is in place. Both sliced off sections will overlap a bit but are hidden by the intakes and won't be noticeable. The molded on angle of attack probe needs to be sliced off and reattached after the fuselage decal stripe is added.

The wingtip decals have cutouts to show the formation lights decals applied (above? below?) them. Don't bother with the formation lights decals. I have never had any luck with them so I have always painted them on. I did try them (below the wingtip decal) just to see if they would work, but they don't come remotely close to filling the cutouts. I slid the decals off and painted the formation lights as usual. Be generous with the area you paint. If you just paint the area that has the panel lines you won't completely fill the cutouts. In the sources I saw, the lights look kind of khaki-ish. I painted them yellow anyway.

Also, there aren't enough decals to put formation lights on the vertical stabs. The pictures I saw show them as milky clear color. With so much white on the aircraft, I just grabbed a couple of yellow ones from my spares and used artistic license to make them look like normal ones.

The striking paint scheme makes this F-14 a nice looking addition to any F-14 collection.