AMK F-14D WIP 9

AMK kit has provided Furball Aero Design decals, they are thin, soft. The decals reacts decently with Gunze Mr. Mark Softer. I worked a day applying all the decals for the airframe, the outcome seems good. Now the airframe is almost complete, except for some small parts (the pitot tubes, air data sensors, anti collision lights and navigation lights)

As for nose wheels, the AMK wheels were too small when compared to Tamiya wheels, so I replaced them with two Tamiya nose wheels. The fitting of landing gear doors did not go OK when test fitting but surprisingly went okay when I glued them. I just align them along the hinge line and the hinge fitted into the bay without much difficulty

As fore the fittings for landing gear struts: I glued the main gear strut in place with its side strut plugged into the hole on the outside of intake trunk, yet had to leave the drag strut not contacting anything (it was intened to be fitted to the pivot fitting).

The fitting of AMK's Tomcat kit was of course inferior to its Tamiya counterpart, yet it has a lot more details provided. It has slats, flaps, airbrakes. It does have shape issue with nose section and rear fuselage, yet can be fixed with a file and some epoxy putties. Most of the fitting problems can be solved by doing more test fitting, yet I still had problem with the part where the nose and center fuselage joins. This problem also brought about fitting issues when you wanted to close the canopy.

With the wings at minimum sweep angle, the Super Tomcat can barely be fitted into a 35cm depth cupboard

With the wings at minimum sweep angle, the Super Tomcat can barely be fitted into a 35cm depth cupboard

The IRST/TCS dual chin pod. IRST dome was polished with Tamiya Polishing Compound, while the seam between two halves has not been treated carefully, it is a pity

the navigation lights on the wing box did not fit well with the pit, some sanding was done. The port navigation lights were painted red while the starboard ones was painted with dark clear red. all paints comes from Mr. Color by GSI. On the starboard side of nose, there are also total temperature probe, pitot tube and angle-of-attack probe. All were painted with GSI's Super Metallic Stainless Steel, covered with a thin layer of clear orange to achieve a titanium like finish

The port side of nose: two different AOA probes and a pitot tube was added, all were painted with Stainless Steel with a thin layer of clear orange covering. Note the yaw string, which was made of a tooth brush hair

This is what i used for the port pressure differential AOA probe, it is from DreamModel, a domestic brand which majors on PE add-ons and some plastic kits.

The instructions only shown two UHF antennas to be added, yet they are of the same size. It is clearly the TACAN/UHF antenna should be taller. So i borrowed one from my Tamiya F-14D Super Tomcat kit. Tamiya has two of it, yet I have to used only one

Now all things are on except for load outs. It reminds me of the good old days with Hasegawa Tomcat kits when you can choose to extend the slats and flaps. And this is the very reason that I chose AMK F-14D over its Tamiya counterpart. Perfect fitting is important, but it is not everything