Academy USS Kitty Hawk
My first aircraft Carrier build....ever!

Robert W Martel
My first carrier build!

Robert W Martel
Ran across my first issue with this one last night. I'm cleaning up & putting the aircraft together. 2 of them, the A-6 Intruders & the F-4 Phantoms are one piece, nothing to assemble, so I did those first. There are 12 A-7 Corsairs, so I figured I'd do them next, get them out of the way. They have very different distinctive tails. Done!
There are 10 F-14 Tomcats, so those are next. They are a bit bigger and take quite a bit to clean up. So, after I got 3 of them cleaned up I realized it was going to take some time to do them all.
So....I decided to put the tails on those 3 as it was getting late, and work on the rest next time. I glued on the two vertical tails on two planes, when I went to do the next one I noticed the tails were different. The first 2 sets had rounded tops, the rest have flat squared off tops. Oh crap....I made a mistake !.
So I pulled out the rest of the planes and checked the parts with the diagrams.....4 TIMES....and all of what was left seemed to be correct. Everything else matches up.
I checked them again this morning, same result....2 sets of tails for the F-14's are different.
Part #'s B3 & D6 are the bodies and #'s B4 & D7 are the vertical stabs.
Sprue D (x2) has 4 each of the bodies & 4 pair each of the tails. Sprue B (x2) has 1 each of the bodies, and 1 set each of the tails.
Now that I look at the parts diagram more closely, the F-14's on sprue B DO look a little different, and slightly smaller. And, looking at the planes more closely, 2 of them are very slightly different!
Why?? So it seems I put one of the different set on the correct plane & the other on the other type. OOPS!
So I guess there are 2 different F-14 Tomcats in the kit
The 2 on sprue B are ever so slightly different than the 8 on spree D. Don't ask me why. ?? In the instructions it says there are 10 F-14's, but they are on 2 different sprues. I figured it was just the way they made them all fit on the trees, but I guess the B ones are different! I wish they would have labeled them separately as 8 F-14x & 2 F-14y. Then I wouldn't have gotten them mixed up.
I've looked and looked and I don't see any F-14's with rounded vertical stabilizers.
Oh Well!! I don't think anyone else will notice.

wilky
I'd throw away the two odd ones

Robert W Martel
Wilky, that might be a good idea !!!
The tails are so short anyway, if I try to square them off I think they'd look funny. I could try cutting the tails back off the one, just build the other 8. There really isn't much noticeable difference in the bodies, just slightly. I had a hard time figuring out which two were different!