1/32 F14B Bombcat Part 3

At long last, the model was ready for marriage. VW speak for putting the bodywork and the chassis/drivetrains together. For this case, its the front fuselage with the rest, Well, it isn't made in heaven and the fit was far from good.

For the start, there seemed a problem to get the whole front to fit snugly into the fuselage. There is a gapping hole of more than 1mm that needed addressing. The shape also need to be compressed. It is solved by using 3M superglue and the accelerator to both act as an adhesive as well as a filler in parts. So I forcibly made the marriage work to bend the parts to conform to each other's contours as much as possible. There is the start of a whole plethora of fitting gaps along the sides of the cockpit walls and the intake ducts. Gaps are so huge, they needed 0.8mm plastic cards to be inserted and Tamiya Putty mixed with Tamiya Cement to fill up and melt the adjacent materials to form a permanent and solid substrate for sanding and rescribing the panel details later.

You can see that I used the plastic card on half of the joint and the other with 3M CA glue to make it a very strong bond. I needed the CA glue to hold the thing together while the plasticard and cement sets the melted adjacent materials. One cannot help but notice the puttying needed for the two halves that constituted the forward fuselage. The stepped differential between the left and the right is huge. This can be a a result of the mould material being over extended in this special edition. The wear and tear resulted in the misalignment of some of the critical areas. Flash is also present in many of the parts that are small.

I chose to make the model with the refueling probe retracted as with parked aircrafts. The model was designed to have the nose cone opened to show the radar system and the gun. However, if we gonna put up a parked vehicle system, the fit is somewhat like the models from the 70s, offerings like I said earlier, to the tune of Revell, Frog, Lindberg and Airfix. The gaps took me 2 weeks to sand and refill. The cone shape does not match the profile of the fuselage and needed to be corrected and built up with putty that required 5 rounds of filling and sanding to make up for the shrinkage. Thereafter, there is also the nightmare of rescribing the panel lines and drilling back a few hundred rivet holes!

For a kit at this price, I would not expect sink holes, but there are many. Including this warped air brake panel.The sink holes are easily filled and sanded. 2 rounds and 3 days of curing should do the job, but the fit was a monstrosity. I had to soak the part is hot water to soften it to bend it back to shape to conform to the fuselage. But the gaps needed lots of filling and rescibing. Evidently, it was designed to be opened and attention to fit was lacking in the engineering of this part of the tooling.

Look at the mess of this massive model. The CA glues, the putties, sanding blocks, sticks and papers, along with splatulas, scribers, drill, liquid putty....one heck of a chore. I have not made a more tedious model since the 80s. I was surprised that this Trumpeter new issue is so crappy in the fit and finish department! The wings are also very flimsy and the extenders for the forward edge of the wings are fragile as they aren't molded into the wings to save costs. they are small sticks that have to be each aligned and glued.

The rear radar sensors and fuel dumping valve body is attached and the fit is self explanatory from the picture above. You can also tell from the top of the picture that there is a huge sink hole that needed to be filled and sanded 3 times to achieve a smooth finish. The fit of the air brakes are bad too, from this picture, you can tell the alignment and gap problems this part has in blending to the body work.

The avionics spine needed to be filled again as well as the joint for the 5th time as a week passed and the putty shrink again. This was further repeated another 3 rounds that took out a week.

Ths air dams in the intakes does not sit flush to the front leading slats. There is a gap about 4mm and needed to be filled with plastic cards and putty. The sanding and filling took me a week, 7 rounds to get the finish that I wanted. So are the sides of the bottom part holding up the cockput. It is aligned off centre and required lots of building up and sanding smooth. Then the conformal Phoenix and Smart bomb rack is fitted. These parts are straight, but the body was not, so, it needed to be CAed, and the force bent to sit flush with the front portion and CAed. Once catalyst is applied, these are wiped down and loaded with extra thin Tamiya cement to form a permanent seam.

Setting the whole plane to cure takes up my 1.5m2 of table space! Care is exercised at all times not to break the front landing strut as it cannot be assembled post painting. Indicating that the designer of the kit is not an experience aircraft model maker that does not understand the logic of airbrushing painting procedures.

The anterior fins are molded in two parts and the fit was bad as the rear portion is too short and required to be built up with plastic card. The fins are too thick by almost 0.6mm and required sanding to sit into the slots molded into the fuselage. From this picture you can see that the fins are too thick. Care must be taken not to sand it our of shape. This would be causing a gap to form and the part to be weakened. The fins are slotted in finally to sit snug. 

 The front and rear mattrage part required a 0.3mm plasticard to be insert. Once cured, cut to shape with a knife and the lines filled and sanded twice to get a smooth finish.

Finally, the canopy needed to be painted inside with Tamiya clear green and leveled up with Johnson Klear. The mask is removed from the innards and the externals are masked. The gaps on the front does not match the shape of the clear part and required 2 coats of liquid putty to get in shape. This is then sanded along with the seam line on the top and bottom of this part.

 The joint of the wing and fuselage part required filling and sanding. This took 3 days and the panel lines are re-scribed.

The refueling probe area being addressed again after a week of shrinkage to make sure that it will appear flushed. The nose cone area needed to be built up again for the 6th time to make sure it sits flushed. The opposite side with the gun mantlet is very daunting as it had lots of rivets that needed to be drilled with 0.2mm steel drill!

The sides of the cockpit required filling and sanding. There area bout 30 rivets that required drilling.

The radar detection module and fuel dumping valve is fitted and require building up of almost 0.5mm in thickness differntial. This is sanded with protection of the forward portion from being obliterated. This has become the frustrating standard procedure of this build.

The canopy is masked and tacked to the fuselage. The antenna is attached. But the hole is gaping and required filling.This is sanded and refilled.

The Kevlar bladder required filling as the part is not moulded straight. This is done several times to fill up in sequence to achieve a more permanent flushed surface.

There is some shrinkage on the top fuselage and it was re-puttied.

The cock put sides area almost done. It required more sanding and filling and thereafter drilling back the 30 rivet holes.

The canopy front portion was pressed and glued to fit flush on both sides. Now, the whole model is almost ready for painting. 1 week more of sanding and scribing required. This is one crap kit that left me no choice as there isn't another close to it except the 30 year old Tamiya offering that had no panel details once you sanded it all down!

Trumpeter Bombcat Part 2

The plastic Nomex fire retardant jacket looks fake even after 2 days of trying to shade it with Vallejo paints. So, I decided to use Tamiya Epoxy Putty to from the jackets. The folds are pressed in with toothpick and I used the Tamiya Extra Thin Cement to melt it into folds.

Two more views. It needed some texturing later with Tamiya Surfacer Primet and dabbing by a stiff brush once its cured and sides trimmed and shaped by filing and sanding.

RIO Instrument panel decaled and softened to conform to the contours. Details are hand picked with Vallejo paints. Tamiya Panel Lines Accentuators are used to matte the drybrushing and highlight the details.

Front Pilot's instrument panel decaled and hand picked and toned with Tamiya Panel Line Accentuator. The original is toned down 50% with Tamiya Enamel Thinners to control it from being too dark.

Front Instrument Panel installed int he front hub for the pilot of this BOMBCAT.

RIO Tub hand painted 100%.

This is the best part that I enjoyed of the kit. The instruments are quite accurate to the ones that were upgraded. A semi glass cockpit, that eventually transitioned to the Dick Cheney rejected JOBS Project- the F14D Super Tomcat. Too bad, he had his way to prevent transition to AMRAAM. Sigh.

The fit of the main parts are a pain, perhaps due to the age of the tooling on the big panels. However, the smaller parts are incredibly good. Really enjoyed this portion of work.

32nd Scale F14B Bombcat Part One

Carried this back from my previous trip to Shanghai. Rare find for me in Singapore. There is less than 2 other kits of this version in the whole country. I am itching all over not to work on this. Since the Stuka is giving me a headache on bad kit, I decided to jump head long on this one.

First is to make the counter mass, I put metalised rocks I bought in a very large hobby shop in Aachen Germany 2 years ago. I put in 1/3, super glued the mixture with one tube of 3M single dose, Catalyst dosed, Then added another 1/3, did the same. Finally, top it up and pour in white glue and stirred in till all bubbles are removed and set into the sun for drying for 2 hours. This forms a 200g nose cone counter weight. Before I pour in anything, I seal off the nose pitot tube provision hole with masking tape. Position it vertically with Blue Tack.

The nozzles were sprayed with black and white lines and drybrushed with white to accentuate the alumina ceramic tiles.

The goal is to mimic this look which is taken from the nozzle end of the engine.

Engine rear end view. Quite happy with the way it turn out. However, my night mare is about to begin.

Night Mare Number One - Millions of ejection marks all over visible areas. This includes the insides of intakes, on the top of fuselage, intake areas, bottom of fuselage.

Engine intake compressor is ok, metalized and happy with the look and feel of it after putting in the Tamiya brown wash.

Nightmare Number 2, the fit is shit. I was told this is a very old tech mould in the formative years of Trumpeter, a big throwback from the present market leading standards. What a shame. Lots of fit is due to the main fuselage part being warped due to bad fit assembly strategy. The gaps formed by the rear 3/4 of the bottom fuselage could have been integrated to the main to form a single pc to increase rigidity. The filling in caused the saw tooth panel lines to be totally wiped out. No choice as the disparity of the left and right is more than 0.7mm. A shame.

Same trouble along the full length of the intake housing. I filled these areas with back and forth sanding, refilling, repeating 3 times at least, till I get a smooth outcome. Liquid cement from Tamiya, half bottle with a complete tube of Tamiya Putty.

The intake parts are warped, so I tagged parts of it with CA glue and accelerated to force it into shape. Gaps needed to be filled, 4 times sanding and refilling to get it nice and smooth. Nightmare Number 3, the edges o the straight edges have flashy parts and warped and is very sharp, needed all to be sanded down.

The nightmare continues to the rear section of the fuselage where it meets the nozzles. The error is almost 1mm lopsided to the outside. Lots of putty and sanding with 320 grit sand paper!

Nightmare Number 4, the engines in, the nozzle and the intake area does not fit, it has gaps about 2mm in size. For this, I solved in by moving the intake deflector to full, so that it blocked the view internally to show only 1/2 the compressor, what a waste of effort to properly painting and weathering it! Crap!

Protection of the panel lines are done with masking tape. However, for the unavoidable, I chose simpler to re-scribe sections, a necessary evil, the lesser of the two, which ever applies.

Once the wheel wells are in, no matter how hard we clamp with G clamps, the warpage is so severe, we cannot have a flushed contact between the lower edge of the wheel wells and the fuselage, leaving large 0,5mm gaps. These needed to be stuffed with Tamiya 0.3mm plastic cards. Nightmare number 5, the Kevlar balloons are moulded in soft nylon type of plastic. Fit is like the 1970s Airfix models. The amount of putty in the picture above is self explanatory. 

After sanding. Quite smooth after 4 rounds of hard work.

Once the gaps are stuffed, white vallejo paints are used to fill in the gaps and Tamiya washed are used to weather the gaps that have been filled with white paint to tone it to match the remaining rest of the wheelwell.

After toning and filling with Vallejo white! Glaze all over to tone up the area to match the rest of the wheelwell.

 

The gaps in the underside of the intakes and the fuselage is mismatched by almost 0.5mm to the portside of the bodyworks, so, both sides needed to be patched and built up with putty, sanded down 3 rounds and rescribed! Crap, double and triple crap!

The insides of the intake frames needed to be filled as the gaps are quite visible. There is mismatch of the top from the bottom that needed 1mm to be sanded down and the gap filled up on the other side with putty! The flash on the intake edges needed to be smoothen.

Nightmare Number 20,489! My God, the nozzle bosses is offset! By almost 0.7mm! Look at the left end of this photo and you realize the mistake. I spent 4 days just filling it up and sanding it down, refilling, curing, sanding, refilling etc. About 5 rounds. There is also the MacDonald's arches from the mismatch between the rear 3/4 panel to the warped fuselage main body needed filling and sanding. Looks like another 5 days of crap! I should have continued with the STUKA! Between the two, this is 10 times worst than the STUKA from Hasegawa. Life is too short for regrets, so, I decided to soldier on.

Tail planes being filled and sanded. Top Photo shows also the side nozzle roots being filled and sanded down to match the lopsided shape.

Tail plane roots being sanded to remove ejection marks and putty. Its a shame that some of the details are lost. However, since it black in colour for Jolly Rogers, its a comforting thought.

The gaps in the wheelwell innards being stuffed with 0.3mm plastic cards and putty!

Injection mould marks on the top of the fuselage! SUPER CRAP! It had t be filled up 3 times and sanded down just the same to achieve a smooth surface! What a dodo man! CRAP!

Nozzle roots mismatches sanded smooth, but the part with the nozzle is another story on its own.

The duck tail where the chute and fuel dump outlet is locate is so warped that it needed a 2 inch size giant clamp to hold it in place while its CA glued. Then liquid cement is used to melt the other parts not glued so that there is insurance of a permanent joint!

 

What a place to find injection marks! Right on top next to the cockpit! Also, the bleeder vent is mismatched and needed a lot of sanding to just to get it to sit right into the slots provided. The vent is made rectangular but the hole is trapezoid, the mould designer forgotten about the offset angles!

Overall, I will rate this well packaged kit as tip top in marketing and packaging, fitting is close to the standard of the 1970s Shorts Stirling model from Airfix which I made so many years ago. Its crap, but anyway, since the project is started, I have to grit my teeth and hold on for dear life!