1/144 Academy F-14

Academy F-14, bad bad bad bad fitting and i have 3 of these.......
Paints used:
Lower body - H308
Upper body/tail fin/wings - H307

Followed the paint scheme on Dragon F-14 instructions sheet.


Decals were from a ancient MiniHobby Models F-14. Got the kit at $3.50, decided to use decals from it because the kit details looks horrendous. Decals represents Tophatters squadron. Anyway, quite satisfied with the outcome.

1/144 Trumpeter SU-47

Bought 2 of this kit for $2.90 each. Box open, plastic quality quite good, cockpit provided!!! Alot of parts for a 1/144 scale model. Fitting of parts quite good, putty needed to cover common problematic areas like the intakes. Whole kit was spray painted first with flat white at specific areas, masked white areas and sprayed black on the whole kit. Easy color scheme.

Weapons bay left open to show the missiles inside, quite similar to F-22 weapons bay. Decals were quite ok, easy to apply but quite abit of excessive edge, but does not pose a big problem. Finished it in about 3 days, satisfied with results.

1/144 F-14 Jolly Rogers

Continued with construction with this kit. Rescribed panel lines, existing ones too shallow and not complete. Cleaned up putty with nail polish remover and sandpaper. Sprayed with Nippon Pylox Sanyo White, looks abit greyish to me though... smoothen paint job with wet sanding.

Painted a strip of black at the front area, common for most F-14. Painted the exhaust burnt iron. Landing gears added and panel lined the whole model, results satisfactory. Smudged abit of ink to get abit of weathering effect, overdid the right wing, had to respray with base color and re panel line. Masked canopy, sprayed flat black, results were good. Decals added, not very good quality, most decals oversized, had to trim using trial and error.

1/144 ARII F-14 Jolly Rogers

Today, started on my 1/144 ARII F-14 Jolly Rogers. My first F-14. The manufacturer, ARII doesn't seem to be popular. Well, as expected due to the quality of the kit. Box art is nice. All the sprues are packed into 1 bag, including the canopy (luckily no scratches). Instructions is simple and decals seems ok. Further inspection of the parts shows FLASHES!!!!!!!

Construction begins with the front area, the cockpit and the nose part, no ejection seats were supplied, guess i will have to paint the whole cockpit area black. Fitting of this 2 area seems fine. Then to the main body and fuselage. Fitting is again ok with flashes here and there. When joining the air intakes to the fuselage, major alignment problem. have to be fixed with putty. Joining the front area to the fuselage also results in alignment problem, have to shave off some plastic and fill the huge seam with putty. Left to dry overnight.

Well, what to expect from a $5 kit???