A tale of two Tomcats

Those of you, that are following my work probably know, that F-14 is one of my favourite aircraft. Getting my hands on the GWH's new kit a few years ago, I just had to build it, though my followers on Facebook and Instagram poll chose the MiG-29SMT instead and the Tomcat had to wait for a little while.

I've decided to build this Tomcat in the colours of RAG (replacement air group) squadron VF-101 Grim Reapers. In the early days of Tomcat career, there were two training squadrons – VF-124 Gunfighters based at NAS Miramar, California and VF-101 Grim Reapers at NAS Oceana, Virginia. When the Tomcat numbers were being cut down, the decision was made to relocate all the West Coast squadrons to Oceana and VF-101 became the only RAG squadron for all the Tomcat fleet from mid '90s till the end of its career.

RAG squadrons were also tasked with airshow demo displays. AD-164, together with AD-163, was one of the final two aircraft that performed tactical demo displays in the last full F-14 airshow season in 2004. It is interesting, that AD-164 had the upper wing “star'n'bars” marking painted in reverse, the star pointing backwards – I am not sure if this was just a mistake or was it deliberate, but have since found another photo of another F-14 from the earlier era, which also sported backward facing star. There were only two more tac demo displays at NAS Oceana airshow in 2005 (which I attended for that special reason), Saturday show being flown in a low-vis VF-32 F-14B and Sunday's with a full colour retro schemed VF-101 F-14D. AD-164 got repainted after the 2004 airshow season and assigned to the VF-31 for the last Tomcat cruise.

As this was a group build with my good buddy Mitja Oberc, we both decided to use GWH kit, VF-101 markings, but to cover both hi- and lo- vis schemes from the end of VF-101 operations. Mitja went low-vis, while I decided to build a small vignette - AD-164 was one of the two showbirds for Tomcat's last airshow season, so I build it as a photo session during the workups for the last airshow season in 2004.

The kit

We are living in the golden age of scale modelling and there are several great options out there at the moment for Tomcat fans in 1:72 – beside the Finemolds kit (gallery) and the new Academy (future build), there's also GWH (Great Wall Hobby) one. Surface details look amazing but the kit is actually a mixed bag of good and bad things. Yeah, it does look amazing in the end but for its price, I was expecting a lot more. At times, I got a feeling, two different designers were working on this kit.

The good:

– cockpit detail is amazing for upgraded F-14D – every button is where it is supposed to be, cross referenced to photos of the real birds
– wheel well details are really good
– great surface details
– placard decals for landing gears and ejection seats
– generally good fit, especially in troublesome areas compared to older Tomcat kits

The bad:

– ejection seats look a bit clunky
– missing rear bulkhead details in the pilot cockpit
– RIO's instrument panel is approximately 4mm too narrow, creating gaps on each side of the cockpit
– missing engraved detail of the starboard formation (slime) light below the canvas bags of wingsweep mechanism (port one is there!)
– IRST clear part is off slightly too large diameter
– overextended slats and one-piece spoilers instead of segmented
– modular design of different panels for different versions or subversions creates some fit issues
– not the best fit of nose cone and rear wing covers
– building the wings with retracted flaps and slats will cause fit issues
– decal options included with VF-2 release are wrong for the included cockpit
– no air-to-ground weapons included in VF-2 boxing (later releases include some)

Step-by-step build: https://vvsmodelling.com/2023/12/28/gwh-172-f-14d-tomcat-build-article/

Model Data

Company: Great Wall Hobby
Scale: 1:72
Aftermarket: Master pitot and AoA probe, CMK wheels, resin exhausts, VF-decals decal sheet
Paints used: Mr.Paint (MRP-004 White, MRP-005 Basic Black, MRP-041 Red, MRP-173 Tire-Rubber Matt, MRP-038 Light Gray, MRP-040 Dark Grey. MRP-100 Interior Grey, MRP-105 Blue Grey, MRP-009 White Aluminum, MRP-147 Burnt Iron)

27 additional images. Click to enlarge.