Unveiled: A Newly-Tooled 1/18 Warbird!

Following the "reserve yours today" link, $229 sounds VERY reasonable for such a piece. Way cool!

 

As a former Grummanite, I'll have to get one of those to put alongside my 1/18 Ferraris. Thanks for the info!

 

Wow, there's even a guy out there offering repaints of these in different markings! Plus rumors of a pilot and rio figures.

 

Hope they don't look like Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards!

 

Well, I took the plunge and bought one, and for now I cannot recommend it. To a major extent, to paraphrase one of the F-14's nicknames, it is a Turkey.

The problems are with the design and assembly. The basic fuselage and wing assembly, from a point behind the cockpit aftward, is one piece, with the main landing gear retracted in their wells. The nose, with the nose gear and canopy, is separate, with the radome and the pitot probe separate still. The tail surfaces and all the external armament are also all separate.

Problem one is the extremely tight fit of the nose on the fuselage. It was easier to grip both components with the model on its back, and I finally got the nose all the way in, only to turn the model over and find a noticeable gap on the topside, and no amount of additional effort could get that gap reduced. Furthermore the black paint on both sides of the joint is marred, and that was not due to my effort; it came out of the box that way. I guess I'm going to have to get some putty, fill it, sand it, and touch up the paint.

Elsewhere, there are parts that fit both too tightly and others too loosely, the latter including the Sidewinders and their pylons. Some of these will have to be glued into place, once I figure out what type of glue is best to use. The stores are actually the nicest-looking parts of the model, and you get some of everything: two Sidewinders, two Sparrows, four Phoenix and two drop tanks, a fairly common fit if the Phoenix were fitted at all.

The big problem is with the landing gear. One has to choose immediately whether to display the model gear down or up; once you go either way you can't switch. I elected gear down and am sorry that I did. The nose gear is fine, but the main gear are flimsy and very difficult to figure out how to lock in the down position. (While there are assembly instructions included, the landing gear is not mentioned at all.) As the main gear are plastic, they are simply not up to the challenge and one broke off at a fairly early stage. It was at a glued joint with very little surface area, and while both parts had holes, possibly for a metal reinforcing rod, no rod was seen. I think I'll have to get such a rod to beef up the gear. The holes for inserting the actuator struts in the top of the wheel wells are way too big and I'll have to shim the holes for a tighter fit. I really wish that, in place of operating gear, they had simply included separate complete fully-extended gear that would have snapped into holes inside the wheel wells.

And if you choose to display the model gear-up, when you lift the model out of the box, the gear will partially extend, and I could not get the gear back into the wells sufficiently to close the doors. So it looks like you're screwed either way.

One other problem is that the assembly is basically irreversible; once you put things together it is very difficult to take them apart. So if I wanted to put the components back in the box and return it, I am unable to do so, so I guess I'm stuck with it and will have to try and fix the problems. From what I can tell the model will look fine once fixed, but I will always worry about the strength of that landing gear.

Not this time, baby!......

 

Anyway, here are a couple of photos I took that indicate the vast size of this thing. I regret not taking some photos of the components in the box before I started to assemble it, but I wanted to get it put together and display it in the same place on the Ferrari's rear deck. Sadly, it was not to be.....
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Here's where the injured 'cat currently rests: upside-down on some cabinets between the kitchen and dining room. Even in this condition its great size is remarkable!
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Obviously I wasn't the only person having troubles with the main gear. An outfit called SkyWorks is not only coming out with decal sheets for alternative color schemes, but also a set of metal landing gear which are not only stronger, but also more accurate. This page shows 1/18 Tomcats in some of these alternate color schemes and all have the improved landing gear:

http://www.skyworkstoys.com/f14tomcat.html

I've ordered a set of the new landing gear; I just hope they can be installed fairly easily.

Incidentally, a second version of the Tomcat will be issued in Iranian markings. JS International's next jets in this scale will be equally large: an Israeli F-15 and a Chinese two-seat Su-27. (No word yet on whether a single-seat Flanker will appear, but it's probably inevitable.)

 

buy em now ,their are only about 10 real F-14 Tomcats left in arizona waiting to be cut-up

 

Here in NY, we have a handful left on display.