After building nearly everything of NAVY and MARINE’s planes in 1/72nd scale in the early 80’s I’m now some kind of „back to the roots“ to my favourite plastic modelling theme…but in a different scale.

The starting F-14 A Tomcat on a little diorama with a deflecting shield is in my humble opinion that classical subject for all NAVY fans. In this case I used the DRAGON carrier deck with blast shield diorama kit but I resigned the Tomcat, which can’t be compared with the REVELL one, because of REVELL’s much better and newer molding.

By the way it’s very hard to get that old DRAGON diorama kit, but sometimes you are lucky to fetch one at EBAY’s. LS had a similar kit in his range, it was in the late 70’s/early 80’s, I think.

To build a starting Tomcat oob might have been a little bit boring, this subject is shown too often. So it had to be something special. But that little 1/144 scale kit has not too many options to show a realistic performance concerning the details of a starting “Turkey”. It’s not enough with spreading the wings…

In comparison to the original there are some aspects which have to be changed if you want to get a realistic starting Tomcat. So I was very happy to notice the new GOFFY MODELS item for my project, the F-14 swept wing with extended slats and flaps, a new front landing gear in arrested position and new AIM-54 rockets with much thinner fins were added. GOFFY MODELS items are made in the Czech republic.

I ignored the AIM-54 because most of them had broken fins, so I used the REVELL ones – they a really not too bad. Beside using the conversion parts the plane had to be changed by cutting off the horizontal stabilizers and to fix them in a negative angle.

Because of the lack of pilot figures in the REVELL kit I choosed to add the really superb sculpted resine pilots made by Eikoku Zakaten (World Air Model Seats Collection), Japan. In the end I added the black/yellow ejection seat handles which were made of a single string of braid.

The base originally shows the partitions of the flight deck in a massive raised way – no discussion, those “fences” had to be sand down! The markings on the carrier deck are made by STARFIGHTER DECALS. Although I ignored the original F-14 kit of the DRAGON box I used for sure the figures and the tractors of the DRAGON kit. The figures where completed by some little white metal guys made by CENTURY WINGS, which I had to sand and paint once more.

The paint job was done by airbrush with VALLEIJO AIR COLORS, a little weathering with thinned SCHMINKE oil colours. The plane, the figures and the diorama base were finally covered with REVELL mat varnish.

On the page

www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?129481-Aircraft-Carriers-Intensive-PIX!!

I found a lot of great pictures of Carriers and aircrafts, so I tried to use some of them as a background for my little scene.

Go 1/144 – beat 1/72!

Matthias Pohl

www.matthias-pohl-modellbau.de

References:

F-14 Tomcat Walkaround No. 3, Squadron Signal Publications by Lou Drendel

F-14 Tomcat in Action No. 206, Squadron Signal Publications by Lou Drendel