Hasegawa 1:48 F-14A Tomcat BuNo. 161140/AC-210, VF-32
The Kit
The Hasegawa Tomcat is long time consuming build. I decided early on to
scratch build an avionics bay behind the RIO and to add a couple of
figures to give the model some life. There was a spacing issue with the
avionics bay and Black Box cockpit set I used. I ended up making the
avionics bay more shallow than I would have liked. Otherwise, assembly
was straightforward.
I wanted to depict my build as a TARPS aircraft. A US Navy Tomcat
squadron only had a few TARPS capable planes. I choose to build "210"
because it was TARPS capable and I had the most reference pictures of
such a plane. Being there were no Desert Storm low-visibility VF-32
decals available, decals were sourced from a variety of decal sheets.
Some decals had to be printed with my inkjet printer; such as those on
the rudder.
For the loadout I used: the kit fuel tanks, two AIM-7 Sparrows and two
AIM-9 Sidewinders from Hasegawa Weapons Set C, the kit TARPS pod, and
the Wolfpack resin ALQ-167 pod.
