SPA Modeler

I shall do so. I'll wait until I get to that part of the build though. I just hate the thought of having to pay extra just to show what a fully loaded combat aircraft is supposed to look like.

You and me both my friend.

This is partly the reason why I know my ancient Airfix F-14 will probably get built before the Hasegawa kit does.

I don't blame you portman. I'm going to be doing some research to find the right weapons sets for these birds.

This past Hobby Day I decided to try and finish the cockpits/forward fuselage sections. I am only going to show one plane as I go through this as most all of these issues were the same for each aircraft. In the event I need to show differences due to alternate parts for specific variants I'll show the two together. The first thing I did was I tried to add the instrument panel cowls over the two instrument panels. The forward one managed to fit okay with only some minor adjustment to the instrument panel. The second one required that I break off the instrument panel since it did not fit:



So this time, I cemented the instrument panel inside the cowl before adding it back to the cockpit:



That finally fit right. Both cockpit assemblies had this problem and needed to be completed this way:



Another issue I had was when I tried to add the rear cover to the opening behind the second pilot seat. The part would not quite fit the way it was indicated on the instruction sheet below the model:



In order to get that part to fit, you need to push it inside the rear opening as seen above, only push it further back to clear the seat. Then, as you are pressing it down, you'll need to also push it forward toward the seat until it snaps into position flat against the fuselage edges like so:



Now it was time to turn these over and complete the assembly by adding the lower panel that closes off the rest of the forward landing gear bay. Once again, I ran into poor fitting parts. I lined up one side flush with the fuselage assembly and found that these panels are too wide:





The solution I came up with was to cement one side and wait for it to dry sufficiently. Then I pressed the other side in until it snapped flush with the fuselage and glued it into place so it was flush on that side as well. Later on I then pressed the forward party down to make it relatively flush along the front join. I figured the shorter step would be easier to sand and be less noticeable that the sanding along the side of the fuselage.

Finally after adding a few more small panels to openings I was able to declare these two forward fuselage assemblies completed:





Now I could move onto the main fuselage parts. I started out with the tail section that holds the tailhook. This went together fairly well so far, considering there are six entire pieces in that assembly:



The steps along the sides are supposed to be there to conform to the main body of the plane when it is assembled. That part on the right side sticking out under the end of the tailhook is one of two different parts. One is for the F-14A and the other for the F-14B. Watch closely to be sure you are adding the right party for the version you are doing.

Next I had to add two side pieces for the main landing gear bays. Why these weren't molded into place I don't know, but I will probably find out later on in this build. They were slightly bent o I needed to glue the one side and then clamped the other side to cement it correctly:



Later, after opening the holes I needed to open for the particular weapons system I wanted to load on this; I cemented the toe fuselage halves together. These fit pretty well in the front section. At the rear, they fit badly with gaps alongside the L=shaped joint. These joints also stepped unevenly and needed to be adjusted that way for a flush join. Putty will be needed to complete the seam repair:



Later I added the tailhook assembly to the rear of this. You can see more clearly here the gap in the seam as well:




That's all I completed this time before I became too frustrated with these models. I hope to get more done this coming week. We shall see.

Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

But... it's Hasegawa... only Monogram makes shoddy fitting kits....

Sarcasm off

Hang in there Mark. I know that you will whip these two cats into shape eventually.

Mark, here in Germany even older Hasegawa kits are rather high priced. So, maybe this is because they offer the modeller more work to get them fit than other kits?

Those fit issues are annoying. But on each trouble area shown you managed to get it done!

LOL! Carlos thanks! Yeah, I heard that too! Yeah, eventually I will, but it is still a pain having so many issues all at the same time. Not only that, but I have to deal with them TWICE!

Thomas, I would think they'd give a price break if they were so hard to build. Oh well, that's life....

Thanks for the compliments on my work. I am learning new ways to make things fit!

I think you're doing a damn good job of knocking those into shape Duke - They do look like a rather complicated assembly though.

Portman, Thank you for the compliment. You are right about them being complicated. Sometimes I think Hasegawa made these a little too complicated in some areas than they needed to be. Still, they seem to be building into some nice looking models so far.

Yesterday, my friend Harmon needed someone to sit at the Knights of Columbus Hall where we hold Hobby Day so that the gas company can get in there and inspect the gas lines and read the meter. He asked me to do this saying that I was free to bring something to build and stay as long as I like. I agreed and invited two friends to join me at the hall since the area is not the best, and I brought a lot of things to work on. We spent the whole day there at the Hall into the evening. This is all the progress I made yesterday on all my models.

I'll start with my F-14 Tomcat that I'm doing for the review on another Forum. It was the only aircraft I worked on yesterday and here is the progress I made. First off, I assembled the second fuselage for the F-14B since I'd already done the F-14A fuselage some time ago. Once that was done, I assembled all four of the engine intake trunks. There were six parts to each one and when you assembled the inside truck tube and inserted it inside the intake you need to clamp it shut since the sides of the intake part are slightly separated:



The intake trunks were designed to snap right into place in the fuselage assemblies and they do go in fairly well as you can see here on Tomcat B:



However, installation on each of these fuselages revealed a couple issues. I don't know whether it was because I mixed up sprues when building these or what, but when I installed the intake trunks to the Tomcat B, I had a gap on the inside of the fuselage where the trunks joined to the fuselage:



That gap did not occur on the outside and the intake trunks were installed on the correct sides; otherwise they would have never snapped right in due to the shape of the intake trunks. When I installed the trunks to Tomcat A, I had a different set of issues. The trunks didn't snap all the way in and the intake openings curved inward. I had to press down the front of the intake to cement them in place; as well as clamp the sides of the intake to conform properly to the fuselage:



Yet despite all this, the intakes on Tomcat A had no gaps at the joint; even after all that clamping:



Just some extra things to look out for when building these models.

These last two pics show the cockpit modules dry-fit to the fuselage sections to get an idea how they will fit. On the underside, they seem to fit smoothly with a flush joint:



However, if you flush out the bottom, you have a step along the joint on top. I apologize that it isn't seen too well here in this pic:



Right now, I'm not sure what is the best way to fix that issue, so I put these away to figure it out another day. I should have some ideas in a future update.

So stay tuned, I hope to have more done on these soon. Thanks for looking in.

Mark, when I run into the fuselage section step problem, and it's a choice of having the step on the top as opposed to in the bottom due to fit, I opt for having the step on the bottom. People will see more of the top, and and seam filling work along with resulting problems is less visible below. Just a thought.