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F14A Tomcat - PART ONE

a build story by David W. Aungst

The Black Box Cockpit Close Up

Background
In this day of after market resin cockpits for every new kit to be released, finally someone has started paying attention to the kits that are not so new, but just as deserving of the attention. The company is called Black Box. They have begun releasing a series of full resin replacement cockpits for a number of great older kits including Revell's A-6E, Hasegawa's "Teen Series" (F-14A/D, F-15C/E, F-16B/C, and F-18C/D), Monogram's "Century Series" (F-100D, F-101B, F-102A, F-104G, and F-105G), and more. All of these kits are great kits in their own right, but some of them are pushing 20+ years old and are starting to show their age in the lack of state-of-the-art details. These Black Box cockpit sets are just what the doctor ordered to give these kits a real lift.

The Hasegawa F-14 kit has been out for over 15 years. Built out-of-the-box, it makes a very respectable model of the Tomcat. The timing of the release of the Black Box F-14 cockpit set could not have been better as I had just started work on some Hasegawa F-14 kits. It was a natural to want to use the cockpit set in these models I was just starting to build. While I had already gone to the trouble of fixing Hasegawa's cockpits pieces to better fit the kits, I had not done any extensive detailing or painting, yet. So, I tossed the kit cockpits out the window and decided to use Black Box cockpits instead.

I acquired my Black Box F-14 cockpits within days of seeing one at a friend's house. I've seen many resin cockpits, but the level of detail in this Black Box set took my breath away. I could not believe the wealth of details that it provided, on the instrument panels, on the side walls, on the back walls, and even on the floor! And, I could not wait to have a cockpit set for my very own. As I was actually working on three Hasegawa Tomcats simultaneously, I acquired three of the set. Then, I acquired a couple more sets to put away for future projects. After all, you can never have too many detail sets.

This story re-published with the permission of David W. Aungst.

About the Author

About David W. Aungst (DWAungst)


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