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F14A Tomcat - PART THREE

The worst fitting pieces in the entire kit were found when I started work on the engine intakes. The cockpit issues are a "cake walk" compared to the engine intakes.

The intake trunk pieces just do not match the contours of the fuselage. They also lack positive alignment points to assist in getting them to fit the lower fuselage. The fit issues are compounded if you do not get the main wheel well pieces to sit just right. My recommendation is to use as little glue as possible to build and install the main wheel wells. As none of them are load-bearing in the kit, this is fine. That way, you can adjust the placement of the wheel well pieces to accomodate the engine intake trunking.

I carefully fit and adjusted the fit of the intake trunk pieces to make them line up on the fuselage. Then, I added some strip styrene locators to assist me with the alignment at the rear end of the pieces. Finally, I adjusted the fit and location of the main wheel well backing pieces (kit parts C15 and C16) so that they would not interfere with the intakes. The engine intake issues are sort of addressed in the kit releases with reworked moldings. The moldings changed, but most of the fit problems are still there.

In addition to the poor fit of the intake trunks to the lower fuselage, the fit of the intake ducting inside the trunks is pretty bad. I needed to use more than a little filler to blend the interior of the intake trunks into the intake ducting pieces. The entire area should be smooth, but the kit has loads of knockout pin locations and rough plastic. While a lip is molded into the trunk for the ducting to fit into, the ducting does not reach it.

My final intakes, after sanding the filler, were not really correct (still), but they were better looking than the way the stock kit provided them. I figured that the view afforded in the front of the intakes would be limited enough to hide any remaining shape issues. I was proved right after the intake trunks were attached.