This is the Hasegawa F-14A Tomcat "Black Knights History" kit built mostly OOB to represent a F-14A assigned to VF-154, the Black Knights serving aboard the USS Kitty Hawk.

I added True Details' GRU-7(A) ejection seats and Steel Beach Bombcat Update set. As the kit did not come with any weapons, I had to source them from elsewhere. Kinetic's F-16 kit provided the AIM-9Ms with the stenciling, Academy's F-14 provided the AIM-54C Phoenix with decals from Fightertown and Hasegawa's Weapon Set D provided the GBU-16s, LANTIRN pod and their associated decals.

I painted the kit using Gunze acrylics and weathered it using Tamiya enamels. Major makings came from the extensive kit decal sheet with some Fightertown stencils thrown in to fill the gaps.

Enjoy the photos! And as usual, critique, comments and feedback are most welcome!





















Mark

That is a very nice build. I really like the surface weathering treatment. Vine attention to detail. Thanks for the photos.

Matt

very nice build,weathering is good and good attention to detail,my hats off,I tried on two occasions to finish one of those hasegawa cats with out sucess,too many construction problems.but yours came out great.

That is a very nice looking Tomcat. The pre-shading, panel lines are very neat. The base makes the whole set very classy. Well done.

Paul

Thank you, guys!

Yup, this kit was a bear to build, taking me 9 months to complete.

Here Kitty-kitty Here Kitty, Well done my friend. Very well done.

An excellent job mark, very nice

A Very nice Tomcat you have there Mark. I hope that the one I'm building comes out as nice. I also like the fact that you picked up on the one open and one closed exhaust which is caused by the shut down sequence that most people dont realise. but i'm not sure on the mix of ordinance. I would have thought they would carry Pheonix's or GBU's not a mix of both (but I could be wrong) either way it doesn't detract from and excellent model.

This looks like a scale 1/1

Thanks for the kind comments, gents.

@Allen: According the Fightertown's VF-154 decal instructions, this was a common Tomcat loadout for OEF/OIF in 2003.

Mark