Great Wall Hobby (GWH) F-14B Tomcat 1:48

Getting some paint on the model

Having a reference photo (or two) of your subject is always a great starting point when deciding how to approach the painting process. F-14s are traditionally very dirty and patchy due to the environment they predominately reside in, namely on board a carrier where wash facilities are limited and corrosion control paint touch ups are common place. Having said that, they can also be very clean especially when they are shore based and are the CO’s personal jet as is the case in the pictures below.

This quite suited me as the scheme would look best if the aircraft was in ‘clean’ look. My chosen paints of choice are MRP and the base colour would be Light Gull Grey (FS36440) and Insignia Red (FS11136). These paints are quite thin and work best over a primer which in this case was Tamiya Fine Grey Primer.

Once the primer was down the tails were painted red first and masked off along with the airbrake interiors. All the other recesses such as the wheel bays, cockpit and intakes were masked up. The Light Gull Grey was then applied next and once dry the nose red and black areas were masked up and sprayed. The ‘rough’ walkways were also masked up and sprayed dark grey and then dry-brushed with a lighter grey to accentuate the texture.

The wings were tackled next and these are a lot more complex than the clean ones in the Tamiya kit. With the deployed flaps, slats and spoilers there is a lot of masking of the red interior areas. There is actually some nice detail within the flap and spoiler recesses. The fit of the wings into the fuselage is quite tight and this did cause me some issues later on in the build.

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VIDEO DEMO

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Read on…