HobbyBoss F-14A Tomcat 1:48

Review by: Andy Goodwin (Dec 2011)

The Real Thing…

This certainly made me chuckle when I first saw it…

A bit of Background

In the late 1950’s, the US Navy had a requirement for a long range, high-endurance interceptor aircraft to protect its carrier battle groups from the threat of Soviet long range anti-shipping missiles launched from bombers and submarines.

This proposal specified that the aircraft should have a more powerful radar and longer range missiles than the current F-4 Phantom in order to intercept both bombers and missiles.

Due to budget constraints at the time, the US Navy was ordered to join forces with the US Air Force and to come up with a joint solution to the requirement.  The Navy seriously opposed this decision, being fearful that too much compromise would be involved and that they wouldn’t get the desired result.

This joint project between General Dynamics (USAF) and Grumman (USN) gave birth to the F-111 program and, although this worked out very well for the Air Force, the weight and performance issues that arose didn’t satisfy the Navy.

With the Navy side of the program having these serious issues, Grumman began studying improvements and alternatives. In 1966, the Navy awarded Grumman a contract to begin studying advanced fighter designs. In 1968, the Deputy Chief-of-Naval-Operations, Vice-Admiral Thomas Connolly, flew the F-111 and saw first hand the associated problems with respect to naval operations.

Congress was persuaded to divert funding from this joint program into a purely naval interceptor program.

Immediately after the change of funding, the USN issued a requirement for the Navy Fighter Experimental (VFX) which called for a 2 seat tandem fighter aircraft with twin engines capable up to mach 2.2 and a built in M61 Vulcan cannon.

The missiles were to be the AIM-54 Phoenix (already developed on the F-111 program), the AIM-7 Sparrow and the AIM-9 Sidewinder for close-in use.  Five aeronautical companies subjected designs, including McDonnell Douglas and Grumman.

Four of these five bids incorporated swept-wing designs.  In January 1969, Grumman was awarded the contract to develop and produce the F-14 Tomcat.

The F-14 was to incorporate the Pratt and Whitney F401-PW-400 then under development, but the P&W TF30 engines originally designed for the F-111 program were used instead.

These engines had some pretty bad shortcomings, causing approximately 28% of overall losses throughout the F-14’s service life. Turbine disc cracking was a large problem, but the major issue was the susceptibility of the compressor section to stalling, leading to loss of control due to the wide engine spacing and, more often than not, a flat spin – do we all remember that bit in the ‘Top Gun’ film?!

The aircraft is manufactured from a large amount of Titanium, centred in very high-stress areas. These consist of the wing skins and spars, the main wing carry-through box and pivots and the main fuselage longerons.  The skin is mostly aluminium alloy with the tail planes being constructed from Boron-composite material.

This in turn leads to a very strong and relatively lightweight airframe, with half of the total lift being produced by the wide, flat body between the two engine nacelles. The twin vertical fins provide a very stable platform and the most prominent feature, the variable geometry ‘swing-wing’ allows for high-lift at low-speeds (wings straight @ 20 degrees) and low-drag when swept to 68 degrees for increased high speed performance.

The undercarriage is, obviously, immensely strong and to cut down on production costs, Grumman actually used a lot of components from the already proven A-6 Intruder.  The nose leg has the ability to ‘kneel’ when hooked up to the catapult for launch, in order to give a little ‘kick-up’ when taking off.  An arrestor hook is located at the tail between the two engines for deck landings.

Two crew (pilot and RIO) sit in tandem on Martin Baker GRU-7A zero-zero ejection seats under a large, bubble canopy that offers 360 degree vision.

This in turn is mounted on the podded nose that also houses the immensely powerful AWG-9 radar set and M61 20mm Vulcan cannon.  This radar has the ability to track up to 24 targets at distances in excess of 120 miles and then engage 6 of these simultaneously at a range of close to 100 miles.

The 6 barrelled rotary-action Vulcan cannon is good for close-in fighting (dogfighting) of ranges up to about a mile and can fire up to 6000 rounds/minute.

Other weaponry includes the AIM-9 Sidewinder, a short range (0.6 – 20miles) heat-seeking missile and the AIM-7 Sparrow, a medium range (20-31 miles) semi-active radar guided missile.

The ‘big-daddy’ though, is the AIM-54 Phoenix missile, a long range (up to 100 miles) active-radar guided missile, which was only operationally used by the Tomcat and was especially developed to meet the requirements of the original joint USAF/USN program in the early 60’s, together with the AWG-9 radar set.

The Tomcat was only in service with two nations Air Forces, the US Navy and the Imperial Iranian Air Force (Later to become the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force).

Of these, the US has retired the big costly ‘cat in favour of the F/A-18E/F Hornet and the Iranians still continue to operate the jet although there is no real evidence of how well they are doing this as there is no spares program from the USA and therefore no spares. Iran are apparently reverse-manufacturing components to satisfy their needs.

The Kit

Click on the Thumbnails to enlarge the images and scour the contents for yourself!

Initial Impressions

Upon being presented with this enormous box by our Editor, I was immediately impressed, purely by the size and weight of this beast.

Once I had wrestled the thick lid off, I was confronted by an absolutely jam-packed box of plastic goodies. Inside are 12 separately bagged grey sprues, two further boxes, 5 sheets of decals and a well presented instruction sheet.

The separate boxes contain the upper and lower fuselage halves in one and various smaller sprues in the other, including the transparencies, a small PE fret and rubber tyres. Some may think “yuk” to the inclusion of the latter, but I do like rubber tyres.

As first impressions go, this one is on a winner.

Quality

Back to that box again. The sturdiness of it gives a good sense of quality.

On first inspection, the plastic parts are cleanly moulded and look nicely detailed. It became apparent to me that this is a scaled down version of the Trumpeter 1:32nd F-14A and the detail shows through without the clunkiness that could be associated with this.

The surface panel lines look to be of an appropriate size and there are a lot of rivets covering the airframe. Some may be put off by this, but in my mind they will look nice once painted and weathered up.

The main transparencies have the usual moulding seam running along the centre of them, but they do look nice and clear and I’m sure they’ll polish up nicely. There is a brace on the real aircrafts canopy so be sure not to smooth the entire piece. This should be easy enough to differentiate as the differences in thickness are quite apparent. If in doubt, references should be checked.

All of the other small pieces look to be nice and crisp. Two full engines are included but there is no way to show these off, with no option supplied to open fuselage panels, or even an engine trolley.

The wings can be shown fully spread, with flaps and slats hanging out. They are movable, but this won’t be possible with everything hanging out. Still, these are really nice features and points should go to the Chinese company for including them. The cockpit also looks like it can be made into a nice replica of the real thing, with full sidewall detail included and two well portrayed GRU-7A seats.

A full set of weapons are included, with Phoenix, Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles well represented. A full M61-A1 Vulcan cannon is also included which can be shown off in its open bays. Another nice touch from Hobbyboss.

A small PE fret is also included, containing seat harnesses, canopy framing and the radar scanner. These will be a nice addition and add a little bit more finesse to the finished model.

Instructions

The main booklet type instructions are well laid out in black and white and look fairly easy to follow, with the usual exploded diagrams. A parts map is included and colour callouts are for Gunze Sangyo in the main instructions and Gunze, Model Master, Vallejo, Tamiya and Humbrol on the separate, double sided colour painting guide.

Decals

Marking options are provided for two airframes;

• VF-32 (Swordsmen), USS John F. Kennedy, 1976
• VF-41 (Black Aces), USS Nimitz, 1978

Both are painted in the early grey/white scheme and are both fairly attractive, representing the “CAG bird” of both squadrons. The decals themselves look glossy and fairly sturdy, without being too thick and are spread out over 5 separate sheets.

Three sheets are for the airframe, with one for weapons stencilling and a set for cockpit instrument dials and screens.

Summary

In my humble opinion, this looks to be a very good offering of a truly iconic aircraft. It could even replace the Hasegawa kits at the top of the pecking order and, with all of the options and engineering provided, in my own mind it has.

I just hope it builds as good as it looks.

Andy G.