Hasegawa

F-14A Tomcat 'VF-84 Jolly Rogers'

Kit Number: 09776

Reviewed by  Dennie Adams, IPMS# 34396

MSRP: $75.95 Web Site: www.dragonmodelsusa.com Confessions of a cat lover. That's right, I'm guilty! I LIKE CATS. Especially if they came off the Grumman assembly line. The F-14 has a great legacy to follow. All the best cats came from the Ironworks in Long Island at some time or another. The Tomcat has fallen to the budget ax, that's unfortunate but not surprising in the modern Navy. The last of the Grumman cats served a long and distinguished career and will be greatly missed by us cat lovers. They were some of the most colorful kittys in the inventory and the VF-84 has been a favorite of model builders for sure. Who can resist that skull and cross bones on the tail? My friend, Ed Kinney has alluded to me that it is somehow unmanly to be a cat lover, real men have dogs I'm sure he has told me… but, sorry ED, I like these cats! Also on the list of long and distinguished careers is the Hasegawa F-14 kit. This kit is top of the line if you want a great looking Tomcat in 1/48 scale. There are others out there but this is the one you want. It's really a treat that Hasegawa has put these kits in an ambitious re-release program with a lot of new and significant marking selections including a lot of the final cruise and stand down schemes. What you get is a straight forward build that gives you a fine looking Tomcat. The kit can be a bit fiddly at times, especially around the intakes, but it's nothing an average model builder can't handle. The panel lines are finely recessed, the cockpit is well detailed, the flaps and slats, the airbrakes are selectable for positioning and the flaps can even be poseable. The options give it a great visual appeal. Any contest I attend these cats never fail to draw my attention. The strangest thing I came across was the case of the missing steps for the boarding ladder. These are tagged as parts F42 and 43 and were nowhere to be found in my kit. They weren't on the sprue nor loose in the bag. As my curiosity was aroused I opened two more of the new re-released kits and could not find either part in the two kits, both of them brand new and unsealed. It seems that they just are not there, the stub on the tree and the number tag are in place and they show up on the parts map in the instructions, perhaps there is an obstruction in the channel on that mold that has created this condition or some other technical glitch. I eventual found a set of steps in an older version of the kit I had on the shelf so I know they used to be there. This was an enjoyable build project that I have repeated more that a few times. The finished plane was given an easy overall gloss gull gray paint job, some detail painting with Alclad II for the exhaust and burner cans and application of those cool looking VF-84 markings. As always with this kit, I highly recommend it!! A comment on pricing. When first released, these kits were in the $45 range. I've noticed that the cost on these kits have been steady on the rise. This one retailed around the $75.95 mark and most of them have been close to that mark. In my opinion Hasegawa surely has paid for this mold and while the new decals should add a few pennies but I can only assume that the rising oil prices have helped to jack the cost of these and other kits. With all the rising oil prices, it's getting harder to budget some of these into my plans. If you want the best 1/48 scale F-14 on the market, get them now as costs will only rise. My thanks to the folks at Hasegawa and Dragon Models USA for the review sample.

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