1/32 F-14A: Bending it to my will

[mconnelley]

Hello:

 

    I wanted to work on the engine faces, as that's needed to close up the aft fuselage.  The thing that bugged me is that the stator vanes (or whatever they're called...the roughly two dozen vanes in front of the fan) are really thick.  The picture below shows the back side of one of the kit parts, and they're so thick that there's no space between them where they meet at the hub.  Thus, you really can't see the fan behind the stators.  

 

   My solution was to cut them all off, and replace them with thin sheet plastic.  This was pretty easy, as I spend a lot of time doing PE on ship models.  The alignment of the stators isn't perfect but given that it'll be way at the back of the intakes, it'll do.  

 

Here's what it looks like dry fit with the fan and the 'bullet' at the front of the engine.  It's a vast improvement over what the kit provides.  I glued the fans to a disk of sheet plastic that's a bit larger than the fan.  This is so that I can glue the fan to the back of the intake ducts.  The kit would have you glue the fan into the front of the engine 'tube' that they provide, but I don't plan on using any of those engine parts.  

 

Mike

 

[mconnelley]

Hello:

   The main focus lately has been getting the nose section to fit properly to the aft fuselage section.  The main problem was the >1mm step where the lower nose meets with the lower fuselage.  The key is that the aft fuselage is very flexible in the vertical direction, so I'll flex the aft fuselage to accommodate the difference in height.  I put more alignment tabs where the nose and aft fuselage meet to force them to match.

 

 

 

In the image below:

Green arrows: alignment tabs

Red arrows: posts to set the height of the aft fuselage section to match the nose, and to be a bit bigger than it otherwise would be.  I put this in to relieve some of the stress on the alignment tabs.  

 

The aft fuselage also got alignment tabs, as there are long flat joints to deal with.  These tabs will help to keep this all aligned.  

 

So here is where we are.  Here's the top joint.  There was a big gap between the intake 'shoulders' and the side of the nose section, which I filled with sheet plastic.  

 

And under the nose, the fit is much improved.  The huge step is gone, and things are at the level where a bit of putty and sanding will smooth it all out.  

 

Mike

 

 

[geedubelyer]

Good job Mike. Excellent progress. 

[SwissFighters]

Engineering your way through the problems!
Thanks for sharing - it's very helpful to see the progress.

Tony

[Pete Fleischmann]

On 4/27/2025 at 8:51 AM, Oldbaldguy said:

I’ve read about this technique for painting intakes for years but have yet to get it to work for me.  Obviously I am not holding my mouth right while attempting it because yours turned out just fine.

When the dust settles after I take my last breath and launch for Valhalla..remember me on the Mount Rushmore of modeling as the idiot who first came up with this technique. It was an F-16 intake..but I am the guy. This is my legacy, and I will defend it til the end.

 

fellow modelers..you’re welcome .

 

P

 

[Flyboyd22]

Wow! Excellent solutions to an unfortunate problem. Impressive!