Best F-14 Kit and Aftermarket??

[Derek B]

I also have both 1/32 Revell F-14A and Trumpeter F-14D kits, but an not yet ready to cross that bridge!  

 

I shall wait until I am ready to make one or the other of them, do the research, then decide whether to put the effort into correcting both kits, or build one using both kit parts as necessary?

 

Great advice from the LSP collective here though, so good luck with what ever you decide upon.

 

Derek 

[alain11]

if I was you , (but , I am not) I would go to the the kit that needs the less of works , the kit with which most AM stuffs are provided . in any case , there is no " good" kit , and at the end all of them will look like an F 14  ... the main thing is to enjoy ...isn't it ? 

Alain

[Stokey Pete]

Tamiya one worked out well enough for me. 
I’ll accept its inaccuracies, i chucked a few AM bits to jazz it up rather than correct anything.

I left the raised panel lines (laziness), gave it a snazzy paint job, and hey presto.....

It looks close enough to a Tomcat for my shelves. 

[LSP_Mike]

Well played sir.

[Mark P]

It looks like a Tomcat to me....

 

Mark Proulx

[Starfighter]

On 5/13/2021 at 9:03 AM, red Dog said:

Did you build it to criticize it?

Did you build both to compare?

 

He didn't hear it wrong. I have built both alongside and my take is that both kits are really great. So I'm one of the guy writing great conclusions about the AMK (and Tamiya) kit. 

AMK kit is gorgeous and gives a pretty decent tomcat in the end, no more no less than the Tamiya. Sure it's a bit more work but it has dozen more options too.

AMK beats the tomcat for experienced modelers willing to get the most of a kit.
Tamiya beats AMK for modelers who wants something easy hassle free.

 

In the end we're happy because we have options. So bashing one or another is utterly stupid, especially from ppl who haven't built it like that 300 stupid pages on ARC even before they were released. 

Hopefully this place is smarter ... ?

 

 

 

 

Olivier, I tend to disagree. One does not need to build a kit to (rightfully, in this case) critisize its the shape issues. There are around 10000 pics of built Tamiyas an 8000 showing built AMKs to compare and that's pretty much enough to see that the Tamiya looks spot on and the AMK has several issues in more than one area.  I hope not to open a can of worms here...

[Anders_Isaksson]

On 5/12/2021 at 7:48 AM, PhilB said:

I built the elderly Tamiya when it was the only game in town before the Trumpeter version appeared.

Sure, there were some raised panel lines on the rear deck but some sandpaper and a re-scribe soon fixed that.

AM cockpit and some Aires burner cans as I was doing a "B".

No am intakes unlike the Trumpeter but a bit of card and filler had smooth intakes.

...

 

The AM intakes for the Trumpeter kit are needed to correct the exterior shape of said intakes.

But then, Trumpeter's intake interior is a bit of a mess by itself - but that's really another story...

[Anders_Isaksson]

1 hour ago, Starfighter said:

 

Olivier, I tend to disagree. One does not need to build a kit to (rightfully, in this case) critisize its the shape issues. There are around 10000 pics of built Tamiyas an 8000 showing built AMKs to compare and that's pretty much enough to see that the Tamiya looks spot on and the AMK has several issues in more than one area.  I hope not to open a can of worms here...

 

Agreed. One look at the AMK kit compared to Tamiya's rendition and the choice should be obvious.

Still, the AMK wings may be usable on the Tamiya kit if dirty wings are preferred. Not a cheap solution, but still...

[LSP_Mike]

Not sure how this relates to 1/32 Tomcats.

[Hawkwrench]

Oh boy, here we go again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Tim

[Martinnfb]

https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/61112-tomcat-tamiya-or-trumpeter/page/4/

[npb748r]

have been following this with interest as the tomcat is getting close to the top of my build list. I built the revell one back in the 80's and it made into a nice kit but was basic compared to modern kits.  I would like to build the kit as a later aircraft as I'm not keen on the white/light grey colour schemes and think that either tamiya or trumpeter kits will enable me to do that. Price-wise the trumpeter one is slightly cheaper at full retail rates but I'll always look for deals. I enjoy building trumpeter kits, warts and all and have only ever built one tamiya 1/32 aircraft (Phantom) and didn't enjoy the experience due to fit issues and found the overall experience disappointing compared to the tamiya hype and elevated expectations.  That said the feedback I'd seen in other posts and in this tread was leading me to the tamiya kit. 

 

However the link to earlier treads above is really helpful as it pulls out in detail where the trumpeter kit is wrong and that's made my decision easy. For my style of building and for what I look for regarding accuracy levels I'm going to buy the trumpeter kit as it looks like it ticks all of my boxes and I wont need to spend any money on AM except maybe decals if I fancy a different scheme to that in the box. Nobody will see my version of this great aircraft once built and it will look like a tomcat to my eyes and that's all I need.

 

I stumbled across this tread at the right time - thanks to all how have posted in it, it's much appreciated.