So with the suspension of the 'VF-213 Black Lions' project, I decided to salvage the good parts from there and use it on this new one. VF-101 is the primary training unit for the F-14 community. During its operational lifetime it fielded all variants of the Tomcat, with this particular F-14D being flown in this particular marking in 2004.

Anyway, the fitting of the Hasegawa F-14 is notoriously fiddly so I went really slow for this one since I really didn't do a good job on the previous one. First up though, the cockpit. This is very carefully handpainted with Vallejo Model Color and drybrushed with light grey to bring up the details. I didn't go all out on the details because I'll be modeling the canopy closed, so most of the details will be obscured.

The F-14 kit is notorious for bad fitting front to rear fuselage fitting. And this was the best I coud do. There's a step on the topside which is quite obvious on bare plastic. Hopefully preshading will reduce the effect. The bottom though, is quite bad. Though mitigated by the fact that I will be covering most of the unsightly gap with the Phoenix missile pallets. This is something to look out for in my next F-14 build for sure.

The misfitting cockpit tub necessitates that I try to fix some misalignment within the fron landing gear bay. I basically used a screwdriver to force a re-alignment of the bay.

The D variant had the wing gloves totally removed so I had to cover these up. Instead of using the kit part then puttying, I decided to slot in 0.5mm thick plastic sheet instead. Less filling to be done later.

One detail Hasegawa failed to add to the kit is the GPS dome on the spine. This is a late modfication though and wouldn't have been there when this mold first popped up in the market. I tested using a small H-eye from Wave. Size-wise it looks right though it might be a bit on the thick side.

An alternative would be to use a drop of superglue. But it's kinda imprecise and doesn't allow much control. I think using the H-eye works fine.