....expires in three days (on January 15th, 2025), so if you want to take advantage of it, do it soon!
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We are very busy with a few major endeavors and this has kept our accessory set development very subdued. We are extremely grateful to all of our friends who have kept in touch with us, and those we met personally in Madison, Wisconsin at the Nats. We would like to extend our gratitude by offering a Christmas/New Year's special offer, in that all orders including the new F-14 wells will include a like number of seamless intakes at no extra cost. So, an order of one Early and one Late Wheel Well set will automatically yield you two seamless intake sets as well. But, if you want two wheel well sets and three intake sets, just order your wells and one intake set. The other two are, as I say, automatic. The offer is valid for orders received by and including January 15th, 2025.
We have two F-14 (Tamiya) wheel well sets out, plus a seamless intake set to go with. The wells are divided into Early (F-14A) and Late (F-14B/D), with the difference being in the nose landing gear well and the well doors. The latter's left unit has the AN/ALR-67 ECM antenna incorporated into it. There are also some pretty significant changes in the well details. ![]() The picture to the left of the Late model nose well is an early test shot to verify fit and some spatial relationships. It is actually not even glued in place (though the fuselage halves are), but the well is neatly nestled between the well opening and the bottom of the cockpit. It won't move up or down, but does slide back and forth which we inadvertently found to be quite useful. it will, of course, be secured in place later. The nose leg is our original HybridCAST units, but the wells will accept the kit gears or any aftermarket products designed to fit the Tamiya wells. Shown below are our new drop-fit seamless single piece intakes to replace Tamiya Kit Parts D10, D11, D12 and D13.These can be used exclusively with just the kit or with our wells, and the wells are designed to clear whichever intakes you use, ours or Tamiya's. The wells retail for $34.99US and the intakes for $12.99, available from our e-shop. These are just about ready to go into production, and are 3D printed sets to allow a significant enhancement of the Tamiya 1:48th scale F-14s. The set is designed for minimal surgery of the donor, and to not pose any issues with clearing the kit intake ducts while accepting the kit landing gear legs or any aftermarket items deigned for it, including our original HybridCAST legs. The set includes 3D printed wells and all associated doors. These shots aren't going to win any Pulitzers and are just cellphone photos, but do give an indication of what the concept of them is. These are test prints that confirmed their look, spatial relationships and fit....all satisfactory. The nose gear strut is our original Hybridcast item, though the set will accept the kit legs or other aftermarket equivalents designed to replace them.
We received some pics of an F-14 build from Nacho Hernandez of indetailmodeling and these screamed to be posted. Nacho utilized our older cast resin sets designed for the Hasegawa kit, because, at the time, the Hasegawa kit was the most current and detailed available. He did request some extra photoetched frames for his build, but our efforts at creating a set that actually fits the target model seem to have paid off for this gentleman. of course, we obliged with extra PE frets to spare, and we are glad we did. His build is done in conjunction with other detail sets such as the engine and avionic bays not of our making, and our own bays were not even available at the time. This build by Nacho is giving us a nice little push with our current project of updating the detail sets (wheel wells, wing box, spine and avionic bays) to 3D prints for the Tamiya kits.
For a very limited time, we are offering all four of our currently available F-16 sets at about a 40% savings if ordered through this offer. The offer includes the Heavyweight and Lightweight Landing Gear and Wheel Well sets, as well as both the Bigmouth and Smallmouth seamless intakes. This is a value (on an individual basis) of $130 now being offered for $79.99. However, this offer expires on Monday, April 22nd or while current inventory lasts. We are out of tubing, and more won't be coming our way til about May....
This set has also been improved on slightly, based on the earlier release, with a lower parts count at no expense to details. The well is designed to fit snug in the Tamiya fuselage, but the instructions do need to be paid attention to, otherwise the wheel well assembly won't maneuver into place. The instructions point that out, and as long as there are no problems, installation is quite easy and yields a fantastic set of legs for your model. The set includes the main and nose wells, all with the required modifications that differentiate lightweight versions from the heavyweight ones, the struts, the gear doors and their (version specific) retraction struts as well as the smaller wheels. The wheel well sets (both Heavy and Light) retail at $49.99US. These include the wheel wells, strut assemblies, all gear doors and wheels. Each of the intakes, Small and Bigmouth, retail for 14.99US. Generally, European customers from within the EU will have their orders mailed to them from within the European Union, so no additional expenses are incurred.
We can report a limited restock of the F-4 Wheel Well and Landing Gear Sets as we gear up printer space for other items, notably F-16 stuff.
A little editorial for you to consider. Let me know if you agree. I often read, and try to understand, the notion of something being labeled ‘fiddly’ in the realm of scale modeling, but I have an increasingly hard time looking at it with any real acceptance. In fact, I confess to a level of annoyance. The goals of plastic modeling, the end result that is achieved, is different for everyone. Some like the clean appearance and a closed up model, something observers may see as a very ‘plastic’ looking model of an airplane. Yippee. Subscribers to this approach may, in turn, view weathering and similar representations of realism, as generally overdone. Both are fine, given that the modeler has experienced a sense of satisfaction, something that the hobby, any hobby, should ultimately provide and they should not allow themselves to be convinced otherwise. But scale modeling is a subjective and interpretive art form. There is a general tendency towards being as accurate and detailed as possible with an associated increase in the level of sophistication in kit production.
Kit builders ply their art via the treatment and assembly of components that are a fraction of the size of the actual item (the fraction being defined by the scale), and the pursuit of detail and realism tends to break the small parts into even smaller items that come together to form subassemblies. This often gets described as ‘fiddly’, where ‘intricate’ might be more relevant. I would see ‘intricate’ a better description for the process and result proper, and ‘fiddly’ perhaps more relevant to the modeling skills of the person using the term. I look at recent efforts, such as Eduard’s Zeros, Bf 109s and Fw 190s, or Miniart’s P-47s, and I am blown away at the sophistication and dedication...and faithfulness, at the execution of the details. Absolutely blown away. The last term that comes to mind is ‘fiddly’, though the term comes up much more than it should. Actually, to my mind, it should never come up in a modeler. A modeler complaining of ‘fiddly’ is a little like a surgeon who can’t stand the sight of blood. Tamiya kits are beautiful in and of themselves, and are considered masters of engineering, and in some respects, they are. And they probably get less ‘fiddly’ labels thrown on them than Eduard or Miniart, but the price of that, to me, is that Tamiya kits have a certain ‘sterile’ quality to them. But it may also give them a generally wider appeal, and are, in any case, a good starting point for a project. If I were to design aftermarket sets for the Miniart Thunderbolts or the Eduard Zekes, I would be harder pressed to come up with something than for the Tamiya F-4B or F-14s, or their Spitfires or Bf 109G, for a more accurate comparison, as good as those kits are. To sum up, ‘fiddly’ is probably a really bad way to describe kit engineering and detail levels and is a better indication of modeling skills at the disposal of the builder. The ‘intricacies’, a better term, of a current generation kit, can be largely overcome by tools of the trade. I have found photoetched brass bending tools and a decent pair of tweezers go a very long way to easing construction of small bits. Hopefully, something to think about...(?). As much as Aeroscale's review is appreciated, I think there needs to be a small clarification. The review states that the hardest part of the build will likely be the masking off of the oleo and retraction pistons prior to painting. In fact, these components are made from (cut-to-length) stainless steel, serving two equally important functions. One is strength, and as such, the longest strut component has a steel tube running down its entire length, providing more than adequate structural integrity for the entire system to support the weight of the model permanently. The other is a realistic representation of the oleo and retraction pistons. Being made of stainless, these need no masking whatsoever, and primer/paint/overcoats can simply and easily be scrapped off with an x-acto knife blade, leaving a metal sheen that is both realistic and in scale. Photos taken with my phone don't do this justice, but..... After using several kits for verification of fit and to deliver as advertised, this is my own little work in progress, and I am very happy with the way it's going.
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