vehicle: F-14 Tomcat

[need4speed]

Hey,

That's a good start. I am an AVID F-14 fan....I have a stack of books on this plane nearly 3 feet tall and probably 20 posters.

Check out www.suurland.com in the blueprints and find the BEST F-14 blueprints that you can. Actually, there was one other place that had some great ones and I don't remember where. I think I still have them at home on my computer there.

If you want some, email me and let me know. I see lots of things that need fixing, but seeing detail through only a couple of pics is hard...but search well and you shall find huge numbers of F-14 pics on the web!!!!

I see some basic things like the top of the body doesn't dip in to a sharp point like it does on yours (there are speedbrakes at the back of the body on top) and the fuel dump is right there at the back between the engines as well. Your engine cones should blend smoothly into the body and the detailing on them isn't quite right...they are more like overlapping leaves of metal as they travel around as they must draw up at full afterburner and the nozzle gets fairly small at full military thrust. You'll have to decide which version you're building to get the engines right though..the F-14A+/B and the F-14D have different engines...GE F101s compared to the old TF30s of the original A's. Don't forget on top of the body and where the wings overlap the body when they sweep back, that area is an inflatable "bladder" to keep the airflow smooth over the body.

Cheers!

[philnolan3d]

Thanks for the info, I don't think Suurland had any blueprints for the F-14, so I got mine from this site that has FAR more blueprints that suurland... http://www.onnovanbraam.com/ my reference images are from this site here, which has just about any info you could possibly want to know about an F-14
http://www.anft.net/f-14/

That site has hundreds of images but only the one on the front page seems to show the bottom nicely so I took a screenshot of that and used it as reference but it's still hard to tell what's going on from only one image.
Thanks again!

[need4speed]

Well, if you would like some more blueprints, I have some 1/72 scale reference drawings that I scanned in a couple of years ago as well. I have some great orthographic ones of the Tomcat (and a ton of other planes too) that are really helpful in building it. My top view is about 4000X6000 pixels (needs to be cropped a wee bit more before it's just the plane...but...).

If you have any questions on anything that looks right/wrong or whatever, feel free to drop me a line. I have been up and close with VF-211 at Oceana and have video from touch and go's close enough to hit the wingtip with a broomstick that I shot as NAS Fentress.

I've wanted to build a Tomcat for a loooong time, but I've wanted to make sure I was going to do it justice and keep getting delayed by other stuff I want to do too....

Cheers!
Andrew

[philnolan3d]

Yeah that would be great if you'd like to email that (if you can). I know what you mean about getting side tracked. I actually got side tracked from the F-14 and started modeling a female body, which you can also find in this WIP Critiques forum. So maybe this would help me get back into it.

Thanks!

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