Building a Persian 'Cat Recreate an Iranian F-14

摘要

Since it presented a good combination of my obsession for 'exotic' Middle East camouflage patterns and a US-made fighter, I elected to build an Iranian Tomcat. Academy's F-14A in 1:72 appeared to be an excellent deal, offering a well-detailed kit with lots of goodies at a very low price. As an 'out of the box' build, the kit looks very good indeed, with fine engraved panel lines, and good engineering of all the pieces. The air-to-air missiles supplied with the kit appear very good as well.rnWhen building an Iranian Tomcat, there are more than a few things one has to keep in mind, and some surgery will be required at the outset. Iranian F-14s had the doors of their inflight-refuelling (IFR) probe deleted even before delivery. This measure was agreed between Grumman and the then Imperial Iranian Air Force. The reason was that the Tomcats were to be delivered to Iran from New York via Rota, Spain, with the support of USAF KC-135 tankers, and were to operate in Iran supported by Boeing 707-3J9Cs, equipped with Beech 1800 refuelling pods. The Beech 1800 uses a 'stiff refuelling basket that has a tendency to break the IFR doors and send FOD into the right engine. Although doors were supplied to Iran, only a fewrnwere reinstalled after delivery. In fact, Iranian Tomcats have flown almost exclusively without them ever since.