Aires

1/72 F-14D Tomcat Cockpit Set For the Hasegawa kit

Stock Number: 7220

Reviewed By  Ben Guenther, IPMS# 20101

MSRP: $23.50 Website: www.aires.cz/ Aires has provided eight castings and a small sheet of photo-etch to make this F-14D cockpit. All of the castings are finely done in the usual gray resin. The Aires cockpit has all the fine switches, buttons, wiring and structural detail that are lacking on the plastic kit, to be fair my version of the F-14D (SP4) does provide PE cockpit panels. Besides the difference in size the Hasegawa’s ejection seat is the Martin-Baker GRU-7A used in the F-14A and B, but not the D. Aires provides you with an excellent rendition of the Martin-Baker SJU-17 (NACES) ejection seat -- which is what you need for the F-14D. PE will provide you with the restraint system (Seat belts). Now for the fun part, Aires instructions shows you where all the resin and PE parts go to complete the cockpit, but the only thing the instructions say on how to fit their product into the Hasegawa kit is this, "Thinning of the plastic parts and dry fitting of the assembly is needed!" You think? After four hours of filing and scrapping, I got the cockpit to fit the way it should. The plastic kit’s left fuselage side has an area for the boarding ladder, which means on the inside there is a corresponding size chunk of plastic. The Aires cockpit has a recess space for this, so the fore and aft play is limited. What you have to work at is to elevate or raise the cockpit up. I attached both instrument panels (parts 12 and 13) to the resin cockpit as an aid in fitting. At the aft of the Aires cockpit is a small half circular bulkhead. This has to fit into the space on the plastic kit. Basically, you’ll need to cut off all the side moldings in the Hasegawa cockpit area and remove anything that projects along the inside of the kit’s cockpit area. When that is done I used a curved blade as a scraper to remove plastic in a slow, controlled manner. You’ll also need to file the sides of the cockpit to reduce the width as well. The Aires ejection seat fits into the aft compartment without a problem, that’s not the case with the front office. After looking at photos, I think I know why. There is a small step molded at a 90-degree angle when photos show this step at an angle. The resin seat has that angle in it so it will not sit properly. The only way to resolve this is to carefully remove some material from the two projecting wings so the seat will bottom out correctly. The side panels have to be cut out of the casting sprue and fitted into the opening in each side. If you glued the panels as one piece, you will never get the cockpit to fit, there just is not enough space. I then glued the panels in separately before I fitted the cockpit in place, but you can also fit the cockpit, glue it in and then try to fit in the panels. I can’t say which would be the better way to go. This Aires set will produce an excellent F-14D cockpit; the catch is getting it to fit into the Hasegawa kit. If you don’t mind the extra work and are mindful how delicate some of the resin parts can be, then this product is for you. I can recommend this product. I would like to thank Aires for the opportunity to review this item.