With the Tomcat now, for all intents and purposes, history, it is a good idea to look back at some of the last schemes carried. This particular one if for a VF-143 aircraft currently with the New England Air Museum and is what I have to suppose is the retirement scheme. No ship name and a lot of high mucky-mucks from the Maintenance Department on the nose, pretty well points to this being the case. It also has a white rudder, red lower intake and bare metal leading edges to the wings. The first two are definitely non-standard.

You may have noticed that Superscale has finally decided to provide separate red bars to the national insignia, a good move as Microscale seems to have trouble with registration on these. The recommended kit is by Hasegawa and while there is an F-14B done by Italeri, most modelers would encourage you to leave that one alone.

A nice selection of data markings that are decidedly retro with this one.

March 2006

Review copy courtesy of . Thanks for your support.