[Sakrison]

I have built several Halinski/Kartenowy Arsenal kits and I own several more that are on my "must build" list. In my opinion, Halinski publishes some of the finest, most detailed, most beautifully drawn kits on the market. Their F-14A Tomcat is no exception, well, almost.

I don't read Polish. Fortunately, Halinski(?) provides English instructions for the kit -- sort of. The first stage of assembly (detailed forward fuselage, cockpit, radar assembly, and nosewheel well) is covered in one short 4-line paragraph which states, "We should start with the gluing of the front part of the hull."

Um, okay.

The kit does include four pages of assembly drawings which are helpful as far as they go, but they leave much to guesswork. I've completed about 3/4 of "front part of the hull" and so far I have found at least half a dozen parts and part numbers that do not appear anywhere on any of the drawings. Photos from Halinski's online Gallery have been helpful in a few cases.

I have had to improvise the construction sequence when it appeared that following sequential part numbers didn't make sense. And I have twice performed surgery on the assembled fuselage formers to get them to fit into the fuselage skin.

So far, the skin sections have fit each other perfectly -- Praise Halinski!

Much of the assembly depends on butt joints between two pieces of cardstock at or near perpendicular to each other and often at corners. Butt joints in 60# cardstock are not strong joints and I have added my own joiners, tabs, and heavy card formers where it appeared that more strength or rigidity was needed. The kit does provide joiner strips for the fuselage skin sections -- Praise Halinski!

With much patience, ingenuity, head-scratching, and a few handy expletives, I still think this will turn out to be a very nice, very detailed display model. And I am sincerely grateful to Halinski for making it available, even with all the kit's conundrums. Published in 2001, on the cusp of the industry's shift to digital production, the kit can be forgiven its idiosyncrasies; it is still "top of the line" and a worthy endeavor for an experienced paper modeler.

But trust me, my fellow papercutters: This kit is not for sissies.