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Old 09-06-2017, 10:55 PM
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Sakrison Sakrison is offline
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Exclamation I'm building Halinski's *&^%$#! F-14A Tomcat

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.
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I'm building Halinski's *&^%$#! F-14A Tomcat-cover1.jpg   I'm building Halinski's *&^%$#! F-14A Tomcat-drollnation-random-3519-500x373-small.jpg  
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  #2  
Old 09-07-2017, 12:29 AM
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abhovi abhovi is offline
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I built a lot of Halinski models in the past and almost always with much pleasure. However, there is a series of 'too-early models' that does not answer to the high standard the publisher reaches in later products. You can tell it from the sleeve: 3/4-2001 tells you the serial number and the year of publishing. In my experience most of his kits from before about 2003 are rather crappy. They are all out of print now. If you have anything at stock from the old days: discard them. I had a Zero from I think 1995, a Buffalo, a Phantom, all very bad. He must have been aware of it, because many of those birds were re-done and published and were brilliant. The improvement in quality goes right up with the quality of the explanatory pictures.
So be warned. Buying the old stuff will in no way bring you the satisfaction the newer stuff does. The later ones are all unsurpassed.
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Old 09-07-2017, 01:50 PM
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Erik Zwaan Erik Zwaan is offline
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Hello Sakrison, that is certainly going to be a very interesting build to follow along!

Ab, I agree with your observation that the old Halinski kits from the nineties are a long way off from the quality of the digitally designed models of today. Two years ago I bought the Halinski Brewster Buffalo in Netherlands East Indies Air Force livery, out of curiosity and because of the name Halinski, but above all because paper models in NEI AF livery from the thirties and forties are absolutely rare and unique. I started the model but quickly discarded it - nothing did fit well and the level of detail, well, it's about 100 parts (compared to the 2006 Dauntless, which has about 1500 parts I once read). Disappointing!

Anyway, enough of this - I am very curious about this build and wish you good luck!!

Cheers,
Erik
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Old 09-08-2017, 07:29 AM
ricleite ricleite is offline
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Good reading on all 3 post and I agree with you all. Halinski quality progressed A LOT! I have an unbuilt copy of the F-14. It is surely not the easiest kit to assemble and I look forward to your build.
@ Erik - The newer Buffalo kit, in Finnish livery, has close to 800 parts. I can assure you that it is both demanding and rewarding to assemble.
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Old 09-08-2017, 07:45 AM
RickPink65 RickPink65 is offline
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I will never understand why card model printers take gigantic paces to design a beautifully detailed model but completely fail to provide step by step, totally clear instructions, both written and with drawings. Designing a card model is a privilege of very few and perhaps because they do the design, they imagine that any modeler can just follow some very few suggestions. They must remember that any Joe Average type of human being will buy the model and he desires to finish it and obtain a reasonably good replica. When the model is simple, a couple of drawings are enough but a Halinski or FlyModel type of kit is almost impossible to successfully complete just with a couple of drawings and no detailed instructions. So the modeler must use guesswork or witchcraft to find out how this or that part will go. Just take two more example of beautifully designed models with over-simplified instructions: Murph's Models and Gary Pilsworth.
Printers and card models designers TAKE NOTE AND LISTEN TO OUR NEEDS if successful card modeling can become a fantastic hobby for the general public.

Greetings from Miami, hoping Irma won't destroy our city.
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Old 09-08-2017, 04:44 PM
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Sakrison Sakrison is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ricleite View Post
Good reading on all 3 post and I agree with you all. Halinski quality progressed A LOT! I have an unbuilt copy of the F-14. It is surely not the easiest kit to assemble and I look forward to your build.
@ Erik - The newer Buffalo kit, in Finnish livery, has close to 800 parts. I can assure you that it is both demanding and rewarding to assemble.
One part in particular gave me fits trying to find it. As the instructions note, if you build the kit with the nosecone open to show the radar, you need to use "Part W 2a instead of part W 2." I hunted all over the parts sheets and instructions and could not W 2a. The drawings show a part 2a but I couldn't find that part either.

Finally, after staring at parts and drawings for what seemed like an hour, I found it. Part 2a is represented by an un-numbereded cutline on Part 2. Part "W 2a" is the lip that the nose cone hinges attach to and it should be cut from Part 2 and glued to Part 3. using the latter's trimmed joiner strips.

I still don't know what the "W" is all about. Neither part was labelled "W."
Attached Thumbnails
I'm building Halinski's *&^%$#! F-14A Tomcat-pt-2a-1.jpg   I'm building Halinski's *&^%$#! F-14A Tomcat-pt-2a-2.jpg  
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Old 09-08-2017, 05:03 PM
rjm rjm is offline
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As I remember "W' in these kits usually means to cut. Sometimes as in the top of the fuselage after it is shaped "W" means to cut out the area where the cockpit goes.
I think you've figured out what they should have said.
Cheers
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Old 09-08-2017, 05:50 PM
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airdave airdave is offline
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W means "whack here with your scissors"
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Old 09-08-2017, 09:28 PM
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Sakrison Sakrison is offline
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By the time I finish this kit, I might have a large "W" somewhere on my workbench, indicating, "Bang Head Here."
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Old 09-09-2017, 03:34 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RickPink65 View Post
I will never understand why card model printers take gigantic paces to design a beautifully detailed model but completely fail to provide step by step, totally clear instructions, both written and with drawings.
Because extensive drawings and text explanation are not really required and are waste of space. Saying that - this sort of kits from Halinski ARE NOT for beginners, so experienced modelers should be able to use them. That is why every time before starting a kit all drawings should be thoroughly examined and checked out. In my opinion drawings within the kits are more than enough to complete the build. I hardly ever read text description, and can get all information required even from simple diagrams.

cheers

PS. W = Wyciąć = Cut/Cut Out. Part 2 is a whole if you are not doing open nose option. Also it may not have been properly marked off on the sheet as 2a. But after closer examination of your pics I can say it still remains as part 2 as it is joined together possibly on some sort of hinges (as if in reality) hence - it should be not marked off as part 2a, only part 2 which is split to two components by cutting.
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