People like E-Flite's Habu 32 and Phantom F4 powered by their 80mm fan. E-Flite have a proven track record of breaking the mould, innovating and coming through with a good solid product. Many Habu 32 owners went on to buy a Phantom as they enjoyed the Habu so much, and also possibly that they share similar power systems/internals.It stands to reason that with this success E-Flite might innovate further and bring more new EDF models to the market.

A cursory glance around the Internet shows that at present beyond a custom build, you can not buy a good quality ARTF F14 (or someone link one in this thread please) . The F14 is a well regarded and loved platform across the world and potentially there is a solid market of buyers who would invest in an E-Flite ARTF.

Some disadvantages:
* Complex wing sweep engineering adds R&D, Cost, and weight challenges
* An F14 with dual 80mm fans would be pretty big, maybe they have to use two smaller fans to get the frame around the Habu/Phantom size? An additional disadvantage to this is that then it would be hard to convert to turbine.
* The F14 frame itself does not resemble the Habu/Phantom so it would be a back to the drawing board redesign.

Some advantages:
* E-Flite seem to have good designers who can make a complicated airframe fly well and still look good.
* E-Flite manufacturing is able to work with a variety of materials such as balsa, carbon, fibreglass and covering to produce a high end product at a very aggressive price.
* Existing owner base that would be very likely to move on a new product like that.
* If Top Gun 2 comes out at the cinema, there may be a resurgance of "love" for the F14.
* A lot less competition in the market for that airframe compared to the Phantom.

Anyone else got any disadvantages/advantages or thoughts on if E-Flite should bring out an F14 Tomcat?

Jet Hangar Hobbies came out with a twin 70mm F-14 which was a builders kit.
with the reliability of the eflight 70mm fan they could easily design an arf F-14
that would not be too big and sell like hot cakes.
The swing wing mechanism has been worked out, they can just improve on a current system.

P. Richards aka SwatTeam

Cool! I will take a look at their website to check it out..

Originally Posted by Boogie_

Who ever is making the call on E-Flites scale jets is obviously into the Viet Nam era planes, F-86, F-4 and the little MiG 15.
And trying to keep them relatively inexpensive.

As cool as the F-14 would be, the R&D on a (reliable) swing wing would make it pricey. Very doubtful they would chase after something like that.

There are a lot of great jets they could produce pretty easy:
A-4
F-106
MiG 21
F-100
F-8
A-7

Then again they could go off tangent and do a more current design.

I'm pretty sure though that there are a lot of vendors who already offer those birds? (ready to stand corrected if I am wrong)

The successfulness of the wing sweep mechanism would depend on:
* Ability to sweep in air
* Strength vs Weight effectiveness
* Smooth/scale action rather than jerky or on/off
* Reliability to not break from normal operation

It needs to be a mass manufacturer with solid design skills to pull that off at a workable price point- sounds like E-Flite or someone similar to me!

Every maker of models jets should have an F14 Tom Cat for sell

It's a great design for model jets IMHO, real tame take offs and landings because of wings out and when it needs to get nasty put the wings back and fly it like it's been stolen.

It's CG sensitive but that can be taken out with some adjustments here and there...

If there is a Top Gun 2, I doubt you would see an F14 in it!
They have been retired for seven years. Expect to see F18's.

Nothing to contribute here except an F-14 would be pretty amazing. And maybe a little expensive.

Eflite F14 would be awesome , I think they can probably come out with a single fan unit with bifurcated pipe thats what most model manufactures do with F 15 F18 . etc

Originally Posted by P. Richards

Jet Hangar Hobbies came out with a twin 70mm F-14 which was a builders kit.
with the reliability of the eflight 70mm fan they could easily design an arf F-14
that would not be too big and sell like hot cakes.
The swing wing mechanism has been worked out, they can just improve on a current system.

P. Richards aka SwatTeam

Thanks! I took a solid look at the Jet Hangar Hobbies setup, it looks tempting, but as a builders kit there's a pretty good chance I would get lost, go wrong, or screw it up in some way. I'm also a woeful decorator. All of the reasons why I think this could be a pretty great ARTF kit by E-Flite or another similar ARTF house.

Just want to put this here also:

F-14 Tomcat Tribute - The Best Flybys (2 min 6 sec)

Prefer a f-15 with fiberglass fuselage.foam core wings.

Thanks! I took a solid look at the Jet Hangar Hobbies setup, it looks tempting, but as a builders kit there's a pretty good chance I would get lost, go wrong, or screw it up in some way. I'm also a woeful decorator. All of the reasons why I think this could be a pretty great ARTF kit by E-Flite or another similar ARTF house.

Yes it is a builders kit I try talking to Larry about putting out an arf he did not comment on it , looks like allot of work and would be very pricy .

An ARTF version of the F14 at even 50% more cost than the Habu32 would sell I would bet.

Originally Posted by Quandry

An ARTF version of the F14 at even 50% more cost than the Habu32 would sell I would bet.

Matters the size, if it's over 5' long then I'd go for it..

A twin 80mm F14 wings swept back would be faster than the Habu 32 soooooo yeah...

Need to make it larger and stuff...

11lbs of thrust static 11lbs plane AUW...

A twin 80mm would be pretty big though right? not quite two Habu 32's next to each other but nearly there!!

Lets be realistic here. E-Flite will never make anything this complex in fiberglass. Way to complex. Way too expensive. The crash rate will be astonishing and Horizon will definitely not want to take their profit and replace airframes for those to catch on to the learning curve of flying one of these with its wings swept back. Yes, gyros would help, but do you actually realisticly see them producing something this complex? It sure would be awesome though.

as cool asit would be..it would cost a ton...and people are crashing f4s left and right....f14 would not be any easier to fly.