Alright guys, I see that there are dozens of threads on this aircraft, but almost all of them are from Banana hobby , Starmax and other sellers who sell them semi constructed, so that just basic parts have to be put together, however I have found only two threads that cover almost entire construction of the Airframe only version. I got mine from Hobby King totally without any instructions except those to warn me to fly it safely , right how I'm gonna fly it safely if I can't put it together in a first place?!
So I did quite a research on forums and found two very helpful threads:

the one from J.E. Johnson
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1068584

and from Colin on HK forums
http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbyking/f...s.asp?TID=8597

however, just by combining solutions from this two threads I believe this plane can be put together by a person who never build foamy EDF before.

So in this this thread I will do my best to show my build as detail as possible, with my own solutions and eventual mods.

My idea in building any plane is to make it as close as possible to real aircraft, so no cheating holes, elevons and similar stuff that real F-14 wouldn't have will I do!

Suggestions and help is more then welcome.

ok here i just put it together hanging by a thread

Ok, here is how it all basically looks after you take it out of the box , except the electronics, wings and landing gear i just put together yesterday but i will take them apart and show again the "how to" and also how put stick water decals. Basically all the questions I had 2 months ago that I couldn't find on this forum, hopefully this thread will help someone who also got ARF setup without ANY instructions

Alright, let's start with stock 60mm EDF unit which btw. is not of best quality , and holes for engine mount are really "made in China"

In photos, parts that come with the unit + Turnigy 5000kv engine, ok now, I purchased recommended engine on HK but engine obviously don't fit to the unit without "surgery" . So what you will require is old soldering iron that you don't use anymore , only important thing is it can heat up, and than make hole on part of EDF as I made for the wires to come out, hole start about 7mm from the edge and is about 2cm by 7mm wide. I recommend using dremill to sand it and make it smooth , than mount engine with only 2 screws on two "proper" holes on EDF to fit the engine, put on propeller and try to spin the engine and see if it turns without jamming, if it spins freely drill other two holes properly and put other two screw, beware not to make too big hole.
Once you mounted the engine with all 4 screw , propeller will probably have small jamming problem on one side , i solved this with dremill by sanding part of EDF housing where propeller jammed.
Once all that is done , put nuts on propeller , tight it well and add spinner , however I recommend two things here, since i read and heard quite on many F-14 owners that this spinner tends to fall off; first , put a M2 nut washer on the spinner and put locktite on the nut. That should do
I will put superglue on rear plastic cone part but not just yet, I have some plans with it (LED fire imitation) , but If you don't intend to do that, feel free to superglue it.

looking good. I have one(the black playboy version) coming from HK also.....so ill keep an eye on this thread

And the prize to the jet with the most threads goes to........ Starmax/blitz F-14 tomcat!!!!

^^^ -1

Jeeze man, the guy is just trying to compile all the helpful stuff in one place to save someone some time and then show what he does to modify the plane.

What would you rather see? Old threads dredged up or new threads? Personally I don't think you can have too many threads about a particular airframe, especially one as troubled as this one is. Also I'm not a big fan of someone 'taking over', for lack of a better phrase, someones build thread with a start to finish, step by step build of how they did their plane. Don't get me wrong, a pic or 2 of how a difficult problem was solved or showing setups are all good, just the blatant hijacking of some threads annoys me but I guess since I've been registered for 7 years (quite a few more as a lurker) I'm a bit 'old school'

Go for it specnaz! I have one of these on the build pile so am looking forward to seeing what mods you do

Haha sorry just having a fun pointless hack, Hope it all goes well, i have three of these. One is 2 years old and still honks along, the second ive modded heaps tried to fly it twice but it just wont fly properly. Hopefully ill sort it out soon and finally get it all correct with the third one. I'm hoping to make new intakes, or at least vac form over the original foam ones to decrease the wallthickness so i dont have to use cheater holes. Intakes are useless if you want to make any kind of real power. Cheater holes on the underside ive found are a big no no. Amazingly, the stock stuff on my first F-14 on 4S is still going without missing a beat. werid huh.

today I will continue the build and put new pics, guys I've written on beginning of this thread my reasons to start it, there is on intention of stealing someones threads or anything like that, sure there are lots of threads on this F-14 but only 1 covers the build and only partially , and most others are RTF , this one is ARF and must be builded from scratch, not to mention that RTF versions from Starmax/Blizt include at least SOME manual, HobbyKing includes NONE

I got mine from HK and I'm pretty sure it had a manual.

I didn't refer to you as stealing someones build thread, but as an example, you've started this then all of a I sudden if I come in out of nowhere and just blatantly start posting all my pics from start to finish and 'take over' the thread, that's the kind of stuff I can't stand.

well mine didn't have a manual

the thread you refer to that i supposedly "stole" was an not as complete build as I plan to post this thread, besides it was an old thread and lots of posts, so if someone new with brand new F-14 came and asked a question , the builder in the thread wouldn't reply, as it happen in my case, I was even sending PM messages to builders and got limited info or no reply at all

You posted in another F-14 thread? Sorry I had no idea, I wasn't referring to you at all.

The other thing i found out is, in case you havnt found them, the weapons are in a secret hatch underneath the box.

Yes Benjo, i found them already, thx anyway. I planned to build yesterday but felt too tired so hopefully I will continue this days, I just made brand new order from HK because i realized I'm missing UBEC for my Rx