These came out in 2008 or thereabouts, so they've been out a while. A couple years ago, my local HobbyTown store had one that eventually got discounted after being on the shelf for a while. Sould have gotten it then, but it was only recently that I decided I wanted one. TheFlyingMule still has the VF-84 and Black Knights versions for about $150 with free shipping.
Do not expect it to be like a BBI or for that matter 21c 1:32 plane. This is essentially pre-painted snap-together model kit and quite a bit of assembly is required! There are a about 167 pieces. Most of these are bagged, painted parts. Only the pitot tubes were on a plastic sprue. The kit was odd in the sense that some of it came already partially assembled (like the main fuselage body) which you then had to disassemble to insert all the interior detail pieces, and then reassemble. The parts fit together tightly and stay assembled quite well, but I glued a lot of the main body parts and detail pieces that did not need to move (or be removed) to make the model more sturdy. I left the main fuselage "panels" unglued so that they can be removed to view the interior, but if they prove problematic at some point down the road, I'll likely glue them in place...
The cockpit is nicely detailed, though nothing like the BBI F-4 cockpit for comparison. You can remove a panel that exposes the 20mm cannon workings, and a couple panes remove from the upper surface of the fuselage to expose the wing extension mechanisms, fuel tanks, electric components, and best of all, the engines. One engine is partially clear to show all the fan blades and afterburner. Panels also open on one of the tails, horizontal stabilizers, and wings; part of the left engine nacelle opens on the under side to view the underside of the jet engine. There is a second non-transparent engine piece included as well.
The plane has lots of working features: opening nosecone with movable radar, opening cockpit with instruments and ejection seats, working glove vanes, working air break, movable wings (they do not move in sync), tilting stabilizers, movable arrestor hook, working landing gear bay doors, removable ordinance, working crew steps with optional boarding ladder piece, and well you get the idea. The landing gear are designed to be plug-in-place, similar to the BBI F-4. The figures are particularly well done - both the pilot and RIO figures are designed to be slightly different, with arms in different poses, for variety. The figures even have a little articulation to them (moving arms and heads). The VF-84 markings on the helmets are reproduced well.
As I've likely indicated above, there are a lot of positive points about the model, but I have a few beefs as well. My first is the paint apps. While generally good, there are some small flaws that are reminiscient of the stuff we used to see on 21c models. They did not do a good job of blending the chevron markings and national insignia on the front left of the fuselage over the crew ladder and step pieces. There are some places where the paint, particularly the transition between the gray upper surfaces and white undersides have a slight misalignment where seams meet. I also found that I had to do some minor touch up with flat black paint on the canopy framing and a couple seams directly in front and behind the cockpit. There appears to be differing shades of white in places on the underside (some is a slight darker weathered shade, other white areas are bright), but its not that noticable... No real weathering, but thats probably a good thing considering the JSI spot fiasco
My second major beef concerns slight inaccuracies with some of the markings. Overall, they got the general correct look for a VF-84 F-14 as it would have looked possibly in the late 1970s-early 1980s. But there were some funny things like the carrier name USS Nimitz being emblazoned on the side of the intake (just passed the red jet intake warning markings). That should be in smaller letters on the leading edge over the glove vanes. The Phoneix missiles also had a "Beware of Intake" label on them - not that Phoneix missiles have jet intakes
Those were easy to cover with white paint. No labeling or details on the sidewinders or sparrow missiles. The tails also do not sit at an angle like on the real plane. So there is just stuff like that which is a little annoying, but not enough to kill the appeal of the model for me at least. One can also see the removable panel seams up close, but they do close tightly. Overall, I am happy with the model. It was nice to spend a Saturday morning/afternoon building it. Its very nice that I did not have to paint the entire thing and only do a little gluing. It does go well with the BBI S1 F-4 Phantom (VF-84) and both are scaled correctly. its surprising how much larger the F-14 is over the F-4... I really think that the BBI F-4 is the superior product in many ways (certainly in cockpit detail and paint applications) but the Frame Master F-14 has a ton of interior details and parts, thus having the ability to make its own unique display. Its also a decent looking F-14 in 1:32 scale, and there aren't many of those!
A pre-painted snap-together kit might have been an interesting way for 21c to have gone with their planes. They did something similar with some of the 32x WWII tanks and had unpainted kits of some 32x aircraft, but never did anything like that with their 1:18 aircraft or vehicles. It was in many ways more satisfying to have built the Frame Master F-14, even correcting some of the small errors, rather than just pulling it out of a box and sticking on a couple pieces to have a finished model.
I would recommend the Frame Master F-14, but would remind anyone purchasing one that it is not like our BBI and 21c 1:32 scale prebuilt items, instead being an elaborate snap-kit. If anyone else gets one - or has one and wants to chime in - I'll be curious to hear what you think
