Detail and Wonder has issued a replacement and highly detailed landing gear set for Tamiya’s 1/48^th F-14A. The set includes a complete set of wheels, both main and nose along with separate hubs. a bag of metal supports and three 3D Printed landing gear- left, right and nose gear.

To start, the instructions are wonderful and coded. The main parts are 3D printed. If you have never seen a 3D printed part, the process requires supports to make sure the prints are good. To start the prep of the parts, you cut off the big outside supports which are there protect the parts. As you can see from the pictures, the packaging is superb. All the inner supports are marked in red in the instructions. To remove the supports, I used a very good pair of sprue nippers and used a set of small scissors. A quick note- these landing gear have all the hydraulic and brake lines in it and they are as fine as hair. The key think is to verify twice and cut once. The supports come off easily but the closer you can come to the part, the less sanding later.

For the nose gear, it comes in 5 parts. To make these strong, specific sizes of metal tubing is run through the insides. For the left and right main gear, these are only two parts but again, lots of lines and parts. They are reinforced with metal. Once everything is assembled, I masked the metal parts and primed the parts with Tamiya Fine Primer. Everything was then given a quote of white. I picked up some of the lines in black based on the pictures. A black wash and decals from the Tamiya kit were added and then flat coated. The tires were built and added.

As soon as you can see from the comparison pics, these are head and shoulders above the already nice Tamya kit. If you want to take your kit to the next level, these are great. Definitely recommended.

My thanks to Detail and Wonder for the chance to review this great set.