[EDIT: For more views of this model, please see my Scraps section; for an image of the Catlass in flight, see http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3053665/ .]

It all started about three decades ago, when I paid a visit to Travel Town in L.A.'s Griffith Park. One of the displays was an ancient fighter of swoopy aspect, reminding me of the futuristic artwork of Wally Wood. It wasn't until much later that I learned the relic was an F7U Cutlass, an interesting but ultimately doomed fighter craft (see John Moore's The Wrong Stuff, an entertaining look into aviation goofs in the 1950s).

While the Cutlass looked great from the engine inlets back, I never really liked its ungainly nose and high, spindly front landing gear, both necessitated by the high angle of attack required by its original design.

Mulling it over, I realized that the problem had been solved in later aircraft through the use of canards on the nose, and, since I had both a Cutlass kit and an F-14 Tomcat kit lurking about, I decided to throw together a quick and dirty "mule" to see just how well my concept would come out.

It exceeded my wildest expectations. With the addition of front canards (donated from a small scale F-86's tail), the resulting "Catlass" has got to be one of the prettiest planes I've ever seen. The F-14's nose and cockpit, amazingly, fit right in place with only minimal sanding... and this thing looks GREAT from all angles, as you're going to see.

This photo essay will also demonstrate the power of black and white imagery; I shot these pics with my digital camera, and they came out a sickly yellow. One quick run through GraphicConverter, and they're now crisp greyscale...

Modelwork and photography © me.