MAW Decals 1/48 LAU-7/A Sidewinder Corrected Missile Rails First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Here is a really nice no-brainer enhancement for your next Hasegawa 1/48 F-14 Tomcat. The LAU-7 missile rails that mount to the sides of the wing glove pylon for the AIM-9 Sidewinder are usable out of the box if you're mounting an AIM-9 to the rail. If you don't mount a missile, you have a small problem.

The kit missile rail (and this is common with most other AIM-9 missile rails in kits out there) is nothing more than a styrene stub shaped like a LAU-7. What AMS modelers will do is run very fine Evergreen styrene on the missile adapter to recreate the actual missile rails onto which the Sidewinder slides.

Take a look at the enlarged image of this nice replacement LAU-7. Not only are the rails there, so are the recesses into the pylon for the umbilical attachment point access. You can also see in this image that the pylon also has the proper mounting stubs pre-molded to fit into the Hasegawa wing glove pylon. This is literally a drop-fit upgrade to the Hasegawa kit.

What this set will do for your next Tomcat built is give you additional details to show off if you leave your AIM-9's off the aircraft or even give them a more realistic appearance as they sit inside the rail recesses of these improved rails.

Note: While these are designed for the Hasegawa kit, these will also work nicely with the Academy kit as long as you remove the two stubs on the pylon adapter.

For more information about this set and the other releases from MAW-Decals, visit their website at http://www.mawdecals.com/.

My sincere thanks to MAW-Decals Decals for this review sample!