[Phantom Phan1200]

Some people have said it's wrong to put weapons on their Century Grim Reapers F-14 because it was a show bird only.
Down the road from me at the NAS Deland Museum (located at the Deland Airport) we have a F-14 in the same exact color scheme.
This a/c was not pulled out of a boneyard an painted in these colors either.
The a/c was flown in on it's own power in 2005 & retired from active service on the spot by the Navy during a big ceremony.
As far as I knew our F-14 also saw combat in the gulf prior to it's retirement.

If the CW model is a show bird because of it's paint scheme than what explains the F-14 in Deland?
Below are some pices I shot of #103 while on display last year, under those are pics of its arrival at the NAS Deland Museum from another site.

[David Hingtgen]

I'm not following/understanding your question.

[Andrew]

I think maybe he is asking why CW's VF-101 is different from that in the Photo

[lanslide]

No, Andrew asked the question from another thread regarding this version. Below is the copy/paste from the thread:

Re: Pics: Grim Reaper "Bombcat"

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Actually, that bird being a show bird and all, i thought it never had any load outs

[lanslide]

Wow Phantom - nice pics again! You took your CW out front again and photo-shopped in the background didn't ya?! Very realistic - just shows you how good the CW model really is.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by lanslide

Wow Phantom - nice pics again! You took your CW out front again and photo-shopped in the background didn't ya?! Very realistic - just shows you how good the CW model really is.

hmm the first thing that strikes me that its not the same bird is the chin pod. D's have a double chin pod

[lanslide]

But it has 'D' nozzles doesn't it? Oh Daaaaaaavid...!

[David Hingtgen]

The plane in Florida is 161426, one of the first A's ever to be converted to a B. Spent most of its career with VF-143. And it's not a TARPS plane.

[Panther10]

Not to mention that this plane is AD103 while the century version is AD164. I don't remember seeing AD103 fly with those particular colors before. The plane must have been restored during post flight-ops, because AD103 was in the standard low-viz scheme. It was AD101 AD164 which had accompanied each other at NAS Oceana along with the rest of the Grim Reaper squadron as CAG planes.

[PappyB]

Color me confused -- but man, my CW Grim Reaper looks SWEEET with the loadout so I'm leaving it on.