Carrier Builders Yard, whats on the Slipway

[gtbred]

a little work on the CVA-62

[Pieter]

Nice to see you building again. Is that a 3d printed island?

[gtbred]

Yes,thanks to Steve Larsen(ModelMonkey) still need to clean up around the walkways. But satisfied it is turning out okay. Glad to be back!

[Pieter]

As it is shelfofdoom january I thought it would be good idea to work on on of my carriers for a month or so. The Ark Royal kit by Atlantic models is actually pretty decent and just wound up on the shelf as IHP and Trumpeter kept offering excellent cold war carriers. A Trumpeter carrier will show up here once I have finished Ark Royal.
Since restarting her last week a few things have happened.
"Sailor" was binge watched again looking for details.
I painted and attached the -very red- boats. Apart form the cutters all of them are from different sources as he kit boats did not fit

I have painted the excellent yellow gear by Starling in ..eeehm... yellow!

Also from Starling are the recently arrived deck crew. Still to be primed and painted.

The hull is now getting ready to be put on a base. Ark Royal seems to have been diving head on in any kind of sea so that is the look I am after.
The resin hull is still dry fitted on the base here.

Will start painting the base tomorrow.

[mmaresm]

I have been working on BOTH Chinese A/C .... At the Same Time.....





Both can be found on the posting of "Liaoning and Shandong"!!!

M

[Pieter]

Nice no-so-flattops. And you are not the only once doing multiple builds.

[Pieter]

More Ark Royal progress.
Painting the seacape has started. This is mostly about adding deep blue green and white artist acrylics to a watercolor paper base. Tomorrow I will start adding acrylic gel to the surface.

And I have started to work on the radar masts and safety netting. These will only be added to the ship once it has been secured to its base but I can do some preliminary work by painting the parts.

[Neptune]

Love your picture titles and also the ship One sometimes wonders where you get sidetracked on projects. Doesn't appear to be that much job to complete it, but I may be mistaken. Good luck in any case

[Pieter]

Hey Roel, nice that you read the captions. The main reason for getting distracted is having this huge amount of information available on the internet, seeing a GA drawing of a ship while looking for a good picture of Ark Royals' height finder radars and thinking 'that will be a nice and quick scratchbuild'. Before you know it another year has gone by.
The radars on AR are actually the reason a month finishing time is an interesting target. Type 965s, you've got to love them..

[mconnelley]

Hello:

Well, there's more than a carrier in the yard. In addition to the Enterprise, the Texas is a recent arrival. And (dare I mention it!) there's an airplane too. A giant round orange airplane.

Mike

[Pieter]

More on Ark Royal. The hull has now been fixed on its base.

I could finally add all the parts that normally fly into my resident black hole if I keep handling the hull.
And now I could build up the large wave which was always present when AR would turn into the wind to launch aircraft. She would really dive into a swell.

The hull has been put aside for now and I am working on the island and the various radars. After a full evening' work I had one fore mast.

It is interesting how different Peter Hall of Atlantic Models' approach to designing PE structures as compared to other manufacturers.
About a year ago I spent a few weeks building the island and radars of an Orange Hobby Hermes, a ship very similar in design to Ark Royal.
Orange Hobby gives you a massive amount of PE with deep fold lines to make sure you glue everything in the right place.
This looks nice but as many parts are attached to others on the photo etch fret any small mistake in folding has a tendency to multiply in the rest of the stucture.
This meant for a non professional builder like me that after lots of effort I had to live with a main mast that is somewhat skewed to starboard and many smaller sub-parts thst had to be cut off and re-attached. Atlantic models' masts and radars have only a few parts directly attached and leaves it to the modeler to keep everything aligned to each other.
Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages but so far I'm feeling less burned out with the Ark Royal kit than with Hermes. Hermes will be finished. In a few years.

[Pieter]

A short update.
The height finder radars in the kit are nice but researching them lead to a bit of a reference rabbit hole so they had to be rebuild.

And after that I assembled the rest of the masts on the island. Mainmast and the base for the forward 965 were very quick builds. The parabolic antenna thing on top of the bridge was useless however (casting sprue on the face of the parabolic dish) so it was replaced by a soviet Kite Screech radar from the spares box.
i added some 30 deck floodlights by cutting .5mm styrene rod at an angle. And so the island is ready to be pinned/glued to the base.

[Pieter]

"-Many men have tried.
-They tried and failed?
-Ooh no. They tried and use the GMM set."
So I did try to use the various(25) seperate parts of the kits' type 965 radars, get them absolutely straight and consistent and to do this twice.
After a while I gave up and dug out my old GMM Modern British Navy sets and used them instead.
I really hope GMMs new owners will continue to sell these old sets as GMM is really nice for semi skilled modelers like me.
The pictures only show the forward 965 as my camera refused to focus on a black PE structure.

matras1.JPG (37.12 KiB) Viewed 3135 times

matras2.JPG (37.44 KiB) Viewed 3135 times

I have also put the bridle catcher in place as well as the white/red structure at the front end of the deck.
Anyone know what the name of this thing is?

And then there is all the smaller things. Ark Royal had a number of flightdeck floodlights though luckily not as many as Hermes in 1982. And then there are the corvus decoy rocket launcher (beautifully done in PE), searchlights, 'traffic' lights etc.
By now I have finished the build of the ship except the HF antenna part which will only be placed on the model once the airgroup is on as it is rather fragile.
This was a nice shelfofdoom january project and the build will continue once I have received the extra parts and decals I need for the airgroup.

flycoclutter.JPG (29.81 KiB) Viewed 3135 times

[NavyShooter]

I had my Bonnie out over the weekend at the local boat show, where the club setup a display.

[Pieter]

Nice Bonnie. And a nice X wing as well. Does it have full CAF markings?

[G. Shoda]

Wow! I would like to have been able to see your great looking model at the boat show.

[gtbred]

Nice Bonnie. And a nice X wing as well. Does it have full CAF markings?

[NavyShooter]

There are indeed 'correct' RCN Roundels on the X-wing. And the CF-100. And the CF-188. And the CF-35.



The things we do for fun!

[mmaresm]

Hello, All!!!

I Just finished my PLAN Liaoning as a 'Training A/C'...with yellow "test article a-c" (so few a-c)!!!











Working on Shandong CV-17...nearly 98% completed model, with 90% completed Project!!

Mario