The Ship Model Forum

Hey Steven, that is a massive amount of work you have been doing on this kit. The result looks nice though. About the dark ribbon on the hanger walls, most of my color pictures of hanger decks look like they were the same non-slip color as the hangar deck. I think is was a way to hide the soot and grime that comes with maintaining 90-ish jet aircraft. As I want to actually see all this in november I think you should attempt to light the hangar. Just ignore the resin ceiling and put in some LEDs. The ceiling is difficult to see unless you have flashlight and a mirror.

Too late, Pieter, the ceinling is already shaped. you'll see this in the next update. But I think it will work out fine, even with lighting.

I wanted a fast method of releasing a number of doors from the printing blocks. Because these are flat, they can be clamped between two rulers. A line was engraved first to guide the break.





Some taps of a hammer and most of the cuts are straight. The bad ones will be glued as the inner half of the door. Two of them will be even almost invisible and I have to shorten them because I shortened the wall too much.





For a moment I contemplated a replacement ceiling made from styrene plate and strips, but it would be stupid to remain with a large unused ceiling in resin that might just fit with some adaptation. So I started on the hardest section at the back.



I cut out this part along the walls of the smaller 1/400 hangar. I used a knife and traced the edges and then cracked small pieces off with the excellent Greenstuff thin-bladed nipper. Most of the flat parts snapped along the trace, it(s just the honeycomb structure that somtimes causes problems so I took care to cut that too. I made holes where some of the internal structures come, because of the support beams.





A view though the doors. The translucence will disappear when the deck is on top. I can now decide if I want the wiring below the ceiling. I can paint it white. A lot of PE racks will be added anyway.







At the front I noticed I had left the keel line, so I corrected it slightly. You won't see this anyway when you can't stand inside.





I tried with the deck on and I don't have to push very hard to close it.

Let's go on with the updates today.



The angled deck catapult ramp needed a different angle, here it's reapplied.



At the bow these ramps have a PE track, so I removed some material for it.





I decided to do the same for the jet blast deflectors, but these have a larger surface so I thought I could use the Proxxon mill to remove the surface geometrically. Some areas were unreachable and there was some melting happening, but I managed to create a good base for the PE parts. Some of it was milled and filed manually later on.





After some filling, the metal was applied.





The perforated kit crane is improved with two continuous PE sidewalls, but even these are adapted to the kit shape and have to be reshaped. Part of the massive plastic arm needed to be split open at the base.





The PE parts are applied to reinforce the base that was thinned considerably.





The crane base is changed too by replacing the round axle by a square beam as is visible on photo's of the recently removed crane arm. This was drilled through with a brass pin used for elevation of the arm. The base is replaced by a larger steel roundel. When the crane will be resting on a new platform attached to the hull, some cabling will be added.







Earlier I pointed out the anchor shape problem in the Otaki kit. Last week I ordered a HS Models replacement set whilst looking for some Zerstörer goodies.





The HS anchors can provide replacement for two ships ans are accompanied by some shackles and an end of fully articulated chain.





It's a pity that I don't need the chain right now, I need the ship to be at speed to launch some of its aitwing. Even then I needed to modify the hull.



The position and shape of the hawse pipe seems wrong, so I need to relocate it.



A few kit roundel parts are changed to new hawse pipe reinforcement rings. The anchors are still unstocked.



A comparison with the Otaki anchors, even the scale is improved though this is an 1/350 upgrade set.



The hawse pipes are redone.





The new anchors are in position and the old holes are filled up.



The arrestor cables are now placed on deck. I had thoroughly removed all plastic detail from it so I had to indicate the position of the PE cables. I knew the Otaki deck arrangement was slightly deformed so I wanted to base the position of the cables on an aerial photograph. I noticed that on this photograph the diagonal covers of the shock absorbing wheels seemed shorter than the PE covers. I traced the positions from the photograph.



When comparing to the PE parts, the position was comparable so I followed the Pe set instructions and added the cables to the deck. On all other pictures the covers are identical to the PE set so I didn't adapt this. The covers are held in place by the removable connecting points so they have the correct angle. The crash barrier is provided to be placed erected but I preferred it to be flat on deck so I made the necessary adaptation.





The L'Arsénal PE fuel tank racks are now prepared to be added to the now hangar ceiling. Assembling the parts is straightforward, but closing up these fine PE box structures is challenging.

After building all 17 racks for fuel tanks, it appears that you only need 13 or either 12 depending from the instruction page you prefer.



Because I rearranged the ceiling to fit into the hull, these racks are crammed into a smaller length.



I had 2 mk.25 Sea Sparrow launchers from Revell, in stead of the Terriers from the kit. According to NavSource in 1967 Sea Sparrows were provided. They even come with quite some detail in the 5 complicated parts per launcher.



The newer type 29 takes up the bulk of all reference.



But the type 25 was completely different, even with some kind of mechanical elevation device.





The obvious flaw of the Revell launcher is the omission of interior paneling. The outline is correct but you can look inside the missile canisters. I had just discarded a pile of L'Arsénal fret parts that were almost exactly fitting. 8 of these are used as paneling.



In PE, almost fitting is of course a recipe for disaster, but I managed after a while to make something out of it.





Also, why is the launcher sitting so crammed into the catwalk corner? This won't function as desired. Looking for some reference of CVN65.



8 Greenstuff LEDs are staggered into the ceiling.



They were chosen as warm white so there's a yellow shine. I might route some into the island, but then some revision is needed on that.

The airwing is now getting the first paint session. In that period all types were painted very light grey on the underside and gull grey on top. I decided to use just a layer of white in stead, you can't see a difference if there are not 20 layers. I changed the Otaki planes so they fit in the hangar and still added some detail to the landing gear, that was quite square.

I painted the hangar ceiling after masking the LEDs..



This is easier using a rattle can. It covers the PE and the resin in one go.





I prefer using Tamiya XF19 Sky Grey for the airplane camo.









As this looks quite boring, I'm modulating it with dark grey.





Lots of these ordnance parts are being painted too. The problem is that none of these are identified, I only know with what plane model they came. I guess some are anachronistic as I see bunker busters among them.



The 11 F-14's are getting the scheme for VF-1 and VF-2. Later I will add radome yellow to different types.

While painting the airwing, I used some kind of wrong radome yellow mix.





For the L'Arsénal bomb carts, simple yellow did the trick.



The same was used for the rest of the vehicles, and these were modulated with brown.





The tyres were painted with a toothpick.



Some details on the crane and fire trucks were added, like rigging and numbering.









Removal of the bomb carts was no sinecure. Especially the handle is prone to breaking.





These wheels are even smaller to paint.





These are now compacted in a small tight box. I actually lack some deck tractors, the small vehicle types only consist of 8 APU carts. About the Prowlers I discovered a design fault where L'Arsénal seems to have copied the Intruder nose cone on them. I won't be sanding down 10+ of these cones, this would probably show.





The Vikings have their white tail planes, still sporting the wrong hue of yellow.



Hawkeye props and Seaking rotors are painted NATO black. Because I got one resin prop set short, I use the PE set of the ancient cast resin L'Arsénal Hawkeyes they still sell, really the only useful part of that kit.



The Viking radomes were painted linght sand and look a lot better now. I also painted the cockpit in gloss black.





But the canopy was painted in Greenstuff colorshift pink. On the black this creates the right shine. I used it also on the Hawkeye side windows to create the golden shine these should have. The Otaki Hawkeye is being treated identically, but it will be hidden in the hangar and therefore had its wings cut.





What's left of the L'Arsénal PE are the maintenance ladders and towbars (brake pads are not needed cause this I got in resin). These ladders are a pain to construct, the PE is too thin and should be plied along the length. I got 5 out of 8 finished.



All planes are now gloss-coated to apply the Cartograf decals.



I should have ordered these decals twice to complete some of my airplane sets like the Corsairs and Tomcats, but this I'll ultimately try to resolve by scanning and copying what I'm lacking on the original sheet. On my copy I forgot to edit out the decal blue paper and I got some creasing of the liquid decal film, but these small decals can still partly be used. Each should be cut, so I can't use the text insignia.



But first I decided to try the Cartograf decals. On 6 of the Corsair II's, a gorgeous livery is applied.





It could have been the perfect decal set, but it isn't that sophisticated to also include the airframe numbers like for example Pontos did in my Essex project. All are now showing the "300" numbers on the nose, wingtip and tailplane. The same happened to the other plane type airframe decals. If I had lots of generic small number decals I might have been able to resolve this, but I won't scratch this freehand painting. On this level I would probably botch that. So it's like that now, which also seems acceptable.



There are VF1 and VF2 F-14 liveries in the set. They couldn't have matched better on these resin planes. I don't know what airwing Revell had provided in their own Enterprise kit, probably not the Otaki originals.











Only 2 Vigilante sets are included, so I made 3 copies. NTS: still paint these tyres.



The resin Hawkeyes got an original decalset, the Otaki one will get a copy.



For my 5 printed resin Intruders and one Otaki one I got original decals. But Revell apparently omitted any Prowlers or Vikings in the kit. I'll only be able to copy from the Intruder set for both of these types so I might go scrounging on the web.



The two most flight-ready Seakings get an original decalset. Here the fit of the largest decal is not that well.



So at the moment this is the airwing with the original Cartograf decals:

Wow, those little planes are great.

Thanks, Joelle.

First results of the homemade decals, copied on white decal film.



These decals have to be cut along the ink lines to remove the blue background areas, whereas in a transparent decal you can offset the cut a bit. this also makes fine text impossible to decal. I'll make a transparant film decal copy for that. I tried to include a bit of the blue background on the Corsair nose decals, so I could include the squadron number.



My copies can't match the original decals because some aliasing happened and the blue migrated to the white during liquid decal film covering. I tried to repair damage on these frail decals with some blue paint.





VF-2 Bounty Hunters made for a nice copy as compared with the original. I had to sketch the NK stencils with a fineliner, but these could later be finetuned with a scalpel because there was a gloss coat under it.



With some VF1 copies I managed to decal all F14's, Corsairs and most Intruders with white insignia. Vigilantes all have roundels but no tailplane decals.



Then there are left the Prowlers "Garudas", knowing that there is a Starfighter 1/350 edition of their Nimitz transfer a few years later. But for me in Europe this would prove hard to get to and also insufficient in number (8 out of 11 needed). Also 10 Vikings from squadron "Dragon Fires" are needed, that are not existing in decal sets. I'll have to get creative in a moment.

The Starfighter instruction sheet was used as an overlay for my attempt at designing decals on 1/400. I measuerd the length of the airframe as 46mm and changed the image dimension. Then I drew over the jpeg artifacts and created coloful and sharp decals for the tail and the Garuda striping. I then mirrored and copied until I had enough for all. Because of the bright yellow stripe with black edge I used white decal film, so cutting out the curved stripe was a pain. For the Valkyries text and numbers were printed on transparent decal film. This will also be done for the Garudas.



Using the transparent decals in conjunction with the bright colors on the white film decals.





NAVY-markings for the Corsairs are turning out better than the color work.



The Garuda tail was an easy application. Also the red-white striped ailerons.







https://skywarriors-gallery.com/vaq-134sub.htm

Along the side stripes some white film will have to be removed. Starfighter had some black walkway but ultimately I didn't use this as it doens't show on the Enterprise pictures. Maybe a later addition.