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Interested primarily in WW II aircraft carriers in 1/700 scale, but branching out lately into some 1/72 aircraft, starting with carrier planes but more recently RAF and Luftwaffe as well. And hoping to get somewhere on my backlog of Star Trek kits. A scratchbuilt launch umbilical tower for my 1/200 AMT Apollo/Saturn V is my white whale.
Back in 1992-1993 I used Larry Gertner's article on accurizing a Hasegawa Essex kit to represent the Lexington (CV-16) in June 1944. After finishing that model in 1993, I wanted to build one that was as different as possible, and bought [...]
This is a "double build" of the same subject - the Essex class aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard (CV-CVA-31) as it appeared in 1945 off Japan and 23 years later in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam. (Build log is at (link) ).
My [...]
2020 was definitely a themed year. When the year started I had two Essex class carrier projects underway, and at the end of the year - still two underway.
IntrepidCorrected – Revell’s Classic 1/720 Essex Class Carrier (Corrected)
For [...]
The USS Oriskany (CV-34) was the 24th and last Essex-class aircraft carrier to be commissioned. Construction on her was stopped in 1946 and she was completed in the fall of 1950 to a new design, SCB-27A, which better accommodated the [...]
It took three days short of a year, but I am finally calling my resurrection build of a 1980 Revell 1/530 Essex-clas angled deck carrier done. (Build log at (link) )
The model started out as a Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) that I built in [...]
For many modelers of World War II ships, Revell's 1/720 scale model of the USS Intrepid (CV – 11) was an early favorite. It was cheap (two dollars, compared to four dollars for a Tamiya Akagi), easy to build, and gave you a big [...]
For the past few weeks I've usually gotten one more swing arm for the LUT up each weekend, with corresponding work to the pad base. But for the past several days the pad and the mobile launcher have taken a back seat to improvements to [...]
I got back to work on the LUT yesterday, intending to complete some piping, continue work on the launch pad support stands, and start figuring out how to model the swing arms.
The first two were straightforward, but the third involved what [...]
I've had this old Matchbox 1/700 Fletcher destroyer model for at least 25 years. I had built it partway down to the detail parts and left it, as shown in the picture to the right (no U.S. flag). Last weekend I decided that I wanted to [...]
Most Saturn V mobile launcher/LUT models use the LUT to show off the crawler/transporter that transported the complete stack from the VAB to Pad 39, as shown above. As handsome as this, I decided to show my LUT on the pad instead for two [...]
