WIP, Tamiya 350 Enterprise

 Nice looking build so far! Glad you are finally working on the old girl, but it seems to be missing something... I don't know. Maybe..A FORKLIFT!! Yeah, that would be cool! I think that's what it needs .

 Nice work!                                       60

38 hose reels are complete...

Phew, wasn't looking forward to building all of them but I finally just bellied up, got into a groove and got them out of the way.

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My approach after the prototype was complete was to measure the distance between the inside of the reels, add the width of the x-acto #11 blade. I then attached round sprue to a piece of blue tape and cut the center sections to length; the gap is 2.05mm. I then attached the reel sides to the base with CA. After the reels sides dried I then spread to the sides to allow the center piece to be inserted. I dipped one side of the center piece in CA and slid it into place. After one side dried I used a toothpick to apply CA to the side and used my self closing tweezers to close things up for the final fit.

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It's inevitable that the carpet monster will strike when working on these things so I bring in the air cav. I empty the vacuum bag and make a few strafing flights over the last location of the monster. When faced with overwhelming air superiority the monster gives up my parts. Even parts this delicate survive the trip into the bag which really surprises me.

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All done. All 38 reels, 152 parts made it to the end. There are spares in the WEM set so those are going into the PE spares box. With some mods they can be used for ship's wheels, capstans and other things. Next step is to prime and paint these and then attach monofilament for the appearance of hoses. I'm still trying to figure out how to make nozzles for the ends. One or two of the hoses will be pulled out for filling a couple of planes on the stern.

 Show the carpet monster who is KING, Dogbert!! Way to go. We await this beauty. Keep sharing, please!

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Memorial weekend saw some progress, not as much as I wanted because I was concentrating on finishing my 350 scale Ohio class boomer and King Tiger diorama for a local IPMS show.

Started drilling out some of the intake and exhaust on the planes. Some are coming out awesome and others not so much. The odd ones will probably go into the hanger. Most of the problem is I just start the hole at the wrong angle and the hole doesn't look to be at the right angle. More on this and pics to come. Anyways...

I finished all 104 raft flotation racks from Tom's and cut out and trimmed the raft canisters. I've seen lots of people ask about using PE and I found that it's not very difficult at all, with some right tools. I use pliers that are not grooved, meaning that there are no grooves on the inside surface. Problem with grooves is that if you hold the part tightly you'll get grooves imprinted in the brass, nuff said about that. These parts are so small that pliers are necessary as you ca't use a PE fold table.

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This is the flotation rack fret. The quality is very nice and the brass is thin. I use a piece of 6x6 kitchen tile and a #11 x-acto blade to cut the pieces out. I try to be exact as sanding  these peices afterwords pretty much destroys them, at least my findings so far. I fully appreciate Tom's family continuing the business after his passing.

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I then line up the part where the first fold is to occur with the end of my blunt nose pliers and bend the part with either the side of my knife or my finger nail.

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After the first fold I rotate the piece and repeat. There is a tab at the top of the piece, after the second bend I fold the tab down into place.

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I then place the piece into the jaws and light hold it. This sets the side walls perpinducular and closes them in on the tab that is at the top. It doesn't require much pressure to squeeze in the walls and make everything line up. The piece is now ready for the last bend, I push up the bottom tab agaist the wall of the pliers and voila, one down, 103 more to go.

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Ahh, the finished product. Now to finish cleaning up the canisters, paint the racks and start attaching them. All in all this part of the construction is 318 parts and about 6 hours just cutting and folding. I never imagined how many parts (and $) this carrier would consume.

Wife's cousin Eddie made a surprise drop in on Saturday while I was folding the canister racks, he was wondering what I was working on so I showed him. He perked up and said, " I was on the Prize for 3 years in the early 80's" woohoo, he was already my friend but now he's now my most favorite friend in the world. He was a white shirt on deck and the hanger deck. He told me all about flex deck plane arrangements including the Alert Five, locked deck, launch only and recovery only modes. He gave me some advise on the hanger deck, I had made some of the watch overhangs that are high up and the bulkheads of the hanger deck, he advised what they were used for, how the worked and the arrangement of equipment on the hanger deck. I had enough planes ready that we went through a ouija board exercise on both the hanger and flight decks :-).

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Here's the general arrangement from the bow, looking aft. Some aircraft were moved a bit whilewe populated the flight deck but this is how they were stacked in. He had some cool stories about mishaps by the aircraft handlers both in bumping things and testing. One time an A6 caught fire because the avionics system was fired up for testing and they forgot to remove a cover from the pitot tube and a cooling vent. The equipment overheated and started a fire in the avionics bay. The guys in the watch booths spotted it, closed the fire tight doors and started the sprinklers. The sprinklers are contolled in zones so you can either spot treat the deck or flood it depending on the situation. All along the bulkheads are fire, eye wash, electrical and other necessary items with marking high on the bulkheads. I found a guy who has these markings at http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=34259. I have some decal paper and plan on printing these soon. In this pic you can see one of my scratch lookout booths laying on the deck, we were using this one for placement of the lookouts. This one is the biggest and sits forward of the fire doors. The two clear odd looking planes are EA-6B's from Trumpeter, they still have lots of work to go.  The E2 in the aft starboard corner is in storage and generally had lots of stuff stored around it. The aft port area where the choppers are is generally where the admirals yacht was kept. My rear bulkhead doesn't go back far enough but that's fine for me. Will have to find a nice 350 scale yacht to sit in there, gotta keep the admiral happy. The little box area on the forward port bulkhead is the gym, I didn't go into much detail here since it really won't be seen once the flight deck goes on.

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Here's the flight deck, we didn't do alot here since I showed him all of the pics I have but he did change some of my ideas a tad. I had planned on having the C2 seen aft of the island here more forward with the crew unloading cargo and passengers disembarking to the island. He advised that generally during landing ops the C2 would land and taxi to the position where it is on the deck. There were many reasons but the aft cargo door brought in lots of cool air to help keep the temp down inside the aircraft while the crew worked. This position also helps protect the passengers and work crew from the landing area and a potential cable break. My favorite little forklift is at the cargo door and will be fitted with a pallet for the cargo to be placed on.

After 1 hour of this play and talk the wives finally asked if we were going to stop playing with the toys, why I asked, so we can watch TV!

I wanted to have a crew member painting an area on the island, cousin Eddie did this many times. I was going to build a scissor or man lift for this, he said nope. They just put a man box on a forklift and rasied you into position to paint, scary stuff as the ship rolls.

Aside from filling and sanding construction seams I haven't done much with the island or hull. Have to get working on the R2 (CIWS) deck modifications on the stern and some other hull mods. I already sanded the ladders and hatches off, to be replaced with PE. Perhaps this weekend will see the hanger along further and tape and prep for painting the lower section of the hull. I expect that once I get some traction this thing will move along quick towards the end since the small stuff will be done and ready to attach.  

Thanks everyone for comments so far.

I talked to a photographer friend and showed him my pics, he was horrified that I would show anyone those, I knew they weren't magazine quality. He says I need another 600 bucks in a macro lens and some real lights. I wonder then why my cell phone phone camera takes better pics in some cases than my D-SLR, hmmm. He did admit that shooting metal objects is difficult because of the reflection.

 Wow, your wifes cousin? Who'd a thunk it? Keep posting, friend!

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Hello,

Not really any new updates on the project, spent two weeks in Chicago on business and concentrating on completing a 1/350 Ohio class boomer and 1/35 King Tiger diorama for the local IPMS show this Saturday.

I brought the life raft canisters with me on the trip and was prepared to explain to the TSA what they were but didn't have any issues there and didn't even have time to work on them.

After this Saturday i'll get some progress made :-)