Clear plastic ship parts

First, I wonder if there may be a typo here in the name of a ship.  To my knowledge, Dragon doesn't make a Saratoga in 1/700 scale.  (Trumpeter does - but it's in prewar configuration and doesn't have a transparent flight deck.)   To my knowledge the only WWII carriers in the Dragon line are the various ships of the Essex class, and a couple of Independence-class kits (which originated with Skywave).  If there is a Dragon Saratoga out there - either the WWII one or the postwar, Forrestal-class ship - I'd be interested to see it.  The Trumpeter kit is a fine one, but recent evidence suggests that Dragon would be likely to do even better.

I've got a Dragon 1/700 Hancock, and it does have a transparent flight deck.  The kit also contains a flight deck molded in grey.  The transparent one doesn't have all the detail - the tie-down strips, for instance, that the opaque one does.  (Such details would make it hard to see through.)  The clear flight deck offers the option of showing off whatever detail the modeler puts on the hangar deck

The aircraft also are molded in clear plastic.  The idea here is that the modeler can paint all of the aircraft except the canopy.  The manufacturer likes to put all the aircraft parts on one sprue, so the wings, landing gear, propellers, etc. get the clear plastic treatment too.

Same goes (sometimes) for small boats.  I've got a Dragon Arizona.  That ship carried some boats with canopies that had transparent ports in them.  So Dragon molded all the boats in clear plastic.

I confess I have some mild reservations about whether that's the best way to deal with the problem of clear canopies and boat portholes, but lots of modelers seem to like that approach. 

My apologies,  You post sent me scurrying back to my stash to verify what I had. I have the same Saratoga kit you mentioned. The kit I have with the transparent flight deck is a 1/700 Dragon USS Independence. The clear deck has a fair amount of detail and the sides of the hanger deck, almost the entire length of the ship, are clear as well. I take it from your post that the choice of how to finish the kit is my decision and that the clear flight deck is just to give the builder the option. BTW this particular kit does not have the grey flight deck included.

Thanks again for the post.

Good point about Dragon and the Saratoga, so I checked DargonUSA's website.  They do carry the old Fujimi Sara kit, in her late-war configuration (cut-down main mast and funnel), but the catalog item doesn't indicate anything about the contents of the kit.  Here's a link to the catalog:

http://www.dragonmodelsusa.com/dmlusa/prodd.asp?pid=FUJ44117

I have that kit in an original Fujimi boxing, and the parts are all opaque plastic, but it sounds like they might have taken the step of adding a clear flight deck.  Dragon would have to had added the hangar deck, then, too, because the original kit really doesn't offer much in the way of hangar deck details.  In the Lexingtons, you couldn't really see any of it from the outside, anyway, not like the later designs, with the rolling curtain doors in openings around the perimeter of the deck.

That's interesting, it Dragon or someone else might be adding additional detail parts to these old kits.

Best regards,

Brad

Ha!  Jack, you hit Post before I did, you can disregard my post, then.

Ha!  Jack, you hit Post before I did, you can disregard my post, then.

Ha!  Jack, you hit Post before I did, you can disregard my post, then.

I have to confess to liking the clear plastic aircraft, even in my chosen scale of 1/700 and despite their being more brittle than regular styrene, for the simple fact that you get a much more realistic-looking canopy. I've never been a fan of either the gloss black or bright blue treatments, and my own experiment with overcoating Testor's Steel enamel with Tamiya Smoke acrylic was only OK. When I built the air wing for my USS Enterprise, it allowed me to get a really cool effect with the gold-toned canopies of the Prowlers, which you can only kind of see here:

Sorry for the duplicate posts above, I don't know what happened there, I only hit it once.

Back to the topic, I really like Trumpeter's innovation, too.  I'm a nostalgia builder, but I am not nostalgic for the opaque aircraft included with all of the kits I grew up on.  Painting the canopies silver or gray just didn't cut it, and trying to file off the canopies and replace them with clear sprue bits didn't quite work that well either, though who knew from polishing pads and Future in 1978?  (Rhetorical question--I didn't know from them back then).

The clear aircraft look much better, especially when we look at the greenhouse-canopied aircraft from WWII.  My opinion, of course.

Best regards,

Brad

Hi , I have the U.S.S. ANTIETAM in 1/700 and it has a clear flight deck and sponson , as well as clear aircraft  . I bought her because I wanted a slant deck carrier I could convert to the MIDWAY. I have decided to build her as is though. I may leave the clear flight deck on her.The hangar deck is full of stuff. Now if I can do it and just kind of leave some clear spots here and there. I,ll will figure out something though.  tankerbuilder

On this board a couple of years ago, someone built a Nimitz class CVN, I think, and he painted part of the clear deck.  It was a beautiful presentation.  He masked off about 1/3 of the flight deck, so that only the section over the middle of the hangar bay was visible.  (On Independence, we called that Bay #2).  He had the sides of the deck painted all the length of the ship, so there was no need to worry about showing the contents of the workshops.

I thought it was a terrific, tasteful display, and it has guaranteed that I will have to paint one like that for my collection, someday.  I hadn't realized how many different models had been manufactured with clear decks and detailed hangar decks.  Also, I think that if you do this clear-segment model, though, you need to build the ship full-hull, because it would lose its believability in a water-base setting.

thanks for reawakening the subject,
Rick

I have both the Essex and Lexington (Dragon, 1:700, optional clear deck). I plan on building one full hull, clean "old school" build with the clear decks to show the interior. The other will be waterline, weathered "new school" approach. I remember just loving the "invisible" (aka clear) models of the 70s and the cut-away models. I snatched  up the Revell Abe Lincoln cut-away Polaris re-release, in all its inaccurate glory.

I think there is space for both types of builds (TIME to build them, alas, is a completely different matter!). AFV released a couple of "see-thru" T34/76s; I do hope to see more of the type. I think the Dragon 1:700 carrier series is VERY underrated; great detailing, plenty of AM options available if you chose that route, good OOB potential, and many build options (including a water base) at a VERY reasonable price (you can get five of these for the same price as a new Tamiya 1:350 destroyer!).

As for modern jets in 1:700 scale, someone told me he snips off the canopies, drops a drop of clear water-based glue in the hole. A variation is to mix a small droplet of food coloring with Future/Klear, and use that to fill in your canopy space and get the "tinted canopy" effect. Some gentle sanding will be needed to shape up the canopy though.