Howdy folks! This is the Academy 1/800 Kitty Hawk CV-63. The time period for the kit is around '75-'77ish, when CVW-11 was onboard. Shipboard armament is the Terrier missle system, with the SPG-55 illuminators.
The kit is a mixed bag of treats and oopsies, the latter being easily overcome. For instance, the kit includes F-18s, which cant be used, wrong era, and it has four rudders. Only Enterprise has four, but like I said, that is an easy fix here.
On the treat side, Kitty received an overhaul to adapt her to the then new F-14 Tomcat, which included moving #1 elevator outboard to allow the new catapults and larger JBDs to be installed. Academy caught that, as the #1 elevator track now angles outboard 6 degrees at the top, and it was engineered into the kit. The parts are also crisp, sinkhole and flash free.
I recommend it as a great weekend stress buster that makes for a good shelf model.
Here she is with the major assembly done. All I need to do is a little weathering, the final details like the "Kitty Whiskers" deck-edge antennae, and then I can finish the aircraft and permanently attach them.
Do you know how steady I had to be to keep 30-some aircraft from flying everywhere long enough to get a half a shot? Lol. Yeah, they are just sitting there..
