Now it's time for me to get all caught up on the stellar work everyone has been doing. And Lord knows, there is whole lot of quality been going on here.

Mongoose: Wow! There is so much remarkable work you have been doing that I need to acknowledge. Your work on the hull looks great to me. Appears to be a nice effect to me. Then there is your aircraft. Really amazing work, detail and painting. I love your approach to the folding wings. I'll be keeping that in my mental file for when I build a carrier. Great smarts going on there with the magnets on the elevators. Clever. The hangar deck and the accompanying lighting is just amazing. Your overall work is incredible.

GM: The Midway is looking great. I can really appreciate the excellent progress.

Mach71: Your Blueback display came out fantastic. The simple stand does it justice.

Ben: Your last bit of work on the boats, platforms and superstructure is just more and more of your masterful techniques in detail.

Keyserj: Excellent start to your Kitty Hawk. Looking forward to your progress on the water base. I'm also a newbie to that and I'm learning a lot from everyone's work on them.

As always, I'm anxious for further activity from all of you. Wonderful work everyone. Cheers!

Keyserj

 

 

GMorrison

 

 

Keyserj

I have 42 planes +2 helos. I already was planning on doing the paint before bending the wings because it would be pretty hard to hand paint camo on folded wings. Here is the first sprue of camo. I masked areas off with silly putty that I got from the dollar store.

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What camo scheme is that?

 

 

Bill

 

 

 

 

It is just a random camo pattern but it is kinda based off the photo below.

 

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keyserj I came across your camo pattern tonight while i was researching the A-7's for my Enterprise. it's Persian Gulf 1988 on the USS Enterprise at least. Check this out

Joe: I have also been having issues with posting images from postimage. Also, nice to see you join us.

Goose: That is too funny that you found that camo scheme. I have just been free handing the masking.

I will hopefully get some more progress pics up tomorrow.

Today I worked on more planes. All the A-7's are done. The intruders vikings, and the Greyhound are painted and decaled. I did a basic layout in the hangar bay to gage how many aircraft i could get in here. All the A-7's fit in the bow. Will probably mix and match once it's time to fix them to the deck. 

I was just going to prep the planes for the hangar but it's so tedious that I decided while I was in the zone to just keep going. Tomorrow F-18's, remaining F-14's then some nose weight in the intrudes and vikings, then paint canopies, then flat coat them all being careful not to coat the canopy. I experimented with flat coat first. The Tamiya metallic blue comes right off the gloss coat though so a little slip of nthe brush is easily wiped away with a toothpick and no one will ever know so that's the process to settle on.

Mongoose, that is just some really amazing work on your planes. I am truly in awe of your skill and patience.

Mongoose: Oh gee, that's a pile of work! They're coming along great!

Thanks guys, having done all this work it feels good to know they look the part. 
I took a break this afternoon because my fingers were cramping up from holding and flipping these planes around to do all the decals. Stopped in here to read what everyone else was doing and Joe I had to laugh at your post about patience! Patience turns into cramps on this build lol

All the decals for the planes I have are done now, 65 of them. Feels like I was in a weekend GB trying to finish by my 6:03pm deadline  I have 5 that I'm not going to use. Each has it's own little problem, landing gear caddie-wampus, wings folds look terrible, things like that. My screwtops won't be here till June and I know I have helos around here somewhere, now just have to find them 

The 2nd flite of F-14's required some brush painting on the tail. Figured out an efficient way to trim those out of register decals and this set looks much better.

I don't have any decals for F-18's so I used a combination of what was left plus did some brush painting to make them look more interesting. Recreated the stripe down the spine and added numbers. This build is all about drawing people to it in the display case as opposed to accuracy...I know, I'm the  hehehe

Time to relax and have some wine with my wife. More later in the week. Hope your builds are going strong! 

Mongoose: Those planes are stunning.  I wish my planes could be as detailed as yours but my painting skills are very limited on 1/800 scale planes. My only complaint is that ohio drink holder in the background.  

I got quite a bit of progress done this week. The one big thing I would like to focus on is the MAJOR fit issues with the island. What I have assembled so far took an hour due to all of the trimming I had to do and the fit is still not quite right.

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I was also able to get the deck assembled and just finished up getting the camo painted on my planes." alt="" width="500" height="350" />bust reducing exercises" alt="" width="500" height="350" />

Sweet job on the airwing Chris.

John, nice start. I have that kit in the stash and am curious how she builds. I'm probably going to kit bash it but if it looks good I may just build her OOB.

Mongoose: That's friggin' epic! I love all the trim you've painted on the aircraft. 

John: She looks good too, looking forward to more! 

I have a few questions now. The first one is mostly for Mongoose but any help is appreciated. Have you ever tried to do the wing folds on the e-2 hawkeye? I have an idea on how to do it but I would like to see if anyone has tried it and have been successful. Here is a reference for what I am trying to achieve.

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My second question is do any of you think I could suspend planes in the air with magnets so that it looks like they are flying?

I haven't attempted to fold the wings on anything smaller than 1/72 however it looks by the picture that one could completely cut the wing off and attach it to the wing base and to the vertical stablizers. the picture looks like the folfed wings are very close to the stabs so at that scale you might not notice.

As far as magnets...yes, I have seen that done on 1/72 scale using several rare Earth magnets, but on the 1/800 you're working at, I believe the magnets would be too large to be effective. Also, the AC I was speaking about used eight, one in the nose, tale and each wing, with the corresponding positions located in the base. Otherwise your trying balance it on the point of a needle, which is impossable with just two magnets as far as I know.

Mongoose: Your continuing work on the aircraft is absolutely stellar. I really like on your take on simply painting or detailing for the sake of drawing the eye as opposed to absolute accuracy. I subscribe to that thought and find it an effective and rewarding practice.

Ketserj: Solid progress. Boy, can I feel your misery you encountered with the island. Similar to all the work I had to do to get the main bridge superstructure to fit and sit proud on my Oakland. It's looking good though and appears the efforts paid off.

Joe MC Gamera thanks for the compliments! 

John, ask and yee shall receive lol Here's pics of the C-2 Greyhound Ikm working on. Don't mind the cockpit as I'm in process of stuffing it with clay so it will sit on the nose wheel. Keep this in mind on yours as those wings threw the balance way off which is why I ended up doing this after putting the halves together. My mistake, your profit lol

the wings on the little kit just aren't long enough so there was a compromise required on mine. Trumpeter kit is what I'm using. Note the wing in your pic is just aft of the walkway and the tips extend to the stabilizers. I opted not to cut into the wing (where the folded wing sits almost right against the engine housing) in order To use the larger area for gluing since there was no way to extend it without adding more to the wing section I had removed. In hindsight I could have cut much closer to the engine housing and gained about 1/2 what was needed in length. Hopefully that helps you out. looking forward to seeing more of your build for sure!

Dang It! Now that I've over analyzed the Greyhound I went and pulled the box down and am going to see if this effort can be improved on. This is the GB that keeps on givng! Love the challenge 

Mongoose: You lost me with all of those big brain words you used in your reply.  I still get what you mean though, just cut off the wing and glue it to get what I want. The issue you are having with balance should not affect my e-2 since it is so light being a 1/800 scale plane.

Keyserj

Mongoose: You lost me with all of those big brain words you used in your reply.  I still get what you mean though, just cut off the wing and glue it to get what I want. The issue you are having with balance should not affect my e-2 since it is so light being a 1/800 scale plane.

 

 I made a new one tonight. Your pic was really helpful. It needed 3/8" of 0.035" lead wire in the nose, even with the fuselage full of clay, to keep the nose down. Your 1/800 will probably settle right down with a dot of glue under the nose.

Forgot to comment on your magnet question. I'll 2nd what MC said. You need a bunch to make something stay in place. I've only seen it done with AC magnets. Check out K&J Magnetics in for some cool experiments and more info than you'd ever want to know.

The e-2 turned out really well. It is a bit off balance and is doing a slight wheelie but it will be glued down to the deck so that should not be much of an issue. Building this really made me realize how small these planes in the kit are. I painted the swirl with a toothpick and it was almost not fine enough of a tip on the end. Anything bigger would have made the radar have a white blob on it.

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Those are tiny, almost as small as 1/700. The toothpick idea seemed to work well.

Wow John that looks super good! Screw top for sure, no doubt.

Keyserj and Mongoose; those aircraft are looking epic!

And here I was getting bogged down on three OS2U float planes for my Arizona.

You two are blowing me away. 

Ben

Ben and Mongoose, thanks for your compliments.  My goal with this project is to make the planes and weathering as detailed as my skills will allow because I am seriously thinking about entering this in the local 4H fair model contest.(started this build because I was bored of sitting around the house) I have another model I already built for the fair but the Kitty Hawk has really gone above my expectations. 

I have an idea for a unique way to show the progression I make on the planes from start to finish so stay tuned for that.

Two sprues down, two to go.

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I am thinking about ordering the Eduard models 1/800 carrier figure set. Anyone ever used a figure set by them?

Figure PE? They're flat 2D but in that scale not bad. Here is the 1/700 Hornet I did a few years ago with Eduard PE figures.

The figures are in one piece right? Never dealt with PE before so don't want to go buy something that is way out of my skill range.

Yep, 1 piece. I've got a set.

John & Mongoose: Great job on those airwings guys!!! 

Keyserj

The figures are in one piece right?

Most are. Some you may have to fold the mirror image to make one. Those are call "3D" PE figures. They're not the actual 3D printed figures.

Regarding figures, for 1/350 you can choose between PE, injection molded, or 3D printer made people.

A simple search in Google or Ebay will give you numerous images to look at and see which type you would like.

Shapeways also is a good source for the 3d printed figures too.

Tamiya makes a set that is injection molded and attached to sprue so you can paint them while attached and just touch up once added to the ship.

There is even some PE figures that come already painted; Eduard is one that comes to mind. 

Happy hunting!, I'm sure any you choose will add the extra detail you are after.

Ben