Reviewed by Mark Deakin
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If you are building the Nimitz or Enterprise you will notice how both Tamiya and Trumpeter mould the life raft canisters in blocks of 2, 3, 4 or 5 with horizontal connections between each canister, to me this always looks wrong so on my Enterprise I simply split each canister into a single, thus removing the horizontal connecter but leaving the vertical attachment point, and then gluing them individually which to my eyes at least looks better but still not quite right. The solution is to model the actual holders and attach 2 canisters to each holder as per the real thing, until now this meant scratch building or commissioning a one off PE run to replicate the holders, neither of which where within my abilities or budget, however fear no more as TOMS as re-produced the life raft holders in 1/350 so you can add the canisters individually to them. The canisters come in 2 sets one for Nimitz and one for Enterprise, those for Enterprise have the unique “bottom” under hang. The Nimitz set you may notice is incomplete, this is because I have already started using the set on my own build so you can judge for yourself the improvement these make, I would add here you are judging the PE appearance not the actual model ! The brass itself seems fairly robust surviving multiple bending and re-bending without separating into 2 or 3 pieces which is a definite plus when trying to seat the canisters. The instructions are straight forward, though to be honest I had got through the first set of attachments before I realised there where any instructions....... Both sets are a not unreasonable price of $12.50 in the US and are highly recommended to those of you who want to take your CVN up another level. The third set is a set of hose reels for both fuel and fire fighting lines. These reels are based on the actual reels used on both ships and are of varying size and comparing them to the references I have on Nimitz they do match very well. The biggest difference with these reels against any others that I have used is that straight off the fret they are a much more in scale than any other reels I have used. |
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Conclusions: If you already have a GMM or WEM PE set for your super carrier you will already have usable hose reels, though they will be to wide and in the smaller reels case to large, so if you want a really accurate set of reels get this Tom's set you will not be disappointed. Recommended. Review sample courtesy of Toms Modelworks. Samples consist of
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