| This is the Nimitz as she appeared in 1976. The type of
aircraft and very colorful air wing markings really appealed to me. |
On this kit I used both photoetch
sets from Gold
Medal Models for the ship, and several different photoetch sets for
the air wing (GMM,
White
Ensign Models, and Tom’s
Modelworks). |
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| First, the ship |
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| .I wanted to do a very detailed hangar bay, and provide
lighting so my work could be seen. All wall and ceiling detail was scratchbuilt.
I used a conglomeration of reference material as a guide, finding different
pictures wherever I could. The lighting was achieved with a set of LED
Christmas lights I found at a department store. You get 18 lights and a
battery pack for under $5. I did rewire the set to include a normally open
momentary contact switch mounted on the frame of the wood base, so battery
life isn’t an issue. |
Click image
to enlarge |
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| You can see the boxes I made in the ceiling - each one
will host an LED, which once lit looks very realistic. Also note the drop
tank racks.
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| View inside the hangar deck from the outside. The hangar
deck still lacks small details such as fire extinguishers, tool boxes,
etc. All will be added. Also will hang UNREP hoses and gear in the UNREP
station area. |
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| The construction of the rest of the ship was pretty straight
forward, utilizing the photoetch sets wherever applicable during the build.
I did use the perforated catwalks that GMM provides, and while they were
a lot of work to install, the end result was very well worth it. I elected
to just remove all the molded on detail in the catwalk area, and scrathbuild
the various boxes, pipes, etc along the catwalks after the PE parts were
installed. The tie down spots on the deck were engraved way too deep. These
were filled in with Mr. Surfacer until nearly flush with the deck, then
hand painted after the flight deck color was applied.
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| I filled in the horribly out of scale tie down spots with
Mr Surfacer, then sanded off. There is still a slight depression there,
much more to scale. I'll be doing the same to the main deck.
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Planes, tractors, etc. that will go in the hangar deck. Still have
lots of detail painting and cleaning up to do, please excuse the sloppy
work! |
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| The Airwing |
|
Here are the masters for the drop tanks. I started with the tanks in
the GHQ set and carved/sanded them to scale. I made two different shapes,
one for the F-4's and the other is good for all the other aircraft. My
resin castings are crude, and take a lot of cleanup! But worth it in the
end I suppose. |
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| The ship was painted and weathered with Model Master enamels,
and the kit provided decals were used. |
In my opinion, the quality of the air wing makes or breaks a good aircraft
carrier model. They seem to be the first thing people look at and comment
on. I made masters for drop tanks and cast my own copies in resin. Ordnance
was carved down from the GHQ weapon set. The various photoetch sets really
dressed up the tiny models (each aircraft is literally it’s own model kit),
even including ejection seats (with pull rings), boarding ladders, tailhooks,
flaps, refueling probes, landing gear, and on and on. Building 60+ aircraft
can be maddening, and the decaling hasn’t even started! Many canopies were
cut apart and glued in the open position.
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| The SH-3’s came from the Tamiya set, as Trumpeter just plain got these
wrong. Also, a couple EA-6B’s came from Tamiya, and a C-2 Greyhound was
added (from Jim Clark Products). The air wing was decaled with the beautiful
set from Yankee Modelworks, which went on with no problems. |
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| Various tractors, deck equipment, supplies, and figures were added
throughout the ship to give it some life and interest. I made a spinning
prop effect on one of the E-2C’s and positioned it just lifting off the
catapult, again to add a sense of life to the model. |
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| The ship was placed in a sea of wall spackling paste. The
paste gave me enough working time to form waves and wakes, and dried with
no shrinking. After painting various shades of blue and green, it was drybrushed
with white in appropriate areas and given several coats a future floor
wax for a high gloss shine. |
| The Completed Ship |
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| The Nimitz currently is displayed above two other great builds; the
USS
Hornet CV-8 and the USS
Ticonderoga CG-47. |
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The
Ships of Kelly Quirk
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