Good day gentleman!
Some of you may remember my USS Arcadia AD-23 build from last year:
http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=69621 and in the intervening year I built the USS Wasp LHD-1 for my Son-In-Law for his birthday. I am just finishing it up and may post a thread in the other forum. After finishing the Arcadia, I had to 'force' myself back to kits. I had gotten pretty used to fabricating all of the parts I needed, but I had been itching to build the Wasp because of the well deck and the landing craft and tanks and planes, and it made for an interesting subject.
BUT, when I was in the midst of the Arcadia build, I had seen the plans for the America at Floating Drydock, so I had purchased that set. Why the America? Well I had served on her in '81 and made the world cruise on her. I was an AT-3 with VS-33 and I worked on the flight & hanger decks. I also loved the size that my Uncle's ship came out to and the plans for the America were just as impressive. The hull, at the waterline measures about 62" long and I think about 70" overall. It will be about 2' wide including the antenna's.
It will be fully lit like my Wasp was. I am planning on making one or all of the elevators work, though I don't know exactly how just yet. It will have a full Airwing as depicted as when I was aboard. "How is he going to do the aircraft" I bet you all are asking? Weeelllll my tentative plans are to buy a good quality 3D printer and 'print' them. I am thinking of building one of each A/C type in say 1/48 scale, and then use a 3D Laser scanner to scan them in along with tow bars, tractors, NC-4's, Puffers, Tilly, Phalanx, Sea Sparrow box launchers, boats, everything. I'll build it in large scale, then scan it in and clean up the design, then print it out to scale in 1/192. I will not need that for another year or so while I build up the hull, so, using Moore's law, the Tech should roughly double and the price come down by half by the time I am ready for it. My Uncle has a friend with the 3D scanner, so I won't have to buy that, only the printer. The hanger bay will be fully lit, and I am planning on installing two or three micro cameras mounted at various spots so you will be able to see all of the details. I was also thinking maybe a cutaway, or removable section to show the "03" level with some berthing and ready rooms and maybe the arrester engines? IDK? Ideas gentlemen?
Before any of that gets done, I need a hull! With the Arcadia I did not have regular hull stations, I only had 7 spaced irregularly, so I had to use a solid block of wood and lay out the deck and profile views on it and carve it down from there. The America plans have the hull stations, 46 or so with 40 being the hull sections at the waterline, so I have a much better starting point with this hull. The broad strokes are as follows: I ordered .040" styrene plastic from a local shop in roughly 28"x24" sheets. That gives me enough material that I can make the hanger deck out of two pieces, one for each bay, and also for the hull sections, or 'Frames". In the Navy, every ship space (or compartment or 'room') is numbered by frames. One frame every four feet, so if you are at frame 100, you are 400 feet from the bow of the ship, no matter what ship you are on. The main deck is number one (1) and every deck below it is 2, 3, 4 etc to the bottom of the hull, and every deck above it is: 01, 02, 03 etc. The '03 level' is the deck directly under the flight deck. The deck (or floor to you civies) is the overhead (or ceiling) of the hanger bay.
Some of the frames will need one side clipped at the hanger deck level to allow for the elevator openings. I have indexes drawn on the frames so that I can use 1/4" by 1/4" square or 1/4" round stock at stringers like on real hulls. I will use 3/4" by 1/4" by 24" long styrene stock for the keel. I am having a machinist friend of mine make me a cutting jig because the frames are spaces an odd amount apart.
Here is one of my reference books:
Here are the plans laid out on my dining room floor:
That is a six foot by one foot shelf for size reference! That will be the building board. I will drill holes in it for mounting while I am building her and will use the perfectly flat face for buildng the keel and frames.
Profile view:
Each little 'tick' mark is a quarter inch on the plan and is four feet to scale.
The '03' level:
The '03' level is critical to a good build I feel. Also the sponsons need to built and blended properly.
The Hanger Bay on top and deck 2 below:
Here is the fore sectionals:
Here is the bow section done with .030" styrene. It is too thin and I will redo in .040 to match the ones already done.
More '03' details:
Elevators no. 1 & 2 details:
The Flight Deck:
One other critical reference book I have is my cruise book. It shows all of the squadrons and their markings, and lots of pictures of the ship itself. Invaluable!
The Airwing (CVW-11) will have all of the A/C that we had aboard on the '81 cruise:
Two F-14 squadrons of 10 A/C each:
VF-114 - "The Aardvarks" (MODEX: 100-114)
VF-213 - "The Black Lions" (MODEX: 200-214)
Two A-7E Corsair II Squadrons of 10 A/C each:
VA-192 - "The Golden Dragons" (MODEX: 300-312)
VA-195 - "The Dambusters" (MODEX: 400-412)
One squadron of A-6E Intruders of 15 A/C: (10 in bomber configuration and 5 in tanker Config.)
VA-95 - "The Green Lizards" (MODEX: 500-517)
One detachment of E-2C's of 4 A/C:
VAW-123 - "The Screwtops" (MODEX: 600, 601, 602, 603
One detachment of EA-6B's of 5 A/C:
VAQ-133 - "The Wizards" (MODEX: 604, 605, 606, 607, 625)
One Detachment of SH-3's Sea Kings of 6 A/C
HS-12 - "The Wyverns" (MODEX: 612, 613, 614, 615, 616, 617)
One Squadron of S-3A Vikings of 10 A/C
VS-33 - :The Screwbirds" (MODEX: 700-711) (I may have a bird "712", but I do not recall us having this bird on board for that cruise.)
One Det of EA-3B's "Whales" of two A/C
VQ-2 DET. A "The Batmen" (MODEX: 14 & 17)
One Det of C-2A Greyhounds of two A/C
VR-24 - "The Lifting Eagles" (MODEX: 324, 325)
So, let's total that up:
20 F-14A Tomcats
20 A-7E Corsairs
10 A-6E TRAM Intruders
5 KA-6D Tanker Intruders
4 Hawkeyes
5 Prowlers
6 Sea Kings
10 Vikings
2 EA-3B Skywarrior "Whales"
2 C-2 Greyhound COD (Even though we moved more mail than they did!)
1 S-2 Tracker COD
1 CH-53D Navy version
1 CH-46 for a possible VERTREP scene I am planning.
1 TU-95MS Bear Bomber (They overflew us everyday and I have a really good pic in my cruisebook)
1 IL-38 May ASW Maritime Patrol plane (Their copy of our P-3C)
I count 89 birds. It will be a full deck and overhead!
So that's where I am at now. Comments? Suggestions?