Mark McKinnis wrote:
If Nautilus does those decks, I was planning on converting a DML Princeton into an SCB-125 ship. I like Princeton for the correct gun directors, S-2 Trackers for an ASW Essex, and the later mast can be used as a starting point for the SCB-125 ships. I figured if I had the decks, I could build the underside of the overhangs and the hurricane bow fairly easily. The increased beam can be done by flaring in some styrene sheets along the hulls sides. About 1/16 of an inch per side would be pretty close.
Until then, the 1/700 angled deck Essex Class eludes us.
A long, long,
long time ago I got the "data card" Booklet of General Plans for CVS-9 and used scaled copies from it, along with a lot of other information I'd gathered over the years, to convert a long-hull Hasegawa kit into CVS-12 in 1969. (This was the mid-'90s, so the Hasegawa kit was all we really had, and the CVS-9 set was all I could get hold of.) Between the information that was available at the time and my modeling skills at the time, it actually turned out pretty well.
Converting an original-configuration ship into an SCB-125 unit isn't really that hard to do if you're able to get drawings for the ship you want (or one that's close enough), have a good supply of styrene sheet and epoxy putty, and don't mind a little scratchbuilding and sculpting where needed. Model Monkey's series of islands takes a lot of the angst out of the process, and there's plenty of photoetch out there not only for railings and nets, but also most of the radar arrays for just about any time period you need. I keep hoping for a kit that does the work for us, but in the meantime, it's easier to do this than you may think.
Jodie Peeler