Well,
Bought the Merit 1:200 Hornet when it came to the market. To me the hull looked like a strange combination of a container ship with square mid section and almost credible looking bow and stern of Yorktown class carrier. Pondered for a while about the possibility to correct the Merit hull but that would have been more difficult than scratch building. So now the plan is to build the hull from scratch below hangar deck and the use the kit parts from hangar deck up. Merit hangar deck compares relatively well to the drawing even if the forward part is a bit too wide and the stern slightly too narrow. Merit flight deck is probably a tad too short and the stern lift is about 2 cm too far forward compared to the plans I have. However, I believe it should be possible to build an good model using a combination of scratch lower hull and kit parts.
Building the hull is going to take a while due to a mistaken assumption of the strength of plastic. I had planned to build the hull from two layers of 0,75 plastic card strips. However, given the length and width of the hull this proved out to be too flexible structure. Now I have decided to use 2 mm thick plastic strips between the bulkheads and then coat the hull with 1 mm thick strips. Finally the hull plating will be added from thin plastic "paper". This is going to take a while so it may take some time before an update of the process.
If anyone has compared the Merit Hornet to scale drawings it would be nice to hear about the findings. I only have Yorktown plans and compared to those apart of the hull the kit seems to be pretty close to the drawings. There is the problem with the aft lift and the length of the flight deck but neither is too obvious.
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File comment: Forward part of the Merit hangar deck is a bit too wide
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File comment: And the stern is a bit too narrow and slightly off shape
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File comment: Contours of the Hornet hull
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File comment: Covering the hull is going to take some time
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File comment: This is more or less the flat part of the ship belly
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