The Ship Model Forum

Much appreciate your support Dan Finishing these truss and girders is quite a relief for me.

Hi guys. After some trimming to the aftmost truss tower and the connecting girders, the entire support system is generally finished. I added some extra cross bracings to the expansion trusses on the aftmost tower according to a stern photo of her.
Meanwhile I finished the port side boat crane and the double funnels directly behind the crane. The crane is made to be rotatable on its base. As for the funnels, a improvised copper rod and two small bearings were used on them to make them also rotatable on their axis. So, with a set of working funnels, the carrier can be set either in a normal underway or flight operation configuration at ease.

Another major parts fitted to the hull were her propeller wings and struts.
I originally planed to scratchbuild the whole thing since the original resin props were beyond repair. Luckily my ship scrapyard has proven its value once again. I found a pair of shaft wings and three bladed screws which seems to be leftovers from a 1900s era armoured cruiser. The wings fit quite well on the hull after some careful trimming, And the struts were scratch-made from plastic strips. The strips were sanded and thinned on the edges in order to make them look more hydrodynamical in appearance. Two copper rods were used as prop shafts. Amazingly,the two props turn freely when dry fitted to the hull.
I took reference to the ship's props using a photo taken at a museum in Pensacola NAS along with a stern photo of the real ship previously shown and I accidently discovered a mistake while examing the model photos closely. It appears that someone who made this beautiful Langley model in the naval aviation museum had in fact, mistakenly fitted the starboard side propeller on the port side shaft, and vise versa. A quite interesting finding. You can see this model in the last photo.
I dont know how many people like me who prefer to build full-hull models instead of waterlines, but to me,I find it quite enjoyable when seeing the complex systems of superstructures, weapon systems which sit above water and the simple streamlined underwater hull, integrated into a beautiful warship.

Great stuff. Despite the complexity, she is really coming together very quickly.

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Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Thanks Martin ,I'm trying to keep the project under three months to allocate enough time for another light cruiser HR.MS.De Ruyter project before the year's over.

Three months? In my dreams.

A very precise build.

Yet another new progress that I like to share with you guys. It will come in several replies below.
I have finished the forecastle general painting， also as a small switch of concentration after those horrendous PE work. And after fitting railings on the forecastle I suddently realized that the foremost truss tower wont fit!!(the railings actually narrowed the space quite a bit since I placed all the railings a little inward). So it's back to the PE works again. This time I completely reconstructed a new tower M to replace the original one, and this time it fits well. Also added were two small cowl vents on the foredeck. The reference to the vents came from an aerial photo when she was still a collier. It is obvious that after she was recommissioned as a carrier, her flightdeck and the support systems would have obscure much view to the foredeck, rendering study much more difficult.

After solving fitting problem to the foremost tower, the next major problem needs to be dealt with was the flightdeck. The original wooden flightdeck provided was too short and her pre-print elevator position was way off to the actual position.Well these problems ocurred as a direct result of my correction to the truss systems.
I found it a bit difficult to explain my ways to correct the flightdeck. So I made a illustration of it, which is shown on the picture below.
However before applying wooden decks to the supports.I need another plastic deck to reinforce the entire thing. This layer of flightdeck is made of ABS sheet. And since all the ABS sheets that my hooby dealership can provide come in A4 sizes. So the flightdeck was cut in two pieces. the joint was set in the middle between two towers, in this way a maximum area can be provided to both flightdeck pieces for a reinforcement slab to be glued underneath.

Now it's time to add miscellaneous missing details to the truss systems. A second travelling crane along with its tracks have been crafted and added to the aft part of the systems. The windshield of the control gondola is covered with masking tape so the interior cannot be seen. Also added were the elevator platform and the extra support pillars right underneath the foremost part of the flightdeck.
There's a small maintainance platform under the flightdeck bow tip, a little offset to starboard, this was recently added after examing some photos of her bow. Area under the aft tip of the flightdeck also has a long and narrow catwalk. This is also been added.

The last thing that was done in this weekend was a scratch-built pigeon house and some analysis to the exact font that she used to paint her name on the stern fantail. I intend to order some customized water decals for her(mainly used on her name at the stern and the massive indetification letter "L","A","N" on the rear flightdeck) over ebay, so it's quite imperative that I have the font correct.
Alright, back to the pigeon house matter first. Langley has a very unique feature being carring a pigeon squadron and a small deckhouse at the stern dedicated for this purpose, althrough the pigeon squadron was disbanded not long after Langley was commissioned (When released as a whole flock, the pigeons never returned to the ship,but instead always returned to the shipyard and subsequently built several nests on one of the cranes at the shipyard, and navy got quite frustrated by this), the pigeon house remained, and was soon refurbished to be used as a living quarter.
I originally intend to use the resin part that the kit provided, but it turns out to be in a quite terrible shape.A huge bubble was formed inside the part and not even putty can bring it back. So I managed to scratch-built one from ABS sheet. The PE work of the windows and their light barriers were scavenged from my PE junk yard. The final effect looks ok.

Well,Dan, I tend to do nothing and just relax after returning home from work. So I decided to just set a few objectives to push myself.

Loving this project, that PE lattice work especially. Great job!

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-Jason Channell

Current Project: 1/200 Bismarck

And there's also a thing that I might ask you guys: Is there a way to post larger pictures dispite the fact that our forum does not allow attachment pics to exceed 400 kbs? I did noticed that a few folks have already posted large pictures which didn't seems to be affected by this limit. Did they use an online domain instead of just uploading local pictures?

encredible work, that structure is really nice... The additional detailing too... with regards to the photo's, a PM has been sent

Yes, you can get past the filesize limit by using a separate image hosting service. We suggest Imgur or Flickr.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Much obliged Silenoz. Wow I didnt know this forum before, and I have signed up a new account on it. I'll try using this method on my next update

Thanks Timmy . I'll try Flickr and scalemates both to observe the effects.

Here comes another update This time I have managed to finish painting the entire hull.

I started adding miscellaneous details to the hull once finishing the paint. For the bow section, I added four bollards to the foredeck. In the hangar section, some gangway plank, temporary house and working platforms were installed in order to get rid of the dullness and void of the hangar. The stern section was the most extensively worked on area.
I scratch-made a deckhouse witch sits directly in front of the pigeon shed.Well this part is absent from the original kit so it has to be strach-made. Other details added were the two searchlights on top of the pigeon house(searchlights were redundant parts from Trumpy's USS Saratoga). Two cowl vents,some platforms and several of the ship's boats.