Here is my attempt at producing a reasonable reproduction of the final configuration of the Ranger CV-61.
Ship Background: The Ranger was the third Forrestal class aircraft carrier and was commissioned in 1957. After 36 years of action in the cold war including the wars in Vietnam and Persian Gulf, she was decommissioned in 1993. Efforts to preserve the Ranger as a museum near Portland, Oregon failed and she was sent to Brownsville, Texas for scrapping in 2015.
Kit Background: The Forrestal class has been somewhat poorly represented in model kit form. The latest, most modern kit of the class is the Italeri 1/720 kit. The kit was designed as Forrestal sometime after her service life extension program. By the end of their lives, all ships of the class were quite different from each other, but Italeri boxes each ship with the same plastic with only the decals changing for each ship. Ranger was the only ship of the class not to receive the SLEP upgrades and as a result there are many differences between this kit and how the actual Ranger was configured. Currently this kit is only available from Italeri as the Saratoga but ironically the box art depicts Ranger painted as Saratoga.
Attachment:
File comment: Box Art
5520_illustrazione_prova.jpg [ 226.26 KiB | Viewed 1800 times ]
References:
Booklet of General Plans USS Ranger, March 1978 - Available from
http://www.floatingdrydock.com/Booklet of General Plans USS Saratoga, 1993 - Available to download from
http://archive.hnsa.org/doc/plans/index.htmRay Bean's Forrestal Class Carriers Photo DVD - Now also available from The Floating Drydock
USS Forrestal in Detail & Scale by Bert Kinzey - Out of print but can be (occasionally) found on Amazon used at a reasonable price.
The usual internet image sources including the excellent pictures from this Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/USSRANGERCV61Materials:
1/720 Italeri USS Saratoga -
https://www.italeri.com/en/product/1966/6/301/720 Gold Medal Models USN Supercarriers (720-11)
http://www.goldmm.com/ships/gms7carr.htm1/700 Various Trumpeter Aircraft Sets
3D Printed Parts designed by me and printed by Shapeways
Lots of Exacto Blades and Putty!
The first step was start removing all of the unnecessary sponsons and inaccurate chunks of plastic from the hull.