Hey Cold War Era Group Build builders!
I have been as busy as everyone else lately, and I have not done much work on my contribution. However, I was looking at it on my shelf this evening, and I thought it would be an alright time to share what kind of progress I have made.
I have finished the hard parts of the helicopter hanger and completely replacing and rebuilding the VLS arrangement on the ship.
Attachment:
smallDDV8 001.jpg [ 86.37 KiB | Viewed 1411 times ]
Visible is the hanger and RAM aft and the Mk71 MCLWG forward.
Attachment:
smallDDV8 009.jpg [ 88.63 KiB | Viewed 1411 times ]
Something I want to elaborate on in the above picture is something I have had to address with several of these DDG-51 class models I have been modifying lately. Where the hull steps down by a deck to the helicopter flight deck there are these swept bulkheads. My understanding is that their purpose is to reduce the radar cross-section. The correction I have had to address several times is extending that swept bulkhead further aft to match, in this case, the helicopter hanger. It was harder trying to figure out how to fix it than implementing the fix. As you can see I extended the hull and bulkhead, carved and sanded it down swept to the right shape, and then a
lot of sanding! I like the result I have. I hope when I get paint on it I have smoothed out the transition between the hull and the new piece so it looks right!
Forward is the Mk71 MCLWG and the 64-cell B-sized VLS module.
Attachment:
smallDDV8 003.jpg [ 65.5 KiB | Viewed 1411 times ]
Again, visible here is the 32-cell VLS "half B-sized module", Harpoons, RAM, and Mk71 forward, the major features of this variant of the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
Well, that's all recently. Today I achieved a pretty big goal at work so now I can spend a little more time on these kinds of projects now!
Thanks for looking!