Hello again all
Well, here I am again. I feel like Horiban, posting this much, god....... Anyway, I've got the ship 95% completed. All I need are 6 more 20mm guns. Then the ship itself is finished, at least as far as I am going to go. I could spend years, but there is not enough photographic reference material available to go much further. The Sangamon Class of Escort Carriers had alot more involved things goin on than other classes of these ships. I underestimated how involved the project would be. In any event, completion is at hand! Here's some photos of the arrestor gear and those comm antennas I mentioned above. These will be the last details I will do on the ship. Next will come the aircraft and the crew.
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File comment: I'll start with the barrier arms. For those of you who are not familiar with carriers, a barrier arm is a series of wires that pop up to a vertical position during landings. This prevents the aircraft from crashing into things should it miss it the hook on the arrestor wires. There are 3 barriers just aft of the bridge(island). Shown in the lowerd position on the stb. side.
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File comment: Here's another view. Arrestor gear and barrier arms are styrene. Arrestor cable is .025 waxed rigging line, and the barrier wires are .025 piano wire. Note the yielding bars, the small rectangles you see beneath the arrestor cables. These were kind of like a leaf spring that popped up and raised the arrestor wire slightly above the flightdeck, to facilitate the aircrafft grabbing the wire with its hook. Small strips of .010 styrene used here.
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File comment: Another view of the arrestor gear. There are a total of 13 arrestor wire assemblies. A bit of weathering needed yet.
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File comment: Here's a better view of the overall arrangement. Note the cable behind the aft elevator. If you look to the top right, you can see the aft comm. antenna.
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File comment: Note this arrestor cable. It goes right across the aft elevator opening. All the plans and reference material I have show this. Question was, what did they do with it when the elevator was in use? Detaching it from the gear would have been a time consuming task, I would think. I called one of the pilots that flew off the Santee, Don Pattie,a highly decorated man, and asked him. He told me the deckcrew would simply pull it back out of the way once the tension was released on the cable. When all aircraft were up on flightdeck level, and the elevator was no longer in use, then the cable would be pulled back to it's original position. By the way, Mr.Pattie is 85...
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File comment: Hmmmm....deck crew pulling the cable.......OK, how's this??
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File comment: Looking from behind. I plan about 50 figures or so. Don't want it too busy. The real aspect of this project is the ship, not the other stuff. Just icing on the cake if you will......
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File comment: Here's the fwd comm. antenna. Made from styrene tubing and rod. This is how I see it as compared to the photo I asked questions about above. Wires are very fine stretched sprue. Resistors are a dab of elmers glue and black paint. Note arrestor gear and barrier arm arrangement in the backround.
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Well, there you go......By the way, I was just kidding about the Admiral(Horiban). Where has he been?? He is a great modeler.I rather miss argueing with him
On to the aircraft and crew!! Stay tuned ......More to come.....