Calling all Charles F. Adams-class DDG fans

[MartinJQuinn]

I was advised by a close friend to NOT hurry the DDG, and to get it finished by OrangeCon in October, and to take the FF instead. Makes a little too much sense to me! Dave, you're mature beyond your years!

Tony - your friend is right. You are doing such an awesome job on this model, why rush it? If it's done, it's done. If it's not, use plan B. Either way, look forward to meeting you!

[Devin]

Reminds me of my photo-finish of the Weehawken earlier this year: Martin picked me up for the Replicon show 15 minutes after I finished the final dullcoat touch-up!

[MartinJQuinn]

Reminds me of my photo-finish of the Weehawken earlier this year: Martin picked me up for the Replicon show 15 minutes after I finished the final dullcoat touch-up!

Oh, that was the smell in the car?

[Tony Bunch]

Hi Guys,
Devin,
Check these out and I sent you some more close-ups to your e-mail address. I hope you get your answer from seeing these pics. I don't know thedifference with the two different illuminators you mentioned....duh. The left SPG-51 is from Veteran Models in Taiwan, and the one on the right is the WEM offering. Melvin is an artist I'd say. He let me have these "pre-prodcution" pieces to do with as I saw fit. As I got them from him, he was not happy enough to put them into production. I just compared pics, and added the on most obvious detail differences...then....moved on to the next "little model" to go onto a bigger model!


As it is, the supsension cables to the feed horn are about 2x too big, and I used .010" dowel;
the smallest plastic dowel available. Sprue or wire may have been a better choice.

Here is the midships kingposts as previously mentioned.....still very much under constrcution.

Tony

[Tony Bunch]

Hi Guys,
Finished for today. I spent 5 hours cutting bits from .010" and .015" plastic dowel and .010" square stock adding on the platforms and extrenal details for the midships unrep station.



Except for a vertical ladder and a lower platform cage, it's finished.
I just noticed 3 locator holes on the deck for this tripod that will need to be filled. Darn; right after painting!
Happy 4th Guys!
Deb, Syd and I will be heading to Montgomery Field in San Diego to rent a plane to watch the fireworks from the air. I've called SD Flight Service for advisories; we're good to go!
Tony

[Willie]

Hi Tony and all,

I can only say WOW...
This DDG of yours is turning into nothing less than a master piece. The pics of the progress are a delight to see, so please keep them coming.
Very best regards,

Willie.

[Devin]

Tony,

Nice work on your SPG-51s, and the Veteran Model parts look good as well; I think your scratch building finesses the finer details better, but that's to be expected in that scale.

The main difference in the illuminators beyond the physical (they did look very similar, though) was the fact that in the TARTAR system they were used mostly for the doppler tracking of targets, sending and receiving radar wave information. In the AEGIS system they they were illuminators only, no doppler tracking capabilities (hence the profile that is more shallow than the TARTAR illuminator). They had talked about putting doppler tracking capability on one or two of the illuminators on the AEGIS platforms, but I think they canned that notion. It's too bad, really, as you can get a lot of information from listening to a doppler radar's tracking feed and discern if the target is a jet, helo, how many engines, etc.

That UNREP station looks amazing.

-Devin

[Tony Bunch]

Hi Guys,
Looking for suggestions:
Here are some shots of the s/s and the unrep king post, (for no particular reason). I want to add on the funnel grill detail. As previously mentioned, these are air intake vents for cooling fans; if I got the description correct.




I contacted Loren Perry for suggestions; had had a few but he said that none were exact. He knew exactly what I was talking about.

I was thinking finding some p/e grillwork that would suffice, but then I thought how about small railroad louvered siding or something...........
Any input is appreciated...
Tony

[NukeMM]

Tony,

Do you have any GMM 1/700 PE like the Modern USN/JMSDF Warship set? There are various grill/mesh sections on it. They may work for your 1/350 stack vents.

I have two sets of this PE and can cut off the grill sections of each and mail them to you. I think that the "Generic Grilles B" would be the closest one that could work.

Here's a photo:

http://www.goldmm.com/ships/gms700-10.htm

[Devin]

Tony,

I think fine louvers would work the best in that area, but since the stack is solid resin I have no idea how you'd get them in there and keep the scale height of that assembly. Scribing those areas might be the best bet, possibly by taking a very stiff wire brush and dragging it across the surface horizontally? You'd have to tape off the surrounding area first, of course. Another option would be to make decals or replicate the effect in some way with paint.

-Devin

[GTDEATH13]

Dear Tony,
The grills looked something like the one in the picture. They had inclined blades (about 3/8" thick) at a distance of about 3/4" . There was also a vertical piece of metal in the middle oh each grill (can be clearly seen in the photo you posted)
The whole grill extended at about 2" from the surface of the funnel. The perimeter of the grill was welded to the funnel.

I cannot clearly see the grills at the pe gmm set nukemm has posted so I cannot help with that.

Why don't you cut 1mm wide strips of metal from a pe set and make the perimeter of the grills (sand the resin shaped "grills" off completely) and in order to make the horizontal grill blades use 1/700 step parts from generic inclined ladders ane atop the other so as to lessen the distance between the steps (two or three pieces of steps would do the job)

Ah, and somathing of minor importance, just to say things right:
The grills are the intakes of the forced draft blowers that provided combustion air to the ship's boilers.

[DanCinSD]

Tony, loking at the photo you posted of the funnel, I agree with Devin, scribing would be your best bet.... even in the photo, the grill is just barely visiable. and looking from a scale distance equl to the photo distance, fine scribed lines would look good.

Especialy since you are putting in so much work in other areas to draw the eye, I think it would work well. my 28 cents worth (2 cents adjusted for inflation)

[Tony Bunch]

Hi Guys,
Thanks for the offers of p/e and advice.
I started painting last night, and I shot both of the funnels.
They are now drying in a glass showcase for dolls. I skipped the funnel grates in favor of painting.....now. I'm kind of burned out, so I'll have to approach this funnel grate issue later when I'm, "fresh". What a difference some time away makes!
The 5" mounts that I worked on for 2 weeks looked bad after painting. The p/e doors on the sides looked odd and you could see the glue that oozed out when being applied. This finish issue and the poor shape of the p/e doors prompted me to remove them and re-paint the gun mounts today........sans p/e doors. One could argue that the doors on the gun mounts sides were flush and using p/e as a raised detail is inaccurate. I don't think I'm able to scribe the outline of the doors with any skill, so I'm done with the gun mounts.
I painted the decks last week and had to do some filling on the midships unrep kingpost area and then re-paint. The WEM Modern Deck Grey paint is enamel and takes a while to dry, so the hull is put away for another week. I'll focus on the Mk68 GFCS, the fantail sound making device tow rig, the boats, the foremast and making some external detail ehancements for the bridge roof deckhouses. Remember, I removed all of those, "20mm ammo boxes"? Well, now I can add them back on without all of the resin overpour compromised detail.
I should have removed ALL of the twin bits, as every one of them has some minor casting discrepenies. If you look at the ones that I added on to the forecastle and the fantail, you can clearly see that they were not cast with the hull.
Oh yes, I need to manufacture 29 closed chocks.......two sizes.
The base will simply require a trip to Lowes for the wood piece, and some cytting and scribing of the still quite large piece of scrap 1/8 dark blue acrylic sheet that I've been slowly whittling away at. If I stay with 1/350 ships, the acrylic sheet will be gone in 1/2 the time!
Heck, I still have a 1/350 WWII Missouri and Fletcher DD display that is very much, "stalled".
Blah blah blah.......Tony
ps I appreciate all of the inputs, and I'll get back to the funnel grill details.......

[Tony Bunch]

Hi Guys,
Been a little while.
I have decided not to race this project to its end.
The IPMS USA National Convention is without a doubt the biggest contest/vendor faire in the good ol' US of A each year; a heaven and a haven! I wanted to finish this model for all of the right reasons but could'nt do it. More would be lost in haste and little gained.
I have spent the last 3 weeks off and on fixating on a small sub-assembly not any bigger than the last .4" of a #2 pencil. The WEM kit provided Mk68 director is just fine if you want to finish this and move along to the next model. I chose to study this item and change it to match drawings and photos. I overdid the sanding and paint prepping on the WEM piece some time ago, pretty much ruining it. I took one from an ISW kit; that was the starting point.
The ISW director has a nice shape to it, but was a little too big. I sanded away the sides, the bottom, the back and the top; checking against measurements from BuShips drawings.
Some things I noticed about the WEM director:
1) SPG-53 radar is too small
a) The Veteran Models radar is just the right size it turns out. This radar is a part of a pre-production SPG-51 and other directors package.
2) SPG-53 radar is perched atop the house with a quardropod, not a solid stantion.
b) made the 4 legs from .010" steel rod.
***********now I'm discussing both the WEM and ISW directors***************
3) The house was integral with the base, no clear demarcation.
c) after studying photos, I realized this director house has a 1/2 round bottom allowing what in aviation is called a roll capability and is seated in a rotating cradle also allowing yaw. Now I get it! The director can be rotated and pointed toward the target, the house can independently maintain stability while the ship is rolling and pitching. The radar itself can be raised or lowered independently of all other motion too.
.........duh!
d) I made a separate rotating cradle/base to match photos
e) I sanded the bottom of the director to a 1/2 round bottom shape, and added all of the side and top details to match photos of directors I had.
4) There was no bump/blister atop the director house representing the clear observer's dome.
I made this from much larger .250" acrylic dowel reduced down to .065" and shaped accordingly.
All of this and more over a three week period........
Side by side with the WEM director...

Much modified ISW director from the port side......

starboard side/aft view.

Now to paint......
All comments are welcome......
Tony

[Devin]

Wonderful work on that director.

[MartinJQuinn]

Wonderful work on that director.

I'll second that - awesome work, Tony.

[Tony Bunch]

Hi Guys,
I intend to put the Mk68 director on the USS Brewton for the Nats. Same for one of the 5" mounts and the Veteran Models ASROC. After I get all of my shipments gone to Va Beach and the L'Arsenal USA catalog finished, I'll be focusing on some last minute imrpovements for the Nats entry; USS Brewton FF-1086. Turns out the Brewton operated with Benjamin Stoddert more than once, as both ships were based at Pearl Harbor and both were in DesRon33.
Next year's Nats will see a finished Benjamin Stoddert!
Come you know what..........or..........you know what!
Thanks for the nice comments Guys!
Tony

[dfmoss]

Quick question - I may be building Dragon's 1/700 USS Charles F. Adams for a friend. Kit number 7019. What, if any, photoetch sets are available for this kit?

Thanks.

Don

[NukeMM]

Quick question - I may be building Dragon's 1/700 USS Charles F. Adams for a friend. Kit number 7019. What, if any, photoetch sets are available for this kit?

Thanks.

Don

Don,

I recommend the Gold Medal Models' Modern USN/JMSDF Warship set here:

http://www.goldmm.com/ships/gms700-10.htm

[Robin]

Tony,

Got to ask how you formed or bent the PE SPS-40 into shape? Getting to that part with the WEM 1/350 Benjamin Stoddert DDG-22.
Thanks