The Ship Model Forum

I'm sure they can get those canopies thinner. Also have the cockpit tub moulded in

Only way to do thinner canopies would be vac form, which has its own share of problems.

_________________
Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Aren't some aircraft kit canopies finer than the trumpeter 350 ones?

Admittedly I haven't seen a aircraft kit for years.

I would like to see the way Trumpeter does it's AC but make the landing gear the same plastic as the plane itself and not that black plastic which is difficult to deal with. I like the clear canopies and plastic plane, nix the clear plane and all one piece plane with canopy.

Keith

I got an early start on CVW-19 for a Ticonderoga 1967 so I had about half the airwing done prior to getting the kit. The decals are mine except the "bars and stars" that are from various Trumpeter Aircraft sets I have.

The "Spads" are from L'Arsenal. I used landing gear from 1/350 scale Tamiya Tomcats to get a nice sturdy gear with the brace behind the main mount.

Both the F-8E and RF-8G's are from Corsair Armada. The Gallery Crusaders do not have the ventral fins. They may be a bit overscaled in the fuselage but they have the same wing span and length as the Gallery Crusaders. I think that they will look correct on the ship with the wings folded. I also like the fact that you can get both F-8's and RF-8's.

The Trumpeter A-3D is really an early EA-3. To make an A-3B for this era (1967), trim off the ECM Pod from the bottom of the aircraft and smooth it out.


I am waiting for some L'Arsenal A-4 Skyhawks to complete the airwing. I think the Gallery A-4 is underscaled a bit. I also need to finish the Willy Fud and the Seaprite Helo's. The canopies for the Crusaders are from Gold Medal Models canopy sets. I used the A-7 canopy for the F-8's. The Spad and A-3B are painted Gunship Gray.

VA-52




VF-191


VF-194 CAG Bird


VF-194




VFP-63



VAH-4




They look great until you take pics! Then you see all of the errors.

Nope, they still look great!

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Aaron Propper
"I don't understand any of this! But when we get in the giant robots, WE MUST FIGHT!"

"This is how Admiral Okita fights."

Not to change the subject, but will Pontos be doing anything for the Gallery Intrepid any time soon? Thanks

I believe they are planning for 2015 but not sure when.
Dave

I guess it is because not much people do care about it?

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The advantage of wisdom is that you can play dumb; conversely, it is more difficult.

I originally was under the impression that it was underscale overall.

I have a set of 1/350 plans for the Bon home Richard so I laid the Intrepid flight deck against the plans. The interesting thing is that the Intrepid Kit Flight Deck is very close from the rear of the Island forward against the plans. The "Dog House" forward elevator and port midship elevator line very well. Almost exact. It comes up short about half way from the island aft. The distance from where the keel curves up to the stern is good as well comparing the hull to the plans. It is Short in front of where the keel curves up. That is where the difference would have to be added.

Too bad. Otherwise it seems like a very nice kit.

You know, that's actually a good point. I didn't "do the math" on the equivalent of the 1 inch to actual, and I should have. I'll keep that in mind for future reviews.

I think part of the reason I "downplayed" it was because I found discrpancies in the overall length of the ships. I decided, in the end, to go with the NHC data, as I thought that would be the most accurate. But since I wasn't 100% confident in the measurment, I didn't want to crucify Gallery over it.

Thanks for your comments. I appreciate them, as I try to be as honest and fair as I can be when reviewing a kit.

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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

You guys got me motivated so I got a few shots this morning of the Gallery Kit against the Floating Dry Dock USS Bon Homme Richard Plans. A better comparisome would be to use the Intrepid Plans but I was not up for spending the cash to make a point.

So, first, a few assumptions that I could not independently verify:

1) The Bon Homme Richard and Intrepid had similar hull and Flight Deck overall lengths? I feel pretty safe with that assumption given that the flight deck matches up very good on the forward half of the plans. Almost perfect.

2) Floating Drydock's Plans are correctly scaled at 1/192 scale

3) My conversion was 192/350 to create the 1/350 scale plans for BHR. That comes out to .548 the size of the Floating Drydock Plans

So given all of that, I laid the flight deck out on the plans. I was able to match up the forward elevators. This leaves the aft section short.



I then laid the hull against the plans matching the bow up and looking at the stern. It comes up 5/8's inch short. In 350th scale that represents 18.23 feet.



Then I matched the stern to the plans and verified that the distance from the fantail to the keel is correct. That is why I believe that to correct the kit to a true 1/350th scale you would have to cut it in half about a third the way from the stern and insert a 5/8 inch plug. That would be a pretty major operation since that changes the angled deck a lot.



It is enough of an error to make 1/350th aircraft look a bit over scaled aft of the Island. Since forward of the Island is correct, I guess if you park you aircraft on the Bow for a recovery set up, it will probably look pretty good. If you park the airing aft for a launch, it might look a little under scaled. I haven't gotten that far yet.

Excellent work - thanks for taking the time to do it!

_________________
Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman

Thank you for taking the time. This is what I like to see. Instead of lamenting a kits shortcomings, show how to fix them. Moving to Reviews so this info will be preserved.

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Timothy Dike
Owner & Administrator
ModelWarships.com

Well, thanks for taking the time and finding out the error is not as large as it initially seemed.
Some of us have the means to have scale plans and all, most of us do not.
Yes, after spending close to 200 bucks for a kit as researched as the Intrepid, I am a bit disappointed to find out (and it took a mere comparison with the much derided Trumpeter Essex) that this kit is too short, and that all the proportions of the side walls have somehow been altered.
I am also glad someone had the resources to show us that the shortcomings can only be MASKED rather than FIXED.
Spare us the sarchasm Mr. Cadman, because I would not have spent 200 bucks on something this off the mark.
I am still going to build it and place it as far as possible from the (correctly scaled) Trumpeter Essex.

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Victoria Nobis Vita.

Greetings,
My friend, Jerry Beasley, who served on the Tico asked me to post these antenna photos to see if anyone could identify what type of antenna this is. These pictures were taken by him. Thanks in advance for your help.
Dave

I was on the Facebook page for the Ticonderoga and found an explanation of what this antenna array was Ed Ofstad explained what it is as he was the the Radio Man that actually worked on it here is his explanation he also describes the 2 other antennas on the platforms on the starboard side if both Ticonderoga and Hancock(I think they are NTDS antennas ASSRA 57 or 58 ) Hope this Helps,
David Smith
MCB Camp Lejeune NC

Ed Ofstad Definitely not the Ticonderoga... We had the pickle fork antenna aft of the superstructure... It was the only one in the world, and it was mine....
July 20, 2014 at 6:37pm • Like • 2

Richard Momberger Ed Ofstad...can you enlighten us as to what the pickle fork antenna was used for and why we were the only ones to have it? Thanks.
July 25, 2014 at 3:09pm • Like

Ed Ofstad The pickle fork was a multiple whip MHF antenna... It had, if I remember correctly, eight whips on a platform about 10 feet across and mounted on a single pole which could be tilted seaward when launching and recovering aircraft... The whips were all attached to a netting of copper cables which surrounded the base of the platform and electrically lengthened the antennas ..It was fed by ten tuners which were a combination of capacitance and inductance in series and parallel to the antenna, and would also electrically lengthen and shorten the antenna in an attempt to reach the point of resonance..... The radio men would attempt to tune it to a SWR of 1:1 for maximum power out...`the advantage was that if the frequencies had enough split between them, we could put ten transmitters up on a single antenna... In Radio II we had around 30 MHF transmitters and if all were up and transmitting, we would have had to have an antenna for each one and we would have looked like a porcupine... If you remember we also had whips horizontal from the side of the ship and vertical on most levels of the superstructure...Why we were the only one to have one, is beside me... It might have been an experiment that didn't work out as planned... Our biggest concern was when the frequencies were not split far enough, it would result in jamming our own transmissions....We also had two bird cages, one forward and one aft of the superstructure, again an attempt to allow several transmissions on a single antenna...
July 25, 2014 at 4:25pm • Like • 3

Ed Ofstad You can see the pickle fork aft of the #3 elevator and the bird cage forward of the superstructure...

Hi, Roberto,

I think the scale-issue with the Interpid-kit has been answered by a research by Maarten Schönfeld in another thread on this forum in "Calling all Cold War Essex-class Fans!".
When putting the hulls of the Intrepid against the Trumpeter-kit I also noticed the difference in length as Martin did.
Maarten mailed me the building plans of the Essex, but the same info can also be seen in Mark's plans. The bow (Front Perpendicular) is at frame 0, the rudder axis (which seemed to me a better reference-point than waterline-length or overall lenght) is at frame 195. The distance between frames is 4 feet, so the distance between frame 0 and the rudder axis is 780 feet. In 1:350 scale this is 679.3 mm, or 26.74 inch. I measured this distance in the Gallery kit and came out at 678 mm, just 1.3 mm too short. Maarten did a check on his Trumpeter Essex hull and measured 695 mm, or 15 mm too long. See his post attached here.

You're right in building both kits as they are, as the hobby is to have fun from building, isn't it? They both will look as an Essex-class...

Walter
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Gentlemen,

the only dimension of length which is of real use to us modelers is the Length between Perpendiculars (LBP or Lpp), as it a structural given for the naval architect and the engineers to design the ship structure. LBP is defined as the distance between the Forward Perpendicular (FP or FPP) and the Aft Perpendicular (AP or APP).

The FP is determined as the point where the Construction Waterline (CWL) intersects the bow (stem), and the AP where the CWL intersects the stern. CWL has very little to do with the real waterline, which is depending on the loading of the ship, hence Waterline Length can differ considerably from the LBP described above.

(Short note here: AP is often defined instead as the rudder axis, but this is not the case with the Essex class.)

So the key question is: where are FP and AP situated in case of the Essex? FP is at frame 0, forward edge of the stem at and below the CWL (Construction Waterline). AP is situated at frame 205, but this is not very clear in the drawings: someone scribbled 'AF' on the drawing at frame 205, but that point does not coincide exactly with the point where the actual waterline (and not the CWL) intersects the stern. But 205 is the correct position for AP.

As the LBP is given as 820 ft, the location of AP at frame 205 means that the frame spacing throughout the hull is 4 feet, which makes perfect sense. Any other location of AP would give a nonsense frame spacing.

As the rudder axis is located at Frame 195, this means that the distance between frame 0 and the rudder axis is 195 x 4 = 780 feet. In 1:350 scale this is 679.3 mm, or 26.74 inch.

My friend Walter measured this distance in the Gallery kit and measured it as 678 mm, or 1.3 mm too short. This must be quite acceptable for most builders I believe!

I also did a quick check on the Trumpeter Essex hull and measured this distance as 695 mm, or 15 mm too long. This is rather less acceptable I believe. So the real error seems to lie with the Trumpeter kit, not the Gallery one, I must conclude.

I hope this help to conclude this discussion, my friends!

So any word on after market PE and things like that? Seems like it has been quiet for such an anticipated release.

There are so many subjects being released now that I believe we are seeing aftermarket subject fatigue, wherein there's just too much for all of them to stay on top of.

Also, in talking with the local hobby shop, he believes that sales have been hurt by the high price - while it was much anticipated in Seattle due to the high content of retired Navy and present maritime/Navy presence, he was only able to sell three of them. I know Brandon sold a lot in his pre-sale, but wonder how sales have been since. My hope is this is an aberration and the perceived need for aftermarket is still high.

_________________
Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman