Macoma was from the Rapana class; the carriers were originally built as Shell tankers
and the structure is quite different from the dedicated Casablanca class or the converted merchantmen from the Empire class; as the ships served both as carriers as well as tankers, much of the original deck layout was preserved and the carrier deck was built over that.
As a result the Rapana class did not have lifts; any work on the planes needed to be done on the deck out in the open only for a row of aft deck plates that could be tilted to vertical to give at least some shelter.
I only have detailed drawings of the ship as a tanker, thanks to Kees Helder from Helderline.nl
As there are no hull cross section drawings from the Rapana class, I morphed, strecthed, cut and scaled the Casablanca hull drawings from ADM as seen here to match the dimensions up to the tanker deck of Macoma, quite a struggle I have to say, and it remains to be seen if it looks the part. As the Casablanca has a flat stern, I will need to create the rounded stern of Macoma myself, probably by shaping from a block of balsa.
Building very much in the same way as ADM, Ilaid the keel today
I made the mistake of choosing thinner multiplex, and that, combined with the foracious appetite of my rather blunt motorsaw plus my my limited skills, did away with the delicate and accurate measuring and drawing of templates i did for a few days
For that reason i choose glueing paste with a bit of filling capacity, to still get strong bonds on uneven surfaces, hopefully later nailing the playwood hullplating corrects any outer dimension mismatch as a result of my plywood massacre.
Any way; here she is: up to the tanker deck in frames,
Bear with me as this is my first shipmodel, so the learning curve is quite steep, but fun
cheers, Skybert
