Egilman

You've come to the right place brother, there is more modeling knowledge, (all genres) than the next two forums combined...... And it's family...... Oh, by the way, I have a PDF copy of the official Booklet of General Plans for this ship.... Just in case you want to see what they really were engineering wise....

Actually Dennis, the whole boat is a bit too high in the water... The waterline is right at the break of the hull and superstructure when in flat water and in rough seas the water will be washing over the decks on almost every wave.... The driest part of the boat is the bridge and it been described as being in a washing machine while it's agitating during rough weather..... For a first time creating a seaway, it is excellent though.... not everyone can do a decent choppy sea their first time out.... Here it's not only decent but good job...

That should smooth out beautifully Jack.... Excellent recovery.....

I got to stand next to a Pagani once, About 20 feet away behind the ropes.... Felt like a privledge to be that close ....

Well, it is free form sculpting in a sense... but once you've figured out what your going to do, it's rather easy my friend.... I just have to remember how I made mountains and rivers when I was working on the railroad..... Pretty soon I'll be breaking out the toilet paper.....

Yep but I do believe that ocean waves count as well..... Thank you brother it's really appreciated....

Yes, normally the aircraft were polished and kept clean in 1/1 scale, in smaller scales light glinting off the surface would be completely disproportionate to the scale of the aircraft when your trying to depict an object.... Flat paint cuts the shine so when observed by the human eye it appears as realistic as possible... In real life some of them were actually painted in flats especially at the start of the war where a glint off a canopy or the spine of a fuselage could mean life or death.... So it depends on what your trying to depict..... in general, in smaller scales, flat paint gives a more natural finish to the eye..... But this is for aircraft.... tanks and ships were generally painted in flats even in real life cause a reflection or flash of sunlight could easily mean getting shot at.....

Gorgeous US Navy tricolor..... Beautiful.....

I think I'm done carving..... So let's see how close I came to the subject..... I think once I add the splashing action along the hull it going to be close..... Onward.... EG

Same interior color you used on everything else Brother....

Almost done carving... lets see what she looks like.... I think she needs to go a bit deeper especially at the stern.... Yep definitely, the stern need to sit down in the water more.... Onward....

No NO badges The pin reference was to "POP"as in balloon.... Agreed wholeheartedly... {chuckle} Correct brother, it protects the rudder pedals from interference from the bombardier as he leans in to operate the bombsights.....

Uh oh, where's my pin.....

Yeah, it is, but I see you got to it before I did brother... I'm slowing down in my old age.... {chuckle}

Well time for another update.... Getting all foamy here... (next time I'll do this first rather than assemble the hull first) Cutting the foam base... Checking size and presentation position At this point we go back out to the shop to fire up the torch, But the admiral asked a question about flammability of the foam and yes it is flammable if you get too close... So, she suggested that I try the heat gun which gets hot enough to melt paint off the wall and see if that would work better.... Anything is worth a shot for safety's sake..... {chuckle} Works like a charm in fact, easier to control than the torch as well.... (she does come up with a good one every once in a while, it's why I married her) The black marks on the foam are the ridge points I want to keep parallel and fore and aft marks for the hull so while I'm shaping the surface I can keep to the pattern I described earlier... go slow and steady and if it starts to deform to fast take the heat away, you want a gentle shrinking of the surface, too much and it becomes a globby unuseable mess.... The results.... Deeper in the middle slightly down at the bow and stern... looking good here... Now we have to insert the hull into the foam... Marking out the hull.... Carving, you will want a tight fit at first to get the shape right, eventually opening it up for a slightly loose fit for positioning later..... About half way there.... You can begin to see the effect the heat has on the smooth surface of the foam, it creates a rippled surface that looks like wave action. (but in scale) Once the hull is in the foam in the correct position, you can start to finish the foam surface off as a seaway..... Next step finishing the mount and detailing the seaway.... Onward..... EG

It's the rear bulkhead for the nose bombardiers section.... Circled in red....

Prayin for ya brother.... Hope you remain well....

I loved these kits when I was a kid, so much fun.... the only real problem was finding them....

Take a piece of the rubbery sprue and test it with some cooking oil see if it breaks down, if it doesn't use a few small drops to lubricate the bogies so the turn real easy....

That's the gear teeth to prevent track slippage, the taper is as you guessed to prevent track wander....

Originally an Otaki designed kit dating from '71, this is a reissue/reboxing from the '90's.... it's a very hard brittle styrene... feels very slick and stiff doesn't it? Neat kit, you gonna make her mobile Dennis?

Ok some history, when I decide to represent a specific scene I usually pick an image that represents what the subject is doing at that point in time.... This is the image I'm attempting to model..... We know the ships name and the date so we can do all the research and model the ship as to her condition and fit on that date, but what else does this image tell us.... The ship is traveling eastward, she is rolling with the westerly swell and the records tell us it's the North Pacific Ocean... You look at the line of waves behind the ship which are driven by the wind so the wind is coming in over the portside from the north... The beaufort scale tells us that the wind is probably 10-15 kts, sea state is force 5.....(choppy waves some whitecaps) The flag on the ship is standing out full in the breeze so she is doing at least 20 kts.... It's early morning given the sun angle and is shining full on her bow, that is what tells us she is on an easterly course as is the USS Sabine AO-25 in the background.... we know that is the Sabine cause she is in Ms. 11 overall Navy Blue paint.... That means this picture was probably taken from the USS Cimarron AO-22... The other destroyer you see in the pic coming about is a Sims class but too distant and indistinct to tell which individual ship..... This is Task Force 16.3 formed on the afternoon of April 17th when the Tankers topped off the Carriers and Cruisers and started their dash into the launch point. These ships are part of the Doolittle Raid group..... So what are they doing..... they have done their jobs and are returning to Pearl at approximately 15 knts.... Right now, the rest of the ships from TF 16, the two carriers Hornet and Enterprise, three heavy cruisers the Salt Lake City, Northampton & Vincennes and one light cruiser Nashville, are returning at 20 kts after launching the bombers from the deck of the Hornet and are approximately 700 miles to the east.... The rest of TF 16, the eight Destroyers; Balch, Fanning, Benham, Ellet, Gwin, Meredith, Grayson & Monssen, and the two fleet oilers Cimarron and Sabine are returning home awaiting the striking force to catch up to them. Now the scene, the ship is 350 ft long and is fully captured in the image... the frame length is 431 feet which means 42 feet of ocean on the bow and stern of the ship is also seen, this is our seaway.... The ship is riding the crests of two swells one the bow has just cut thru and the other just under the #3 5" mount the low spot between the two crests is right under the forward stack.... The depth of the swell is approximately 10-12 feet.. The crest at the #3 mount is about 2-3 ft below the main deck level and drops at the forward stack to below the boot topping probably showing a bit of hull red... In scale that is about a 5/16ths inch rise to the swell, it will be a bit higher at the bow when the stem throws the water aside as she cuts thru... Along the ship there is some foam and spray but not much airborne as this is the lee side of the ship. the swell is slightly angled to the bow off the ship probably 5-10 degrees to port...... The ship hull is just under 12" long measuring up 431 feet at scale gives me roughly 15" leaving me an inch and a half at bow and stern, I'll bump that up to 16" for a bit more surface..... The hull is a inch and a quarter wide so giving a scale I would need 5" of seaway beamwise for an angled presentation which is more attractive than square to the board so I'll set the width at 6" I'll cut a piece of foam at 16x6 inches to make the seaway.... Next up, firing up the foam cutter and then, lighting the torch.... EG

There hasn't been a current study that I'm aware of and if you look at the NHHC's site they are still running the same story they fed to the newspapers way back in '44.... as they say the victors get to write the history... (and spin up their less than stellar moments/little white lies/dirty little secrets) can't have the public knowing the truth can they.... (at least not until all the people who were participating are gone) All war planning today does the same thing, but it's much much easier to do today with the tracking and guidance equipment we have now.... Especially weapons delivery...... All the naysayer were claiming that we would be overwhelmed by hoards of soviet tanks coming thru the Fulda Gap, and from the early '50's thru the mid '60's that was for the most part true.... But since then not a snowballs chance in hell of that happening... (although the naysayers are still thinking up reasons that we will get our butts handed to us by the enemy)

Ours just drops them over the fence into the yard, sometimes we are lucky if they put them in a plastic bag...... Is it any wonder that amazon set up it's own delivery service? {chuckle} And, that is a good idea brother, I think I'm going to do that as well, getting tired of all this crap.... Thanks...

Very Very true brother, it was plain that the age of the "Battle Line" tactics taught before the war were dead.... The airplane was the death of the battleship... exactly as Billy Mitchell predicted in 1919