Hey all, I have finally gotten one of Trumpeter’s 1/500 scale aircraft carriers; something I’ve been wanting for decades!
I got the USS John C Stennis CVN 74 and she is quite big, at almost three feet in length! Here is a pic of the main hull on my workbench:
I did a little bit of the construction on the back sponsons when the above pic was taken.
Building this thing was a pretty good challenge so far. I had to fill several areas with gap-filling CA glue and sand them down due to poor fit of the sponsons and rear hull. There were four major areas that I needed to fill and sand:
The Bow:
Port Sponson:
Starboard Sponson:
Stern:
I think I was sanding for at least three hours or more! Any holes, gaps you see are already filled and sanded down smooth. The white is from the accelerator I used. I also need to mount the elevators. Hopefully I can find the fourth one that seems to have disappeared.
Now, here it is with the main flight deck test fitted.
Tomorrow I get to paint the main hull and start detailing some of the sponson decks and fittings. I will be putting gun barrels on the CWIS too.
waw, that’s one big carrier. Will you be using any AM parts (if they exist) ?
Another question, are the planes in the kit, or do you have to buy them separate ?
Thank you scalehobby and 9x19! This guy is pretty darn big all right! I love it!
NO Dan, I won’t use any AM parts since I can’t afford them. Too bad, because the detail is quite basic on parts of this kit.
And yes, the planes do come with it. In fact, it looks like they gave me more planes in this kit than any other kit has done. I’m gonna have quite the air wing on this baby!
Larry, Trumpeter does have these kits in 1/350 scale as well. In fact, that is all they advertise now. I never see the 1/500 scale ones advertised anymore. FSM did an article on the 1/350 scale one a few months back, but then you already knew that.
I happened to get it because I have always wanted one of these in 1/500 or 1/600 scale or anywhere in between those scales. Trumpeter released their 1/500 scale carriers just before coming out with the 1/350 scale line.
I’d like to see pics of your PT-109 next to that behemoth if you can post them. That would be cool to see!
Well everyone, here is further progress on this behemoth on my workbench. I actually completed this a couple days ago, but haven’t been able to post because of computer problems.
I finally got the hull painted. I masked off the lower hull after having painted it black and letting it dry. Then I airbrushed on the grey. Here is how she looked:
You can see on the following pics how the gap filling and sanding came out on the areas mentioned above. I only showed one sponson though, the other pic came out too blurry, but the result was the same:
Bow:
You can see where a part of the front broke off. I’ll have that cleaned up when everything dries.
Sponson:
Stern:
While the hull was drying, I decided to go ahead and build the island. The lowest level of the bridge section was molded hollow, so here you see a piece of sheet styrene cut and glued into place to fill the hole:
Here is the basic assembly with the bridge windows painted in:
This last shot is a test fit to give a small idea of how this bad boy will look once complete.
Also, Dan asked if an air wing had been included in this kit. There are four sprues of F-14’s, F-18’s, A-4’s, A-7’s, S-3’s, helos, and a vigilante. Then there are two sprues with the E-2’s, F-4’s, A6’s, EA6’s, and some more S-3’s Well here they are:
Comments are welcome. Thanks to all who stopped in before to see this.
Well, it seems nobody has come back to see my progress here, but I’m going to go ahead and post additional pics here for anyone to see if they wish.
Today, after having built my Challenger II, I took a look at the flight deck of my carrier and was not real happy with what I saw:
Yep! Three piece flight deck! Oh how I hate dealing with the seams on a deck! Well, what can you do? I glued the three parts together, added some gap-filling CA, and set it aside for awhile to dry.
While it was drying, I went ahead and assembled the rest of the Island. This was not easy! There were four instances where the part numbers were reversed from what was on the sprue. One part was given a completely incorrect number that was given to another part that goes on the main hull. Then four of the parts had to be left off because two of them were molded far too large. Man, was I disgusted, but I forged ahead. Finally I got it all assembled. Here is the new Island before I painted the new additions:
Finally the deck was ready. I spent another three hours or so sanding down the seams as carefully as possible. It was tough, and I’m not as happy with this as I wanted to be, but I think I’ve reduced the seams enough to make this an acceptable model. Here is the newly painted flight deck after all that work:
Now about the only thing to do is paint the details on both the deck and the island. The lines in the flight deck have to be painted on. I’ll even have to paint the borders around the elevators! The only decals that go on the flight deck are the helo landing circles and the deck numbers at the bow. Once I’m done with that, all I’ll have to do is take care of the air wing, decal everything and assemble the hull/flightdeck/island assemblies.
Looks good until now and BIG.
Makes me want to make one.
I think flight deck wants more filling…give it one more!
Thanks for sharing those step by step pics!
You were right, and I did fill it again. I worked on it a bit last night before bed and today, I’m gonna paint it again to see how it turns out. I hate to lose all the detail on the deck though, but I do want it to look smooth.
Thank you cromejob. I am enjoying this build, despite the issues with the seams on the flightdeck. Hopefully, I can have it done by the time my IPMS meeting rolls around.
Well, I apologize for taking so long to continue on this kit, but I finally did get some more progress done. I don’t know how many people are actually watching this progress, but I’m continuing to post as I work on this model.
I painted the main island and all the assemblies on it. Here is what it looks like now:
Finally, I taped up the flight deck to get the paint on it. That’s right, I have to paint all the lines on the deck since they were not included on the decal sheet:
I’ll be using as simple new tool that I ‘developed’ to refine the lines on the deck. More about that in the Tools Forum.
In between all this, (and the five Armor kits I’m building,) I’ve been cementing the vertical stabilizers on all the carrier aircraft, along with any other parts needed. After that, I’ll spray them with grey on the tops and white on the bottoms. Once they are dry, I’ll paint the details on them and maybe have them ready when the carrier is finished.
Further update: one of my deck seams cracked, so I’ll be doing some more repair for awhile. The deck is almost fully painted now. Pics will be up in a day or so showing my progress.
