Trumpeter Aircraft carrier question

Modeling Subjects Ships
1

Hi

I’m new here, so and the reason I joined is so I an share my project which will combine my love of ships and planes, as I’m making a Trumpeter aircraft carrier. But, I do have a few questions first.


I know this is a long shots but if anyone has a 1:350 Trumpeter USS Enterprise CV-65 kit then can you please answer these questions:

- how many models come with the kit
- how easy is the kit to assemble
- do the models just snap together or do they need to be glued
- do you have to apply decals on the ship and if so do they give you them in the kit
- do they supply decals for the models
- do you need to be good at assembling things to make the kit
- does the kit need glue or other materials or does it just snap together
- what material are they made of
- what’s their quality level compared to other carriers, and what’s the models quality level

If you can’t answer these, but know a good forum which can, then just post it in the thread. Thanks.
2

I can’t answer any question specifically about that carrier, but I have built several kits from Trumpeter, including the CV-2. The kits are all regular kits that require glue and paint. They are made from styrene plastic. You do need to be pretty good at assembling models. Trumpeter is notorious for making parts in five pieces when other mfgs might make the part in one piece. There is a reason for that- they do not need a draft angle, so deckhouses can be made with truly vertical walls instead of being at slight angles.

Trumpeter kits have beautiful detail and accuracy, but you need to be willing to work harder to build the model. If you are really a novice I’d suggest a few simpler kits first before going after a carrier.

3

Thanks Don. D you know any simple kits?

4

Trumpeter kits are notorious for being intricate and difficult to build, requiring lots of experience, but resulting in beautiful models if done right.

For a simpler ship kit, I would look at something from Revell, but even they may not be good for beginners. Why not try a basic airplane kit first, to get the feel of it? Again, Revell may offer basic models.

5

Thanks Chuck. Do you know of any kits that snap together? Is a Revell kit detailed?

6

I second the Revell suggestion.

7

I am not aware of any Snap-Tite aircraft carrier models. Maybe a LEGO set?

8

Are they hard to build or,just time consuming?

9

Actually, an aircraft carrier is fairly simple as long as you just build it straight out of the box with no frills as compared to a ship with a complicated superstructure like a destroyer or a battleship. What is hard about an aircraft carrier to me is getting all of the aircraft to look good. Submarines are a snap in comparison to a surface ship of just about any type.

Time consumption is what a hobby is all about, for that matter.

10

Thanks. Do to know how many parts there are in an aircrfat carrier (Trumpeter Cv-2). I found one with 23 models for $25 so I think it’s too good an oppurtunity to pass up.

11

No, I don’t know how many parts there are. Just use the parts you want, it doesn’t matter.

12

Thanks Sub. Are there are any materials I need to put it together like glue or paint, or does it come preprinted.

13

Thanks Sub. Are there are any materials I need to put it together like glue or paint, or does it come prepainted.

14

You will need a lot of stuff. The side of the box or the instruction sheet will list the materials needed. But you can count on needing some glue (super glue will probably be the easiest for you), paint, brushes, a sharp knife like an X-acto, scissors, an emory board. and tweezers at least. The model is completely unpainted. Or you can just slap it together without paint and leave it in the raw.

15

What about the Tamiya kit? Does that come painted or not?

16

None of them come painted. None! Maybe you can find one somebody started and didn’t finish so you won’t have to do anything yourself. Check E-Bay. Maybe you can find one that is already built and painted.

17

Ok, thanks. I’m still going after that Trumpeter kit, then.

18

adam have a look at this, I make ships as well, you can get aircraft as complicated but usually in larger scales. This is an absolutely huge kit, if you have not actually bought the kit this is a link to a review.

http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/ships/ru/cv/350-kuznetzov-trump/kuznetsov.html

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Thanks, that’s very informative. How easy would you say it is to build out of 10 (don’t count time, just how hard it is to assemble).

20

If I may, I’d like to take this thread in a slightly different direction - back to basics. I have the impression that adam340 may have been out of the model building hobby for quite a while, and unfamiliar with what it looks like nowadays.

The modern plastic ship model kit is quite a bit different than the ones you probably remember building as a kid. Plastic scale modeling has, to all intents and purposes, ceased to be a kids’ hobby; the kits that have been produced in the last ten, or even twenty, years have been intended for adult enthusiasts.

The typical modern aircraft carrier kit has several hundred parts, many of them quite small. To build it typically takes months; some of the simpler (i.e., older) kits can be done in a few weeks, and some modelers have been known to spend over a year on a single model. The “snap-together” kit is almost a thing of the past; there are a handful of airplanes and cars (which are targeted at kids) in that category, but I don’t know of a single warship.

The typical modern plastic kit is designed to be painted in its entirety. Serious ship modelers do research on the exact colors (and sometimes get into pretty fierce arguments about them). There are vast ranges of paints on the market - and modelers also get into arguments about which is best.

I’d have to rate the difficulty of virtually any state-of-the-art aircraft carrier kit on either of the two most common scales, 1/350 and 1/700, at 10 out of 10.

With a few exceptions, modern kits don’t come with paint, cement, or anything else you need to build them. You’ll need quite a few things to do even a basic job on a kit: at least half a dozen colors of paint, cement, brushes, tweezers, an X-acto knife, and some sort of small files (or emery boards) at the minimum. Experienced modelers build up tool kits of dozens of tools. Many of them use airbrushes for painting, but I suggest you don’t worry about that in the beginning.

I checked the Trumpeter website; it doesn’t list a U.S.S. Enterprise. In the company’s early days, it reissued some simple, rather crude kits that were originally made by other companies; maybe the Enterprise kit on E-bay was one of those. (I suspect some other participant in this Forum can list all the kits Trumpeter has ever made.) I wonder if that ad was somehow garbled. I don’t think it’s possible to design an aircraft carrier kit with 23 parts; I wonder if that might have been the number of airplanes the kit contained (in addition to the parts making up the ship itself).

If you want to dive back into ship modeling after a long absence, I have to suggest that a carrier is not the best kit to start with. (The carriers Trumpeter does make have hundreds and hundreds of parts - and cost a good deal of money.)

Revell does make a 1/720-scale Enterprise that’s been on the market for more than thirty years, but is, by most accounts, a pretty good kit. It has 102 parts. Here’s a link to the relevant page on the Revell website: http://www.revell.de/index.php?id=210&KGKANR=0&KGKOGP=10&KGSCHL=45&L=1&page=1&sort=0&nc=&searchactive=&q=&SWO=&ARMAS4=&PHPSESSID=67a26fb0bf08da77303c4de354304dae&KZSLPG=&offset=4&cmd=show&ARARTN=05046&sp=1 . If you really want to start with a carrier, this might be a good choice. Be aware, though, that 1/720 scale is mighty small. Some adult modelers find it seriously challenging - especially if they (like me) have arthritis and/or fading eyesight.

Revell just recently released a model of the U.S.S. Nimitz on 1/1200 scale. That’s really small. Here’s the link to the website: http://www.revell.de/index.php?id=210&KGKANR=0&KGKOGP=10&KGSCHL=45&L=1&page=5&sort=0&nc=1&searchactive=&q=&SWO=&ARMAS4=&PHPSESSID=67a26fb0bf08da77303c4de354304dae&KZSLPG=&offset=36&cmd=show&ARARTN=05814&sp=1 . If you click on the right box (the one with the little image of a wrench) you can see the instruction sheet, which will give you an idea of what you’re getting into. I haven’t seen the kit, but on the basis of the instruction sheet and the photos it looks quite nice.

I hope the above hasn’t insulted adam340’s intelligence. And I certainly hope I haven’t discouraged him or anybody else from taking up the hobby; it’s a great one. But I do think newcomers to it need to go in with their eyes open.