1/350 USS Nimitz CVN-68 (Trumpeter)

Well this has been just over 4 years in the making! The aircraft are mostly Trumpeter with some Tamiya in the hanger bay with the decals from Starfighter. All aircraft have rudimentary cockpits with more time spent on the ones with open canopies. A mix of GMM and WEM etch was used for the landing gear, cockpits and missile pylons.

The two Tomcats on the forward catapults both have 2 LEDs fitted together with an IKEA under cupboard LED lighting strip for the hanger deck. I used the same process that I used when constructing the USS Hornet in that all the aircraft and support equipment was completed before I started on the ship. I found this very important in a psychological sense as some major construction hurdles I had to overcome while building the ship and without the airing it would have been so very easy to just give up on the whole project.

As mentioned some major work was done in correcting the inaccuracies in the kit. The biggest being the hugely oversized deck aircraft tie downs on both the main and hanger decks. This was achieved by filling each of the holes with filler and when dry, sanding smooth then re-drilling.  On the latter as the deck is all that is supplied in the kit a major amount of wood, plastic, resin and brass was used to create a realistic hanger environment, together with moving/deleting some of the hull apertures.

All the catwalks past the bow area have been removed and replaced with etch together with the accompanying support braces with a mix of WEM and GMM brass.

The bridge is the one part which did not require too much adaption, but I lit up the ‘68’ with fibre optics suppled with x3 LED’s in the lower bridge section and changed all the main and bridge masts with GMM and WEM etch.

All the paints used were mostly WEM colorcoats with the sea base being car spray paint with Tamiya acrylics and Artists Gloss Acrylic gel

On the whole I am very pleased with the results but if I knew the journey ahead at the beginning I would have chosen another project

Build articles can be found on this ship in various editions of the Romsey Modeller Magazine.
 
 

Gallery updated 4/19/2016

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