Reference Material

For anyone interested in building an accurate U.S.S. Midway scale model and needs detailed reference material there is a very good site which I have based most of my research on: called Midway Sailor (www.midwaysailor.com).

Hangar Walls

With the hangar deck glued to the hull I started the laborious task of cutting and gluing together the various walls which make out the hangar deck. This took a few evenings to complete but it definitely looks a lot better then my initial plan of using straight walls (like a box). Using the red outlines which I had made by tracing the scaled plans of the hangar deck I was able to create a fairly realistic depiction of the actual hangar deck.

Elevators

The Midway has two elevators in the hangar deck, creating boxes out of styrene sheets will give the impression of seeing into the depths of the hull. I did some testings and they can be easily seen by any of the three hangar doors so detailing these features is important.

(hangar deck view from underneath)

(elevator located in the stern section of the hangar)

Hull Wiring Guide

I will be painting the hull section soon and need to glue the hangar deck in. My dilemma was that in doing so I would no longer have access to insert wiring needed for the two white led lights to be installed later on. My original plan was to pass the wiring immediately and have two wires sticking out of the bottom of the hull where I had drilled two holes that will be hidden by the pedestals. What bothered me with this idea was that for the rest of the time I would be working on the kit I would have wires dangling in my way.

Today I had the ingenious plan of gluing two small straws cut up where the bottom section is glued to the holes I had drilled and the top section slanted at a 45 degree angle would reach the side of the hull and accessible behind the hangar walls. Now I will be able to work on the ship and when I am ready to wire it and will simply have to insert the wiring from underneath and it will follow the path of the straws up into the hangar for wiring.

Keel Completed

I finally finished scratch building the keel section to make it as accurate as possible to the real thing based on photographs I have found while the ship was in dry dock.

Keel Updates

I have been hard at work updating the keel section of the ship. Below you can see the original keel and the updates made. I have not yet completed the keel section but it is coming along quite well...

ARII Hull Errors!

Since I have completed the initial parts of the hangar deck I have been preparing the hull itself. Before I can glue the hangar deck I need to drill holes for the two pedestals and pass two wires for the LED's to be installed later on.

While working on the hull I started to examine the propeller shafts and rudders where after a bit of research I found the following errors:

• ARII kit comes with four rudders, Midway only had two.
• The four propellers have five blades each, in reality the two exterior propellers have only four blades, not five.
• The two inner propellers center are flat and not round like the exterior ones.
• The hull's keel splits in two towards the stern (back end) where the two inner shafts connect, in the model there is only one keel on the center (this will be a challenge to correct).
  

Correcting the rudders should not be too difficult, modifying the propellers will be a bit of a challenge. I will also try to add the metal lines which I suspect are used to guide water flow which lay between the propellers and the propeller shafts.

Holes and even more holes!

I have finally completed drilling the holes needed to cover the hangar deck, I counted 769 holes drilled in total! It took a couple of hours to complete and I did it in several sessions over a period of one week since after about 20 minutes of manual drilling my fingers would start to hurt. I did some tests placing the hangar deck inside the hull and setting the flight deck on top and the results were very nice. Unfortunetly I will have to repeat the process later for the main flight deck which has a surface area about twice as large, I'll save that for another day.

The Jig

I wanted to recreate the the holes which criss cross and cover the hangar and flight deck. These holes have a cross in them and are used to attach aircraft and equipment securely to the deck.

I used Adobe Photoshop and printed out a template with the criss cross pattern which I then taped to a small piece of styrene. This now became my Jig and will be used to accurately align all the holes on the decks with the proper spacings. The next step was to take a 0.5mm mechanical pencil and make the pattern on the deck where afterwards I will take a small hand drill and make small holes but not go through the styrene sheet. I have made some small tests and applied two coats of paint on another piece of plastic and the results were very nice. My only regret after completing the dots is that I should have used a transparent piece of styrene so that I could see easier where I am placing the dots.

Below is a photo of the jig on the hangar deck, if you look carefully you will see the pencil marks to be my guide when using a small hand drill.

Photo Etched Sets Arrive!

Today I received the Gold Medal Models (GMM) photo etched detail sets I ordered from www.goldmm.com. It is not in 1/800 scale but the difference in size is very small and I believe acceptable. I will have a few challenges since the USN SUPERCARRIER photo etched set is not actually intended for the U.S.S. Midway, however I have seen it adapted for it in another model from research I have done and I believe that I can do the same. This will be my first time working with photo etched parts.

1/720 Scale USN SUPERCARRIER

1/700 Naval Figures

1/700 USN NUCLEAR CARRIER DECALS