Island Primer

Gave the Midway island a coat of Tamiya primer as it was really needed with the mix of plastic, putty and styrene used to assembled it. It is the first time I used Tamiya Primer and it sure did a good job of making a nice even coat.

Island Assembly

Island assembly is pretty much complete minus the photo-etched parts. Been a hard couple of weeks as I had to constantly verify reference photos to ensure accuracy as best as possible. It sure is a challenge to be historically accurate with a kit that is far from it.

Radar Mast

Tonight I assembled the main radar mast. After checking a lot of reference photos it appears that the kits mast will hardly need any modifications with the exception of a small radar that will be replaced with an improved photo-etched one.

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my 37th birthday and what a better way to celebrate than to receive some new kits! My brother-in-law was nice enough to give me a 1:35 scale Bell H-13H helicopter and a World War II German Type VII C U-boat in 1:350 scale.

The helicopter is a project I have been wanting to do for a while when seeing the kit a few years ago. I am a big fan of the tv show M.A.S.H. having seen every episode and though it would be nice to recreate the helicopter used in the series. Would be really night to even try to make a Hawkeye figurine with a hawaiin t-shirt!

As for the submarine, I have always liked German u-boats but wanted something small that would fit on my shelf and at 1:350 scale it is only 20 cm long which is perfect for a quick fun build.

One Big Radar

Today I used Gold Medal Models photo-etched parts to assemble the largest radar on the U.S.S. Midway. Composed of three different photo-etched parts glued together with Micro Kristal Klear it sure beats the plastic one included with the ARII kit!

Updated Dog House

I realized 2 days ago that the dog house I built was not large enough so I added a 1.5mm strip of styrene to the side and redid the supporting structure.

Radar

Having stopped modelling for a week due to a summer trip to Cuba I came back and continued where I left off building the photo-etched radar for the tower I build back on August 5th.

Radar Tower

Using photo-etched after market parts I built the radar tower to be eventually installed onto the dog house structure of the island. The fence on the top was particular challenging and ended up doing it twice.

Dog House

While the kit has a nice island structure it of course is not accurate to the Midway I visited. In the very early 80’s the island was extended with what was nick named the dog house. I used various types of styrene sheets to reproduce this structure using reference photos I had taken ok my trip to San Diego.

Yellow E

Depending on the reference photos the Midway has a yellow E painted on its deck during the 80’s. The style of the E appears to change slightly every time the deck was repainted which initially was a bit of a headache as to how I should paint it… In the end I chose a thicker style which was easier to mask using Tamiya tape. I really like how this turned out and am glad that the letter was simple to mask and paint.