First let's start with best wishes to Roger Schafer who is recovering from ankle surgery. By all reports Roger is doing well and we'll look forward to seeing him soon.
Let's take it from the top....
Victor bought a new ship transporter and my wish came true when his first transport was the 1/200 USS Missouri made with the wonderful Pontos upgrade set. Victor did not disappoint! What I love about these big models is they draw you in and everything is so easy to see. You can put yourself in the scene. Victor invested a year in this project. Let the pictures speak for themselves...
John also did not disappoint and brought some really nice kits and parts...
First HMS Penelope 1940, the new release from Flyhawk. The kit itself includes photo etch and barrels. A separate purchase is the wood deck for this kit.
Another Flyhawk part purchased separately are pre-finished chains
Next up is a new Aoshima IJN Sub Tender Taigei. This is a big kit for 1/700. It includes photo etch and there is also a more extensive photo etch set sold separately. Also included in the kit is a submarine. This should build up into a real nice kit.
John also brought a resin kit from FSTAR Models. This is the IJN escort carrier, Akitsu maru. As you can see it includes extensive photo etch including flight deck. Something I didn't notice until later was what looks like a gyro copter?
Also from FSTAR models was this wonderful photo etch set for the 1/700 New Orleans Class Cruiser.
John found these great IJN decal sets that include about every IJN ship you can think of and air wing decals.
Finally John shared some small parts that flyhawk sells. One set includes RN 20mm Oerlikon's and Ships boats. They are very finely molded and would add nice detail to your RN ships.
Next up Bill Smallshaw. Welcome back Bill! Glad to see you building again. Bill brought in his Trumpeter 1/700 USS New York. This is Trumpeter's latest release. Looks like a dandy and you can bet a Texas and detail sets will follow.
Bill is also doing an ambitious kit bash of the USS John F. Kennedy CV-67. The base kit is the Italeri 1/720 USS Kitty Hawk, with flight deck augmentation, and a few other parts from the Italeri USS Harry S. Truman kit. The Kennedy was a Kitty Hawk class ship with the flight deck attributes of the follow on Nimitz class carriers. Kennedy also had a unique island, a modification from the Kitty Hawk ships in having a slanted funnel. As the Nimitz class was nuclear, the island structure for the follow on carriers do not have funnels.
Additionally, the Italeri Kitty Hawk kit is of that ship in the mid-1980s. The Kennedy had fairly different stern sponsons from her partial sisters during this period, supporting the NATO Sea Sparrow launchers. Rather than rebuild these elaborate structures I opted to retro the kit back to the early 1970 configuration of Kennedy. The sponsons of this vintage supported the BPMDS systems, which are much easier to model.
Bill made reference of two source items available on the ship: Ray Bean's CD of USS John F. Kennedy photographs and the Detail & Scale book on the subject. The combination of the two provides enough photographic evidence to work the build. Thanks for the narrative Bill!
Jerry Beasley demonstrated the Flexy 5K CA glue. It has some very nice qualities. It's designed for photo etch parts. It takes longer to dry so it could be very useful for these large photo etch plates that are applied to structures. It is thicker as well so not ideal for attaching small wires and such. If we have some interest we can put together a group order. This came from Michigan Toy Solder web site. It is currently listed at $7 per bottle.
Jerry brought an interesting naval subject well suited for Halloween. The skeletal remains of a Roman wharf rat. I didn't get a picture but it looked something like this little fellow...
Last but not least was from your's truly. Victor took a year to build his 1/200 Missouri and that's how long it took me to get around to finishing my model of the USS Ward and IJN submarine sunk in the opening hours of the Pearl Harbor attack.
I really hate blowing up photos of 1/700 ships. They don't look nearly as good this way as they do in person. This ship is 5 inches long and the sub is only an inch long. I focused on the rigging during my talk. I used .6mm Tungsten wire from Modelkasten for the stays, antenna, and standing rigging; .001 inch lycra rigging from Uschi for supporting the antenna and rigging attached to the davits; and for halyards I used UNI-Caenis 20den black monofilament thread for the halyards.
What I liked about the Tungsten wire is that it is strong. When I added them to the masts it increased the strength significantly. There were 8 standing rigging lines on the main mast. It also allows you the show off a natural sag on the main line from the bow to the top of the main mast. The Uschi rigging allowed me to keep the antenna very straight. I demonstrated this on my old ship demonstrator the USS Pine. I used Tungsten wire for the rigging and bracing on the sub.
Anyway, here she is and I'll bring her to another meeting to talk more about the rest of the build.
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