It is with great pleasure that I announce that I am done with this project. It was challenging in it's own respects, but I like to think that I often thrive more when I'm up against the wall with modeling. I knew that the second phase of this project was going to be new ground for me, but I met it with great enthusiasm, and like to think that it came through in the final product.
Out of the box, the carrier deck itself appeared to be very straight forward. There was not a whole lot of parts, and the parts that were there simply kind of fell together like a puzzle. However, my biggest dilemma was trying to establish a good starting point. With that came other questions such as how do put it together. Did I want to make it where it could be broken down later? Was I about to do something that would require more work further down the road? I just simply didn't know. So...I did what I always do in these moments, which was just start. Start anywhere. I started with the JBD itself, since it was a removable partition of the display. I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to paint it and have it set to the side to where I wouldn't be going back later and having to mask a whole lot. This turned into a bit more of a process than I first anticipated. While the concept of the JBD was very nice in theory...the quality of the parts required to make it happen was not. The plastic was very soft, which made the actuators not very easy to work with. I had to go back and actually repair about three or four pieces that just snapped in half throughout the process. Fortunately, they were all clean breaks, so I was able to salvage them. If I could recommend anything to the company, it would be to make these parts out of soft white metal, as I honestly believe that it would help reinforce them better.
Once I got the basic premise figured out, I did a bit of test fitting, only to come to the horrible realization that I had mistakenly inserted all of the actuator wells backwards...as well as the interior arms. Dyslexia must have snuck in the back door at some point during that whole process....or perhaps the very bare instruction manual finally caught up to me. Either way, they were both quick fixes, as I was able to pop off the well caps and extension arms, and flip them all around as they should be. At this rate, the JBD did open and close, which was a nice feature with the exception of the fact that some of the arms would randomly come off of the piston, and just start flapping around. Having already experienced many of them breaking, I knew that the more I handled them, the more I ran the risk of this becoming a common reoccurance. Armed with that information, I elected to go ahead and glue all the joints to hold it in place. In the end, that was the most durable, and safe decision to ensure the longevity of the display.
Once the construction portion was understood, I needed to figure out how to accurately portray the deck to look like a modern carrier, without going overboard. My spidey senses were constantly reminding me that it wouldn't take much to screw this up if I went overboard with weathering. While I did want to portray some good tone variations and contrasts, I didn't want to trash the overall look, or take away from the weathered look of the plane, which in my opinion, was still the lead actor in this play. I did want to make it accurate, and have good scale effect, but I wanted to keep it in the supporting actor role. For a project this size, I knew it was simply not feasible to even entertain the airbrush for a base coat, so I picked up a can of Rustoleum primer that was a charcoal gray. Very nice color for the overall appearance, and it looked great when scaled down. After that settled, I went ahead and surfed the web for some reference shots of the JBD to accurately portray the exhaust, tonal variations, and if you look close enough....a couple of tire tracks from tractors. Again, I didn't want to nuke the project, just help sell the fact that yes, this was an aircraft carrier, but also not to the point to where there was no added detail or interesting offset of color.
Once the JBD was wrapped up, I had to make the decision to use decals around it, or try my hand at painting cautionary barber stripes. The instructions required that you at least paint a yellow stripe around it, and then use red decals. I didn't like that idea, so I used a strip of the decals to make a stencil, and just went ahead and painted the entire thing. Oddly enough, the instructions made zero mention of the white and red striping on the sides of the JBD themselves, only the yellow and red surrounding the well on the deck. So I went ahead and painted those too. At this rate, I figured since I'd already come this far with masking and painting, that I may as well work that angle with the rest of the carrier markings, so that's what I did. I used the photo provided for decal layout to get the basic idea, measured how long the decals were, and just converted those measurements into where to mask on the flight deck. This was time consuming, but the results look much better to me than I think the decals would have. It's one of those things where sometimes the additional work is worth it.
Next in the spectrum of things were figures. This was a part of the project that had me perplexed. I was confident in my ability to build, and portray the figures, but I didn't know exactly which ones needed to be designated for what. There's four figures, and essentially, three of them look as though they were molded to be yellow shirts, or aircraft directors and handlers. It doesn't take a brilliant person to realize that three people trying to tell one jet where to go would simply equate to mass confusion, so I had to get creative. The first figure that I had free reign with was the ordnanceman. He was posed in such a way that he could have either been running away from the plane, giving a thumbs up or all clear, or that he could be reaching for something. I stood him next to the plane to see how he would work out, and it looked perfect for him to be final checking the missile. The green shirt was probably supposed to be another handler who was taxiing an aircraft with both hands, but again...didn't want three directors so I posed him like he was a final checker doing a once over around the nose of the plane prior to high power. The other two were kind of unavoidable, since it was very obvious that they're marshaling aircraft. I did what I could, and have even gone back and found a more convincing way than is shown in the picture to convey them.
If you'll notice in the picture, the yellow shirt to the back seems to be giving hand signals to a phantom aircraft while the shooter is about to launch a jet that will most certainly suck the green shirt down the intake. What I've since done is taken the aft yellow shirt, and put him up towards the nose, and made the "shooter" appear as though he's handing off control of the aircraft to the other director - not giving the all clear to shoot. In the end, it's a creative balance that you have to overcome sometimes.
Last but not least, I had to fabricate a hold-back bar for the final display to be somewhat more accurate. This turned into a rather interesting project, but I was finally able to get what I needed using stretched sprue and foil tape. You can watch that process unfold here. All in all, I couldn't be happier with the results. I guess this technically classifies at my first attempt at "ship modeling", and I'm proud of the results. The customer is extremely happy about it as well, and I look forward to getting some good looks at it in an upcoming model contest here in North Texas in the next couple of weeks.
But for the moment, I'm happy to reflect back on it, and know that it's done.
Check out the rest of the photos of the final project here.
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