RC Boater Bill

I am going to see if I can find enough (P-40) decals in the stash to do this one:

Yikes!! A month has slipped by, with virtually no progress to speak of….. lots going on here that has kept me away from the bench. (I also have spent some fooling about with making masks on my Cameo4 for the markings.) I still haven’t painted the de-icing boots- I got stuck on where they end. Airfix has this wide raised panel line outlining where they are- should they be black or camo color? They’d easier to mask if black, but I suspect the should be green/gray. (Ughh- I am so tired of masking this thing! )

A post on the “Seaways Ships in Scale” site 20+ years ago recommended this book: “CSS Alabama Builder, Captain, and Plans” by Charles Grayson Summersell. Published by the University of Alabama Press, 1985. I found one fairly easily back then, it wasn’t very expensive. It is a well researched, thoroughly documented work. It includes info on the construction specs for the builder. It has a sleeve with plans inside the back cover- printed on heavy, high quality paper. Can be found on the secondary market, but try to find one that still has the plans.

FWIW, there were at least two HMS Jaguars, one a J-class Destroyer from early WW2, and a Type 41 Leopard class Frigate named after the first one. (I was surprised that I didn’t find a frigate or 74 gun SoL from Nelson’s time…) There’s also a USS Jaguar, and Armadillo-class Tanker from 1944-1946. Finally, there is a USS Jaguar from the Star Trek (gaming) universe.

Terrific model- you really captured the look of a hard-working tug! A bunch of my friends have 1/96 scale RC warships- Nokomis would be a great addition! One minor note— The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney is the oldest surviving naval vessel from the Pearl Harbor attack. Taney entered service in 1936. The USCG was put under Navy Control in November of 1941. Taney was one of the ships used to patrol the approaches to Pearl Harbor. (USS Aaron Ward was on duty that fateful morning.) Taney was moored at the Honolulu Power plant, she opened fire from there as the planes flew over… I know all this because I have a 1/96 scale fiberglass hull for the Secretary-class Cutters, and am going to do Taney in her Pearl Harbor configuration….. and Taney is now a museum ship in Baltimore, Maryland, where the ship is proclaimed to be the “Pearl Harbor Survivor”. But now I’ll need a Nokomis too— your model will be a great reference!! Thanks for sharing it here! -Bill

Yes!! This fine result deserves to go in a case! Well done!!

Terrific build- thanks for sharing it! Like others, I built one of these as a kid. I love all the work and improvements you made—now you have me wanting another crack at one!

Here are some pics of my 1/144 scale RC model of the USS Guadalcanal, ca. June 1944 at the time of the U-505 capture. I like to build models that blend my two hobbies: Plastic scale and RC scale boats. I had always wanted to build a carrier, and had acquired a number of 1/144 scale aircraft kits over the years. I started with the plans published in Model Boats, and used the book “Anatomy of the Ship: USS Gambier Bay” as my primary reference. The hull is made from balsa, with a layer of fiberglass and resin. The hangar/flight deck is made from foam core board, then skinned with thin styrene sheet. Lots of styrene and brass stock was used to make the island, catwalks, gun tubs, etc., etc. The guns and figures are 3-D printed. The radar antenna and forward elevator are motorized. Three different 1/144 kits were used for the aircraft: - Sweet FM-2 Wildcats (great little kits!) - Minicraft Avengers ( crude kits from seventies- no interiors. I used them to cut up to make the Avengers with folded wings.) - F-toys Avengers. ( Really nice snap kits, they come pre-painted and with detailed cockpits and torpedo bays. The canopies are pre-painted, which saved me from a lot of masking!) A typical Composite Squadron assigned to a CVE would have 10-12 Avengers and 12-16 Wildcats. I built four Wildcats and six Avengers, but I decided in the end to go with a less-crowded flight deck. Here is a 10 second video showing an early test of the elevator mechanism… I spent the majority of my hobby time over a two year period to built it- I would guesstimate about 3-400 man-hours… Took a strong gust broadside during the first sea trials— she heeled over but stopped at this point- she is pretty stable, despite all the “sail area” topside! Turns out the model is true-to-scale: Guadalcanal somewhere in the Atlantic (US Navy photo)

Added two more recently: #11: Smer rebox of the Eduard sprues: Paul Baumer, Jasta 2 “Boelcke”. The white and black markings are mostly painted, the red stripes are decals. Baumer’s plane wore both the earlier Maltese crosses and then later the straight sided ones. Smer gives you decals for the later version, but the painting of the trim and decal placement in the instrucions are a mix of early and late…. (I used the Albatross Aircraft of the Aces book as my guide. ) #12: Eduard kit: Jasta 5 Ltn. Hans Joachim von Hippel. Another Eduard kit, with painted markings. There is a bit of a debate on the color of the tail- it seems the experts are 50-50 on red vs. green. The plane was a hand-me-down from another Jasta, and had a red tail when given to Jasta 5. Because Jasta 5 was soon to be getting new Fokker D.VII fighters, the CO did not mandate repainting the tails in “Jasta 5 Green”- he left it up to the individual pilots. Some did, some didn’t, no one knows for sure who did what. I picked green, as it makes the plane a little more colorful….

Mixed up a slightly lighter shade for the underside- same mix of Tamiya colors, but with a little less dark blue… It is difficult to capture in a photo, but it looks great in person! I won’t be able to get to the bench for the next 5-6 days, but the next steps will be to install the (already painted) gear doors and drop tanks, then gloss coat it to prep for decals…

The main colors are finally done! I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the model, and have seemingly spent most of it faffing about with the airbrush. The Tamiya Neutral Gray went down fine, then I masked and painted the overspray area with Tamiya OD. Then masked and painted some overspray off the gray. Then more OD to touch up gray spots…. round and round we went! The good news is there were no issues with the tape pulling up any paint. I think I am finally ready to start masking and painting the de-icer boots in my next session….. One a more positive note- the top turret looks really nice. ( Better than the photo.). I like the way Airfix engineered it so it can be installed at the end of the build.

I am still faffing about with the B-25, fixing OD overspray off the gray, then gray overspray off the OD somewhere else, round and round and round… For a sanity break, I decided to get some paint on the P-38— a base coat of blue. I just mixed some Tamiya XF-8 blue with some XF-23 Light blue about 50-50, to use as a base coat- I like how it looks already! My current plan is to do lighter blue underneath, and then do some post-shading sort of thing with a darker tone on the top….

…and I’ll save my P-26 Peashooter for the follow-on GB: “Give Peas a Chance”

Well that resolution of “no more mods” didn’t last very long…. The Hobby Boss kit is rather simple, so I had long ago decided it wasn’t worth the effort to clean up enough to do the kit decals over a metal finish. So I was planning on using some decals from the stash for an Olive Drab over Neutral Gray scheme. But masking this thing for two colors (or more ) is also not looking all that appealing now. So, tonight I decided to cut away the stumps on the nose that are supposed to be the guns, and fill in the recesses with a little bit of putty. I’m going to turn this model into a photo recon F-5E Lightning, and paint it the overall blue scheme. I’ll make a couple of masks and paint some glossy dark gray or black camera ports on the nose and call it “good enough!”…..

The HB kit has an empty shelf in the area behind the seat, so I made some little back boxes to fill the void. They are made from bits of styrene strip, painted black - something representative of what should be there. This will be the end on my scratchbuilding/improving on this kit- OOB from here on*……! (* I also cut the camera pods off the drop tank pylons, but that was before I made the cockpit bit. I also reserve the right to use aftermarket decals…) 😎