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Aircraft Carrier HMS Ark Royal – Airfix 1/1200


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Aircraft Carrier HMS Ark Royal – Airfix 1/1200

 

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This one is a small but nice snap-together kit from 1976 that was designed to go together quickly. This is another quick build, so I plan to forgo any improvements to this one and simply bang it together as God and Airfix intended! 

 

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Airfix cleverly depicted the hangar and other decks visible behind the Ark’s outer skin with snap-in inserts.

 

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The insert boat and hangar decks go aboard quickly, and they impart a pleasing sense of depth and complexity to these areas.

 

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Snap! On goes the flight deck.

 

The little Ark’s island was a sraightforward assembly; only six parts, including a lower section which was already molded as part of the flight deck piece.

 

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Cleanup of the small parts was simple but fiddly. A homemade sanding stick helped!

 

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The only glitch was a set of visible locator pins inside the funnel halves, but these were easily removed. Although the well engineered parts do snap securely together, I’ve been cementing everything in place anyway for a more positive fit.

 

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The mast consisted of two parts which fit together well – that is after I figured out that the instructions had incorrectly shown the mast mounted backwards so that the little mounting pips for the support legs faced the wrong way!

 

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Still, I appreciate this little kit more and more as I work with it: the parts are so small I hadn’t even noticed the faint depressions at the front of the bridge until I saw this enlarged image. Bridge windows!

 

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Some of the nicest moldings were the eight tiny radio antennas. Though only 12mm in length, they show Airfix’s game attempt to depict the lattice structure of the originals.

 

Here’s Airfix’s 1976 HMS Ark Royal finished out of the box with no alterations other than parts clean up.

 

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Out of production since the 1970s, Airfix has finally re-released this kit, along with a 1/1200 Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Hood, Sufolk, and Tribal class destroyers as a combined “Sink the Bismarck” set. Very cool.

 

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Having finished the little Ark Royal with an out-of-the-box unpainted build, I liked the kit so much I went and bought the new Airfix “Sink the Bismarck” set to get the 1/1200 Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Hood, Suffolk, and destroyers to go with it.

 

Upon opening the box I was surprised to find a flight deck stripe decal for the Ark – a nice plus not in the original 1976 release I built! This was so cool I went ahead and shot the Ark with a coat of  Model Master Acryl 4755 Dark Gull Gray (approximate for 507B) and again with a darker mix of Dark Gull Gray and 4752 Gunship Gray to highlight the catapults and lifts.

 

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After coat of Future to gloss the surface, the flight deck stripe went down with no problem. Even the clear decal film within the circle aft disappeared completely under a second coat. Sweet.

 

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I love it when companies add value to re-releases with little upgrades like this. Go Airfix!

 

After the gloss coat was dry I reinstalled the masts and gave the ship a thin wash of Grumbacher Raw Umber artist’s oil with a bit of Titanium White & Ivory black added to grey it down. The mixture was also applied to weather the hull sides (unfortunately, I may have gone a little too subtle earlier with the catapult and lift color contrasts, since they almost disappear under the oil wash...)

 

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Airfix had provided faint depressions to represent the bridge windows, but I added a decal to make them more visible. This was a cut down set of victory markings from a 1/72 German fighter aircraft - you never know when those odds and ends you  keep in the scrap box will come in handy!

 

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This is a great little kit, highly underrated.

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The Ark also came with six nicely molded Fairey Fulmar aircraft. I intended to paint them with a camouflage pattern of Tamiya XF-81 Dark Green 2 (RAF) and XF-77 IJN Grey (Sasebo Arsenal), but unfortunately the contrast between these colors was so subtle that it completely disappeared in this small scale. I substituted the Dark Green 2 with a less correct, but higher contrast, XF-22 RLM Grey to make the schemes more visible. Canopies were painted Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey.

 

The markings are from a Gold Medal Models international naval aircraft insignia decal set in 1/700 scale.

 

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Even though oversized for 1/1200, the markings are still pretty small; I figure they look reasonable on the little Fulmars.

 

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With the ship painted and her airgroup aboard, my diminutive Ark Royal stands ready to help hunt down the mighty Bismarck!

Edited by Tim Reynaga
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  • 3 weeks later...

I think I built all of these at least twice long ago. I've now got original boxings and the Sink the Bismark set. The quality is good but some are better than others - the Prinz Eugen is particularly fine. Sadly the Revell equivalents to round out the fleet aren't special (Scharnhorst, KGV) and nobody ever did a Rodney AFAIK.

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