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Merit Ark Royal 1/350 Finally Completed (In September)


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The figures from North Star are absolutely amazing.  They actually look like scale little people walking around on deck.  But what an absolute pain to paint them up in enough numbers to look realistic.  I did about 150 figures.

 

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No 1/350 scale model should be able to survive this level of enlargement, but the figures still do surprisingly well.

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A few general construction and finishing pictures.

 

Salt applied and painted

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Some dot filtering like a nerdy armor modeler

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And the result.

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As Crisp noted in his Sink The Bismarck thread, the anchors really are atrociously under scale.  I have some USN anchors from Black Cat, but they definitely didn't look right, and I didn't know about the ones from North Star, so I just used the kit parts.  It occurred to me last night that I could have used the anchors from my Trumpeter Repulse kit which look about right, but... Oh well.  I have the North Star anchors now ordered and they will be replacing the kit ones.

 

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I did my own black and white test out in the sunlight - inspired by Jamie Duff's many postings in his back yard - and I think the results are not too bad.

 

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One thing to note, I definitely should have laid the salt on thicker.  The hull definitely should have shown more chipping.  I had to improve the weathering after the picture above was taken. 

 

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On 1/15/2021 at 2:58 AM, iang said:

A correction to avoid this becoming an internet factoid. After her Nimrods had been disembarked, Ark Royal's fighter group was composed entirely of Skuas until October 1940 (with the brief exception of the addition of 3 Rocs embarked for her first deployment off Norway (Operation DX, April 22 - 3 May 1940). After April 1941, and until her loss, her fighter group was composed entirely of Fulmars. However, between October 1940 and April 1941, she embarked one squadron of Skuas and one squadron of Fulmars. 

I knew that, and my model is SPECIFICALLY dated for March 31, 1941.... 😐

 

 

 

Ok, I didn't know that.  Thanks for the info.

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I can appreciate the amount of hard work that has gone into this, aircraft carriers are several orders of magnitude more complicated than one would think,...and then when there is light at the end of the tunnel you find yourself with lots of insect sized aeroplanes plus dozens of even smaller people looking busy to deal with, my attempt at Victorious in 1/400 took several years and nearly led to insanity (though some may say it was the cause). This is a stunning piece of work, and to do it in a year is remarkable, bravo !!!

 

Cheers

 

David

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20 hours ago, Dancona said:

I can appreciate the amount of hard work that has gone into this, aircraft carriers are several orders of magnitude more complicated than one would think,...and then when there is light at the end of the tunnel you find yourself with lots of insect sized aeroplanes plus dozens of even smaller people looking busy to deal with, my attempt at Victorious in 1/400 took several years and nearly led to insanity (though some may say it was the cause). This is a stunning piece of work, and to do it in a year is remarkable, bravo !!!

 

Cheers

 

David

Thanks David, I appreciate the kind words.  I think next time I will build the little planes first because you are right, as soon as you think you are done you realize that you have the air wing to complete.

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  • 6 months later...

A quick update.  IPMS Nationals were in Las Vegas last weekend and it was a fantastic show.  There were about 2700 models entered - a bit less than usual - and they were almost all outstanding. 

 

I took my Ark Royal to the contest and entered it in the 350 scale aircraft carrier category and believe it or not...  I WON!!!

 

Here is a picture of my model and all of the competition...

 

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😐

 

I could have picked up a rock in the parking lot, called it a carrier and won...  Blah!!!

 

Other than that the contest was awesome.  And I did get a ton of nice comments about the ship.

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Gidday, in the past I've won in model shows too, with no other contestants in that section. That didn't alter the facts that:-

1.   I enjoyed making the models

2.   Yours is a very good one.  👍                  Regards, Jeff.

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I like the outcome of your build very much, think its a fine example of a great looking ship. Looking through some of the wip photo's as well i must say although the tetra pom-poms are a great improvement, the kit parts themselves don't look shabby at all. It seems she's like a candidate the building straight OOB could still produce something very nice and taken to the next level by details sets, 

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18 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday, in the past I've won in model shows too, with no other contestants in that section. That didn't alter the facts that:-

1.   I enjoyed making the models

2.   Yours is a very good one.  👍                  Regards, Jeff.

Thanks for the compliment.  Making the models is definitely the best part. 

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5 hours ago, S-boat 55 said:

I like the outcome of your build very much, think its a fine example of a great looking ship. Looking through some of the wip photo's as well i must say although the tetra pom-poms are a great improvement, the kit parts themselves don't look shabby at all. It seems she's like a candidate the building straight OOB could still produce something very nice and taken to the next level by details sets, 

The kit parts are definitely nice enough on their own.  But in the future I am going to go a different route.  I am going to use the 3D parts from Black Cat and Micro Models.

 

https://micromaster.co.nz/

https://blackcatmodels.eu/en/95-weapons

 

They are expensive though

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  • 3 weeks later...

Missed this when it was first posted and I must say that even if there had been a ton of entries in the aircraft carrier class, it still deserves to have won.  That really is stunning.  I struggle to paint cockpit canopies in 1/48 and there you are doing it in 1/350!  The weathering actually looks very realistic in comparison to some of the photos I have seen so I wouldn't say it is underdone at all.

 

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Chewbacca nad ejboyd - than  you very much.

 

Yes, you may assume that the string bag is launching unassisted into the wind.  I was trying to capture the look of a clip I saw years ago of a Swordfish kind of angling across the deck a bit as it took off.  That's why it's a little to port and slightly askew of the center line.

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4 hours ago, grahamwalker said:

very nice build nice weathering but what happened to the flight deck looks like it has never been used. BTW the union jack is not flow from there it is flow at the bow when anchored.,

Thanks grahm - you just cant see the weathering on the flight deck in the pictures.  It is much more apparent in real life.  You may be right about the Jack generally, but I put it there because it was there in one of my reference pictures.  I don't know all of the Royal Navy rules about where they fly the different flags though.

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