John's Plastic Ships

Finished Model

Unrep hose and finnishing details

After viewing many photos of the Yorktown, I notice that the hoses for unreping are usually visible. I attempted to model this by using some plumbers solder which is soft and easily shaped. painted it black and testors steel.
I finally started working on the aircraft. As with the rest of the kit, there is a lot of flash to cleanup. The kit decals look good and applied easily. PE from GMM includes the boom and rigging for the tilly crane along with an assortment of crew figures which add a certain amount of realism to the flight deck.

Radars and other Antennas

The radars supplied with the PE are very good and pretty comprehensive with one exception, the SPS-30 radar which is installed on the platform on the port side of the island. This is important for any 60's Essex class. Fortunately, it's not too hard to make from plastic sheet. I intended to make the dish from sheet brass cut from the PE fret but when I punched it out it was pretty ragged. So I used some .010" styrene sheet and it worked out ok. Lots of photos online to use for reference, just punch in SPS30 into the search engine. The rest of the whip antennas are from stretched spru, super glued in place. The model is starting to get close to finished now. The next big challenge will be the airplanes and helicopters. And of course, there always seems to be one more detail to finish.

SPS-30 scratch built.

Mast

The mast supplied with the kit only has one part that can be used and that is the very top. I started out by drilling a hole in the top of the island and inserting a brass rod to anchor the new mast. 3/32styrene tube was used for the new mast. Platforms were cut from .010 sheet styrene and discs were punched from .010 " with a a hole punch. It all glued together nicely with testors liquid cement. The yardarm supplied with the pe looks too short so I cut a length of styrene rod and attached the pe yardarm to it. I used photos and drawings to complete the rest of the mast and added the radars. The whole thing was painted testors flat black. The drawing I used is from a warships data book on the Yorktown. The drawing is in 1/720 scale (1"=60'). So I had to change all my measurements to 1/530 scale. The photo shows some of the notes and figures I scribbled on the drawing.

Pictures from 2005 July 4 Turnaround Cruise

the gun deck looking fwd. The large white structure is a portable generator.

In 2005 I was lucky enough to be invited to the July 4 USS Constitution Turnaround cruise. The ship is towed from dockside to the mouth of Boston Harbor, turned 180 degrees and returned to the dock. This is to keep weathering even. I was one of the first to board so I took the opportunity to take pictures before it got crowded. When everyone was aboard I think there were around 300 people. During the 2 hour cruise the main hatch was the center of attention, with speeches from dignitaries, music from a Navy Band and the swearing in of about two dozen new American Citizens. Throughout the cruise a number of American Flags were ceremonially flown. At the mouth of the harbor gun salutes were exchanged between the ship and the fort at the harbor entrance. One of the forward cannons was loadable from the breach and could be fired by a single gunners mate. The bulwarks are higher then I expected to see so it was necessary look through a gun port to see activity around the ship, but there must have been a hundred small craft traveling in company with us. In Boston this is a really big thing! When I said I was lucky to be invited, I mean that literally. I won the invite through a lottery! At the time I was building a 1/100 scale model of the ship and I was going to the USS Constitution website a lot to view photos of the ship. One of the links was labeled "Lottery", so I clicked it just for curiosity and found invites to the turnaround cruise could be won. So I filled out the form and promptly forgot about it. About a month later a notice arrived by mail (I almost through it out thinking it was junk mail) saying I had won! The day was just about perfect, the weather could not have been better. Something to remember for life.