by Roger Torgeson
1/350 USS Phoenix CL-46 (Classic Warships)
Having had the Classic Warships USS Brooklyn (CL-40) kit in my stash for a few years I had thought to myself a number of times "To bad the hanger is cast closed". In an exchange of email with Keith Bender about 2 years ago I mentioned the subject of opening up the hanger to him, next thing I knew Keith had sent a few photos of his Salem which he was working on and had done exactly what I was thinking. After a passing statement of a friend, which I took as a verbal challenge, "If Keith can do it why can't you" I had to try. After a lot of resin dust and 30 minuets of work I had a rough cut hole that I was satisfied with, cleaning up the hole with an X-acto chisel blade did require a few days of cutting and scrapping. I scratch built a hanger out of sheet plastic and used the kits lower hull as the hanger deck. The actual building of the kit went rather smoothly except when it came to making the necessary changes to backdate the 1942 kit into a 1939 version of Phoenix. I owe a lot of thanks to a number of others who one way or another helped me out, Keith Bender for his encouragement, Tony Bunch, Ron Smith, and Dana Bell provided photos and Phil Reeder for sending me the .50 cal Trumpeter machine guns I needed from England . After having built nothing but camouflaged USN subjects for five or six years it was a very pleasant change to do something different and as an added bonus I didn't have to build up and detail 30 or 40 20mm guns. L'Arsenal parts replaced a lot of kit cast metal ones, new gun directors were scratch built and a few copies cast, Aircraft were Trumpeter with only the one with folded wings having any additional work. A combination of kit supplied and Gold Medal Models PE was used and the aircraft markings were some left over from a Starfighter Decal sheet. Building time was approximately 4 months with time off for Christmas. It was an enjoyable build, despite the anxiety of taking a hand drill and bit to an expensive kit, and sparked an interest in pre WW-II ships for me.
