1/535 USS Midway CV-41 (Revell)
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by Ken McClellan |
1/535 USS Midway CV-41 (Revell)
After about ten years of not building a serious model, I decided I needed
to build a model of the first ship I served on in the Navy, though I served
almost 40 years after the time period of this model. I bought this
model off eBay and it was not in mint condition. The first owner
glued the bases on the hull, then decided to snap them back off, leaving
part of one base on the rear of the hull, and the front now featured a
major glue line. The majority of the parts were off the sprue's,
but I was hoping that with a little luck all parts would be there.
The only other down side of this purchase was that the instruction sheet
was from the CV-42 Roosevelt, not the Midway. Knowing that Roosevelt
kit and the Midway were probably identical except for the decals, and since
I planned on building this kit not collect it, I didn't care about that.
I sanded the hull and removed the broken portion of the stand and began
construction. For the most part I used Testors Model Masters Navy
Aggressor Gray in both spray and brush on, and for below the water line
I used flat red mixed with some flat black brush on. The planes are
painted Testors Model Masters Blue Angel Blue, and the lines on the deck
as well as the numbers on the deck are just Testors flat yellow.
Assembly was fairly easy, but when it came to the decals I had a problem.
The decals would not separate from the paper no matter how long I soaked
them. Because I am impatient, I opted to mask off the deck numbers
and paint them on, but the island was simply freehanded since I couldn't
mask that small. If I come up with a better plan, like press-on lettering
later, I will sand the smoke stack and try again.
I like the art of illusion, so I "faked" the aircraft insignias by
simulating the star and bars with a dot and two dashes. From a distance
it looks pretty good. In high resolution photography, well...
