Tamiya's 1/350 scale
USS Enterprise

by Louis Carabott

Tamiya's 1/350 scale USS Enterprise is available online from Squadron.com

I’ve just finished my model of the USS Enterprise CVN 65.The kit is the Tamiya 1/350 scale and I finished the model in a year and a half.

Here is a report on how I made the model.

Gold Medal and White Ensign photoetch was used to detail both the ship and the air wing. However, there was also a lot of scratchbuilding involved.

The hangar was entirely scratch built from back to front. The fir door mural was a scaled down digital image of the original.

The hull was sanded clean of all raised detail and piping and trunking was all scratchbuilt using different gauges of telephone wire and plastic strips. Sponsons for sparrow launchers finely detailed as well as afterbow and quarter decks and support structure with odd bits from a computer motherboard. Mountings for Phalanx cannons in the stern and satboard midships were scratchbuilt discarding the kit poarts which were not accurate. Sparrow launchers and Phalanx cannons detailed. Elevators detailed adding further girder fretwork. The structure shown in elevator 3 was reshaped and restructured accurately. Catwalks and walkways detailed. Weather antennas and electronic warfare scratchbuilt discarding kit parts and again using odd bits from the old computer motherboard. RBOC Launchers scratchbuilt.Life raft canisters detailed accordingly. The island was also sanded clean and detailed with scratchbuilt piping.,scratchbuilt viewing gallery port side facing the flight deck also added. Accurate superstructure detail on the starboard side was added altering the whole face available in the kit.

Available yellow gear equipment in the kit was finely detailed adding more scratchbuilt equipment mainly twin agent fire fighting units …more trucks. Gpu’s, asu’s tow bars trolleys heavy forklift and even a tarmac sweeper. L’Aresenal figs were used …don’t know how many inside and outside many were altered and converted.

All the aircraft were detailed with extra fuel tanks fashioned out of simple tooth picks. All ordnance was scratchbuilt which include sparrow, phoenix,maverick missiles and side winders mainly consisting of 10 individual parts. They can be seen on the port side as well as behind the island near the armament elevator.
Alterations were also added to the maindeck which include an LSO platform new JBD’S on CAT 1 and 2 the AN/SPN-41 automatic landing control radar in stern starboard was scratchbuilt.

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