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CV-62 Independence kit.


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Hi all,

Curious as to if anyone knows where I can locate any kits for the Indy. Got a guy who would like me to attempt to build one for him, but can't seem to come across one. I see that Italeri had one long ago, but they seem to be pretty rare. Any help or direction on possible work around would be nice. I know each ship has it's own unique characteristics, but since I'm so new to ship modeling, I didn't know what the plausibility was of slapping decals on a different like-era ship and still having somewhat convincing results. Thanks a lot.

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Hi!

No expert on this but I'm not aware of a current kit.

The Revell and Italeri kits will need some mods depending on the time depicted.

Revell are much bigger than the Italeri 1/720.

First thing is to be sure what your buddy wants.

He should specify the time period, how accurate he wants it, and how detailed he wants it.

If more than you want to do you may want to pass on the project.

Older kits don't have hanger decks. If the hanger bay doors are open then you look into the hull.

The later the period, the more mods for accuracy.

Different periods, different planes. The kits don't have much to offer in after-market so you may be stuck with what you've got in a boxing. I don't know of any aftermarket decals.

Revell re-released their kits with changes in planes and the most recent have ship mods (especially from Revell, Germany; which are the old Revell kits with some changes).

Forrestal had an open fan tail so you'd have to make the enclosures that the other 3 had as-built.

Late in life they all had more stern area enclosures and flight deck mods.

Radar, antennas, and weapons changed a lot.

Indy lost the big sponsons for 5" guns, molded in to the model hulls.

I've been working on some of these Revell models and it's a slow but easy job to do the mods--one nice thing about ship kits is that they aren't that hard to modify compared to larger scale kits.

All of the early Revell angle-deck carriers and the Midways are the same scale so you can make a nice collection of same scale ships.

Any of these are available regularly on eBay but some of the boxings are scarce. A lot of prices are way too high so look patiently.

Be careful that any listing you look at is, without doubt, CV62. CVL-22 and the new LCS are currently on the market

You might want to get two kits--one to get familiarity with the kit and ship model building; also to experiment on and one for the project.

That may sound intimidating but I find with all this, the kits are a lot easier to build, with mods, than making an airplane in larger scale correct.

The old Revell kits can be built with hammers, explosives, and a tube of glue for every part (I may exaggerate slightly) so they're hard to mess up and easy to fix (except for the tube of glue part----I really exaggerated there).

Rich

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AFAIK all the 1/720 Italeri/Revell/Testors Forrestal-class kits have the identical plastic in the box--the only difference in them is the boxart and decals. And since you wouldn't want to use the kit decals anyway (get the Gold Medal Models 1/700 USN supercarrier sheet, which includes Indy markings) you can expand your search to boxings of the Forrestal, Saratoga, and Ranger, too.

I'm in the process of building one of these kits as the Saratoga, circa Desert Storm, and I feel like I'm scratch-building the entire thing, because of the amount of modifications needed, and also because it's just very light on detail in general. But with that said, it's still very do-able, since the overall shapes of the kit's hull, flight deck, and island are pretty good. So they make a good starting point, and you just have to add or replace some of the sponsons and stuff that went thru several changes during the various overhauls and refits over the years. (Also, the kit's a/c are worthless; throw 'em out and replace 'em with ones from Trumpy... or Pitroad/Skywave, if you want a cheaper option.)

Like Rich said, find out what time-period he wants, and once you've gotten a kit you can start figuring out what changes need to be made. Some good sources for reference pics: http://www.navsource.org/ http://www.defenseimagery.mil/index.htm http://navysite.de/cvn/cv62.htm (the cruise books on navysite.de are mostly full of pics of the crew and the liberty ports, but you can find some really valuable detail shots of the ship if you have the patience to look thru 'em...)

--edit-- I forgot: there's also the 1/540 Revell kits. I've only ever seen Forrestal and Saratoga boxings, but again, the plastic's the same in both, and Starfighter Decals makes a 1/540 Indy sheet. But I'd still recommend the 1/720 kits if you can find one, if only cuz there's a lot more 1/700 aftermarket available for them...

Edited by Daniel_B
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