1/7 Scale HMS Victorious R38

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Albion

Guest
I am interested in constructing a 1/7 scale, working model of HMS Victorious (R38) as she appeared between 1942-45. The vessel would be designed to operate scale model aircraft appropriate for the time period and be navigated from a station in the ship's island versus remotely. I would like to make the model as accurate as possible with regards to hull form but I am having difficulty in finding line drawings or any other construction plans for the vessel. Also, having never built a scale model before I am looking for advice with regards to making scale gun mounts, ships boats, etc.
 
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alan2525

Guest
Welcome to the Forums!

There's a couple of thing I didn't quite understand in your post:

1) 1:7 Scale HMS Victorious - Wont the model be about 100 feet long?

2) The part where you mention that you have...never built a scale model before...

Wouldn't it be wiser to start on something a little smaller? A Scale MTB, a little steam tug or a 1:700 HMS Victorious?
 
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Albion

Guest
Your'e correct about the scale, it would be in the region of 106 feet in length. You are also correct in that I have never built a "scale model of anything" at least not from scratch. I am however an experienced boat builder and very familiar with constructing working craft in the 100 ft range. I would have no difficulty in taking a set of construction plans for HMS Victorious reduce the scale and then turn out a 100ft hull. What I am not familiar with is the sort of nuances that go into taking a 740 ft aircraft carrier and making a 100 ft boat that not only looks just like it, but has the feel of it, certainly there are methods that scale modelers use to bring this about?
 
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alan2525

Guest
I was asuming you must be either an experienced boat builder or it was a very late April Fools Joke!

What's the storey with the 1:7th scale aircraft carrier - Is the build a comission for a naval museum or something or do you have a very large front room with a very large empty glass case waiting for something to go inside? As far as plans - I'd go for purchasing the largest scale kit I could find and then making a set of plans from that - in something that scale a foot here or there won't notice too much!

Also what are your plans for modelling aircraft for the flight deck? Would be worth spending the time making moulds and then producing the parts in bulk! What was the reason for modelling the ship 1:7th it seems an odd scale - If you went for 1:6 you could use action men as crew!

You could also check out the thread on a proposed build of a 21foot HMS Hood on these very forums:

http://www.scale-models.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4297&highlight=hood

I would have thought the problems you both face regarding sourcing plans and scaling up details from smaller models, reliance on images and photographic images for research, etc would both be similar for the two builds.
 
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RickF

Guest
Since you will be presumably be building the hull as a full-size ship, the obvious place to start is with the drawings that are almost certainly available from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich http://www.nmm.ac.uk/ They should have everything you need - at a price.

Rick
 
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Albion

Guest
\ said:
I was asuming you must be either an experienced boat builder or it was a very late April Fools Joke! What's the storey with the 1:7th scale aircraft carrier - Is the build a comission for a naval museum or something or do you have a very large front room with a very large empty glass case waiting for something to go inside? As far as plans - I'd go for purchasing the largest scale kit I could find and then making a set of plans from that - in something that scale a foot here or there won't notice too much!

Also what are your plans for modelling aircraft for the flight deck? Would be worth spending the time making moulds and then producing the parts in bulk! What was the reason for modelling the ship 1:7th it seems an odd scale - If you went for 1:6 you could use action men as crew!

You could also check out the thread on a proposed build of a 21foot HMS Hood on these very forums:

http://www.scale-models.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4297&highlight=hood

I would have thought the problems you both face regarding sourcing plans and scaling up details from smaller models, reliance on images and photographic images for research, etc would both be similar for the two builds.
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The project is purely for my own enjoyment, the model won't be a display, when complete it will ride at a mooring in front of my house. I hadn't considered a kit. Setting the hull design aside, it would be a good idea to have a three dimensional model for reference purposes before and during construction.

As for the air group, I planned to acquire all of the aircraft as rc kits, or scratch build them if not available in the required scale. Although I plan to assemble a mixed group of between 30-40 airframes ( Corsairs, Fulmars, Avengers and Albacores) to display on the flight deck, obviously not all of these will be in flying condition, maybe only one of each type, depending on my time and budget. There will be aircraft elevators and a functioning hanger beneath the flight deck. I have not decided how to handle the aircraft when struck below, maybe a center isle deep enough for a person to stand in would work, since to scale the hanger would only be about thirty inches high.

The scale was selected based on my available building area, at 1/7 scale it will be close to 106 feet in length at 1/6 scale it goes to over 123 feet, oh it would be grande, but I just can't squeeze it in. I would build it smaller, but I very much want the ship to be a working vessel, able to launch and recover rc aircraft and accommodate a small crew to handle them while aboard.
 
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MartinH-K

Guest
Good luck! I'm cutting bulkheads and fitting at the moment for my 1/35 scale Hood and that's going to be 7.49m but my scale is limited by available construction room as is yours.
 
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Albion

Guest
\ said:
Good luck! I'm cutting bulkheads and fitting at the moment for my 1/35 scale Hood and that's going to be 7.49m but my scale is limited by available construction room as is yours.
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Thanks, your HMS Hood sounds like a great project, big enough to have fun and turn some heads, yet still at a size where its manageable. I would go with a smaller scale for my own project, but I don't think that anything shorter would do.

I am still having difficulty in finding construction plans, the NMM doesn't seem to have them, and the largest model kit I have found so far is 1/400 by Heller. I have plenty of drawings and photois, but I would still very much like to have a full set of cross sections of the hull.
 
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Bluewavestudios

Guest
Hi Albion and Welcome to the Forums,

As it happens I do know someone around here who sails a 1/75th Model of the very same ship and it is still quite a large model at 12 ft long, he transports it with a similar sized container ship on a specially built car trailer complete with extending slipway and sails both quite regularly on the pond close by me.

Have a look at this link, I posted this up sometime ago, I presume it is the very same ship.

The specs are on that thread and some pics of the container ship too on the dedicated trailer

http://www.scale-models.co.uk/showthread.php?t=701

If I see Ray that owns it, I will ask if he has any plans for it, I have a few more pics than shown on that post too.

Regards........Mark
 
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Albion

Guest
\ said:
Hi Albion and Welcome to the Forums,As it happens I do know someone around here who sails a 1/75th Model of the very same ship and it is still quite a large model at 12 ft long, he transports it with a similar sized container ship on a specially built car trailer complete with extending slipway and sails both quite regularly on the pond close by me.

Have a look at this link, I posted this up sometime ago, I presume it is the very same ship.

The specs are on that thread and some pics of the container ship too on the dedicated trailer

http://www.scale-models.co.uk/showthread.php?t=701

If I see Ray that owns it, I will ask if he has any plans for it, I have a few more pics than shown on that post too.

Regards........Mark
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Wow, thats a beautiful model, just as she would have appeared after her final refit in the 60's. Nice job on those Buccaneers, now if I had had that as a kid.....

As I sit here considering hull structure and the thousands of details that will go into it, it occurs to me that I have not considered about a hundred other necessary items. I do not yet know what to use for catapults. They (there are two) should be around 22 feet in length, hydraulic, and capable of excellerating a 12-15lb object to about 15mph within there own length, and adjustable to boot... How does the catapult connect to the aircraft? What was ther method used on British carriers? Could I use the same system on a 1/7th scale Victorious?

And then theres the arrester gear. When an aircraft catches the arrestor cable, the cable doesn't spring back, it plays out obsorbing the shock, instead of snapping the aircraft in reverse like a bungee cord would do. How can I simulate that?

And electric elevators would be nice too, they would only have to move maybe 20lbs for thirty inches up and down, however the motors would be exposed to spray and the elements, anyone know of a good off the shelf solution?

I can go on and on, but you get the idea. There are a lot of things I have not contemplated yet, and if anyone out there thinks of anything that might be nice on a 1/7 scale RN aircraft carrier, by all means jump in... with both feet. My time frame is to have all design work completed by October this year. Lay down the hull by November 1st and launch by April 1st next year, fitting out will take probably a year maybe two.
 
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MartinH-K

Guest
That's the beauty of doing this stuff! You get to work out 'how' to do things much smaller and from gear you wouldn't normally think about for the purpose!
 
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Albion

Guest
Well yes that can be exciting, the whole project is exciting for me. The only thing that I am worried about, is will I think of everything that I need to, before I lay the keel? It might seem that I am rushing the entire project, but after mid October I will have a six month window, during which I will have no work obligations.
 
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Bluewavestudios

Guest
Hi Albion,

Just a couple of thoughts on items you have mentioned above, eg the arrester hook wire mechanism & The elevators.

For the arrester wire, you could use something like a fishing reel system with twin motorised spools hidden under the flight deck, the spools will allow a certain amount of cable to reel out freely, but rotated in the opposite direction will have the motors to reel it back in....you would obviously need a right handed and a left handed reel to fix this up. (They are available too)

As for the motorised elevators,

you could build the platform based with 4 nuts, one on each corner, those nuts would lay flat & would be on vertical threaded rods each fitted onto a motor, All the motors would be powered at the same time from a single switch so when the power is turned on, the threaded rod rotates and your platform will move up and down accordingly. You can buy the threaded rods in 4ft lengths in most hardware shops. If you can't quite picture how it works, just look at any sea-drilling rig which uses a similar method to raise and lower the legs to and from the sea bed. They generally use a rack and pinion gear system which is also another way to look at. The threaded rod principle I mention here has been used to great effect on many R/C Jets which use swing wings...eg Tornado, F-14 etc.

At the size ship you are looking at, these should be perfectly viable methods to use....I hope these help.

Regards.........Mark.
 
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Albion

Guest
Great Ideas, thanks!

I am a little concerned over size constraints within the island. As I said in my first post, I want the ship to be conned from the the island as well as some of the air operations controlled from there. In order to sort these issues out I have decided to go ahead and begin building the ship's island this week to see if it is feasible to control the ship from there. Otherwise I will have to do one of the following:

A) somehow increase my available building area, and thus increase the scale to 1/6.5 or 1/6 i.e. have a hull 114-123ft in length (something I do not really want to do)

B) transfer some or all of the navigation functions into the hull (also something that I do not want to do)

I will begin to post pictures here as soon as building starts.
 
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alan2525

Guest
What are your plans for the internal layout of the aircraft carrier? I'm not too familiar with the relative proportions of the vessel but will it have berths and be fitted out inside? Would be fun to cruise the waterways of the UK - be a little different from the average narrow boat!
 
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Albion

Guest
I have some general ideas for the interior, but nothing definite. The hanger, catapults and arrester gear mechanisms will take up nearly the entire length of the boat below the flight deck, except for the space between hanger and catapults, where I would like to build a small version of the pilots ready room on the old Victorious. Beneath the hanger deck there will be a lower deck for the engine room, storage and fuel tanks, as well as crew berths for 12 or more personnel (volunteers, who will be very welcome). If space permits I would also like to include a small wardroom.
 
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Gaz

Guest
If my Memory serves me correctly doesn't Duncan have a large scale Carrier?

It would be worth having a chat with him as I think he'd be "the man in the know" as it were.
 
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Albion

Guest
I have read of his HMS Invinciple, very very nice looking model. Is there an account of his rebuild anywhere?
 
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