Sometimes playing around with cheap rubbish can be fun. As some eagle-eyed regular readers of this Blog may have noticed, there has been precious little on the wargaming and miniatures front this month, but the enforced lay off has enabled me mis-pend the time by indulging in some definite flights of fancy!
Thoroughly enthused by the amazing work on view over at the Arbuthnot's Aeronautical League of Gentlemen Blog, I've come up with a use for a large piece of extremely cheap plastic tat in the form of a snap-together kit of the USS Eisenhower that I discovered on EvilBay for the princely sum of £2.44.
I had originally envisioned using this for some nifty spare parts for some spaceship scratch-building, but was tempted into Mad Idea No 1, namely an Aeronef Mega Carrier along the lines of the USS Langley by the Arbuthnot boys.
My chunk of plastic tops out at 24cm long, and could therefore hold a whole Air Wing of Brigade Models' tiny fighters, for example, the VAN-902 Fixed Wing Fighter as we see in their rough state here:
Now the snap-kit itself is, to be blunt, a crime against scale modelling and although from a Chinese company, interestingly the parts are marked internally as both being 'made in Italy' and 'made in Israel'......!
The WHSmith mini marker pens mentioned previously on this Blog are laid out to give an idea of what this monster might look like with Dirigible booms - should it ever see the light of day.
Some suitably VSF-style deck accoutrements should spruce her up a little, although I'm undecided as to whether to actually use the lower hull, as included in the original kit:
You'll note that the kit's maker has given the Eisenhower the interesting aircraft choice of what appears to be SU-25 Frogfoots and GR1 Harriers - or are they the naval version of the YAK-38 Forger? :-)
The Conning tower pieces should at least provide some ready made nautical-looking bits and bobs....
So how might this monster scale out against actual Aeronef?
Well, up against a VAN-2003 Turkish Muin-i-Zaffer as we see above, pretty d*rn big - it's going to need a rather large flight stand of it's own, I think.....
Of course this outrageous example of becoming side tracked away from my more mainstream projects has not progressed much beyond the mad genius cackling stage, but would be a real conversation-stopper should she ever grace an gaming table. In the meantime, though, never fear, I've managed to put a little work into the Union side for the 3mm ACW project, and have been playing around with some Fleet Scale Sci-fi, all of which should begin to appear on the Blog in the coming month.
So, apologies for the recent sparsity of posts, and see you all in August!
Hi SoS,
ReplyDeleteCloudbase from Captain Scarlet perhaps?
I have seen this kicking around at boot sales before and the Israeli connection was present in a 1/72nd kit of a Merkava tank they produced - equally a 'crime against scale modelling' as it was good for bits and little else.
I am really looking forward to seeing what you eventually do with this.
All the best,
DC
I think you might get away with it SoS - especially if you cut the narrow bits off each end of the model - would look less like a modern carrier then ...
ReplyDeleteI don't even own the plastic tat and I;'m lloking for ways to use it! your distraction is contagious! ;)
That looks like a nice cheap find. Perhaps some nation has achieved a technical breakthrough to make such a monster, or it's more of a floating city (sort of a Victorian Battlestar Galactica or NCC-1701 Enterprise).
ReplyDeleteSome random thoughts for sprucing it up - booms with aircraft hanging off (or under), like the old American airships; instead of a single island, more of a city in its mid-structure, since those biplanes won't need much to land on; using some of Brigades turret packs to arm it up.
Hi guys, thanks for the comments; some really interesting suggestions there - Cloudbase meets early Carrier meets floating city -maybe the place where Robur's Albatross docks amidst the clouds?
ReplyDeletePerhaps this slice of madness might see the light of day after all!
Good set-up there! I'd avoid the original hull and instead clutter the underbelly of the Monster with open plane storage decks, machinery (bust open a cheap clock for some cogs - there is plenty of space here to use them) and the like. I think it would also look hilarious, if the Admiral had his beloved villa translocated aboard the megaship, along with a bit of a garden and a tree or two around it ... might be too much, but I still think it would look awesomely evocative of the times when commanding armed forces was a "gentlemanly" pursuit ...
ReplyDeleteBrilliant! It could also be a VSF equivalent of an Aerial Assault ship - using all that space to carry soldiers, some cavalry and steam contraptions. That then lends some scenarios where she has to land safely and disembark troops, or perform an extraction under fire while her escorts try to defend her from swarms of enemy 'nefs.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to seeing how she comes out!
Thanks guys, we're really cooking on gas now - City-in-the-Sky meets Supervillian's Lair meets Mobile Mega Casemate containing a whole VSF army!
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly given me a lot to think about - here was me wanting to get back into the groove of churning out the mainstream projects again, and it looks like I'll be of into flight of fancy territory once more..... you lot are are a really bad influence, you know! ;-)