Posting here just to document the build of my campaign ship, USS Wasp. I picked wasp because she was the shortest carrier that still qualified as a large convoy ship for IRCWCC. She's got all the looks of a full size fleet carrier without the back breaking weight. At a comfortable 18 lb ish she's just as heavy as a Des Moines heavy cruiser. To start with I completely modeled the boat in fusion 360 using profile morskie plans. Then I cut the boat into sections that were an inch thick so that way I could carve it out on my CNC machine out of lowes blue foam board. The blue foam wasp was then covered in Bondo and spackle and multiple layers of paint and used to make a mold for a fiberglass hull. The front and rear gun mounts proved to be a bit of a pain. In the future those areas will be cut off of the mold since I cut those areas off of my hull anyway. The subdeck and flight deck were both CNC cut. The hull had some serious shrinkage at the top so it took quite a lot of effort cussing and spreading the hull to get the subdeck to fit. Sub deck is made out of 3/8 Baltic Birch plywood from woodcraft, the recess for the deck hatch cut on the CNC. it's not always perfect, and it took a little bit of sanding to make the deck hatches fit, but it's a lot less effort than having to do it yourself. Superstructure is my traditional 3D printed. Not crazy detail but enough to get the point across from across the pond. Planning on having a number of 3D printed aircraft both on the open hanger deck and on the flight deck. Recovery float is going to be the rear aircraft elevator with a big block of blue foam glued to the bottom of it. Not sure how crazy I want to go on this build, since it's supposed to be a medium/low effort convoy ship. to add a little bit of visual detail inside the hanger I may print out on paper a hangar background soak it in epoxy so it doesn't get nasty and glue it on the inside. I thought about adding a blue white LED bulb hooked up to a flicker module so that way it looked like somebody was welding in the hanger, but once again lots of effort for a cargo ship. As of right now waiting on McMaster to drop off shaft and stuffing tube material. 3d printers are churning out SBD's and F4F's, should be able to get this log off of my workbench by monday evening at the latest. Picture dump in roughly chronological order: This picture with the subdeck installed really emphasizes how not symmetric this banana boat is.
Wasp Update for 2023: This is a fresh build in a 3d printed hull. Not a lot to say. 570 brushed motors, direct drive, 1.25" props, 1060 ESC, Flysky GT-3 radio, hobbyking WP servo. With barely any foam stuffing, she won't entirely sink when empty. With full ballast and very mild foam stuffing, she can be driven to shore when "sunk". This is to take advantage of a new IRCWCC rule regarding convoys and allow them to not truly "sink". Wasp, with her open hangar deck, will be very easy to tell that she's sunk even with this true lack of sinking. Picture dump.
