For what it's worth, if you're looking for additional information, AJ Press has a book out titled "Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet, Vol. 1". I've looked at the book and it's got great amounts of detail. It also has a pull out plan set with rib stations and superstructure (island) details. Obviously the plans would need to be blown up to the proper sized but the book would be a great resource.
A friend of mine is building the CV-64 (Constellation) just to R/C. At that scale, we also had to double the number of ribs, which required doing some interpolation from the hull sections. Alot of that effort can be sped up with a CAD program. For the second set of ribs, my friend sketched the in-between rib by finding the mid-point between the two ribs in question, adding dots every so often and then connecting them. Thats about all you can do if you lack proper side and top profiles. And you only need to do one side. Just make copies of your master template and then fold the paper rib in half and cut it out. Then rip your plywood into strips that are long enough to hold alternate rib profiles so you can have the top edge of your rib at the finish edge of your wood. That saves you tons of cutting, and ensures your top is straight. (Most builds out of wood that I see cut out the top edge of the rib or dont even include it. I found it helps exptreemly much to have. I'll show you some pictures here soon. Then we laid a new sheet of plywood on the table, drew a long parrallel line near the edge (a bit further than the final width of your sips hull) and then drew perpendicular lines along that line where the ribs are. The idea is to create a template for the flat hull bottom and the cap rail (the part that holds the ribs together at the top). What you are looking to do (if you have a flat bottom hull) is set the bottom or base of the rib against the perpendicular lines you drew and center it on the long line that is the sip centerline. Mark on the plywood where the rib first touches the plywood. Mark that point. Then, measure in (toward the center line of the ship) about 1/2" - 3/4" or up to an inch (this depends on the curvature of the hull - very tight curve on after the flat bottom you want to give more room for the sheeting, the balsa or wood you will use for the skin of the ship, so that you have enough area on the ribs to glue onto before you try to bend it). This mark will be the outside edge of your "baseplate" as the flat bottom is called. Once you have that marked it will show you the locations where the flat bottom starts curving and where to cut the baseplate for the notches to hold the rib! The idea is, that when you are finished marking, you can connect the marks on the plywood and they will show you the flat bottom if your hull where the ribs meet it, and the markings on your ribs and the inner marking on your plywood will be where you need to add notches in your flat bottom to hold the ribs. You will see pictures of that soon. The you connect the dots - to get nice curves, we use 1/8" balsa strips (anything that bends works) and use pins to attach / hold it in place (one on each side) and follow the contour along the plywood marker. Once in place, just trace with a sharpy or somthing. Neat trick to get the curves really nicely. Then mark in your notches at the width of your ribs, and to the depth that you marked. Thats your baseplate. For the cap rail you do the same thing, just use the top edge of your ribs. Here are some pictures of his carrier build. We are at the stage where we need to do these steps. We'll post some more pics if you wish as we build her: http://s17.photobucket.com/albums/b...=slideshow
I saw a 1/144 model of this carrier RC several times in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1994. It was owned by the local Hobby Store owner. He had in it 2 Dumas Pitman motors running2 or 4 shafts I think I am not sure. It weighed over 100 lbs fully equipped. It had proportionally speed control. He had several 1/144 scale model plastic jets on board along with a couple of AWACS and Sikorsky's. He had a couple of mini crane vechiles and pull carts aboard and he had Ho scale crew aboard . He used several 6v 5amphr gell cells. The center of the flight deck was removable for access. The Island was held in place by pins that were mounted and protruding from teh underside of the Island and inserted into the starboard side mounting location. Operationally it handled very smooth . It was slightly nose heavy as a little chop would cause the bow to plunge quiclky. With a breeze the carrier would tilt and rock so it was a little difficult to handle in a breeze. It's fate is unknown but I did know that it was heavily damaged after the Island portion fell off and rolled down the flightdeck knocking off the plane and deck details. It also slipped out of the owner's hands and tumbled in his stairwell. Heavily damaged. It was then given to another person who stored it under his stairwell for several years in it's damamaged state. I don't know what it's final fate was. I don't have pics but I do have a video of it running it around and close ups of it. I hope to locate the video and download it into my computer and fix it up and upload it onto a DVD. I hope to post it here for you. It may be a while yet before this happens but I won't forget about it.
I have found a fiberglass hull of a Yorktown. It looks like I have my work cut out for me, but I am happy.
