The Build: Airwing, touch up, Completion - December 2, 2013
The airwing for the Charles de Gaulle consists of Rafael M strike fighters, Super Etendard attack aircraft, E-2C AEW aircraft and Dauphin ASW/SAR helicopters. The aircraft supplied by Heller are passable...but they are not very well detailed and are lacking when it comes to landing gear and any external stores. But they are fair representations of the airwing and so building them and adding them to the carrier...as well as painting them to help with their overall representation...is a must.
The assembly of the parts is relatively straight forward. For the Rafaels, the only thing required is to glue the tail onto each aircraft. The delta wings and the small canards are modled into the aircraft. For the Super Etendards, it is the same, except the tail section included the horizontal stabilizors. For the E-2Cs you glue on the large radome (which is overally thick for this scale aircraft...I looked at using the much better and more detailed Trumpeter 1/350 scale E-2Cs, but they were in fact too large). Once the radome is added there are two props..again, overly large and thick. Finally, there are the two Dauphin helicoptes. You glue a decent horizontal stabilizor on, and then the main rotor, which, again, is overly thick.
Once the gluing was done, it was time to paint the aircraft. I painted all of the aircraft an agressor gray overall. Then, for the Super Etendards, I came back and used a gull gray to paint a camouflage pattern very similar to what you see in the actual photos of these aircraft on deck. After this it was Black for the canopies and portions of the stubs being used for landing gear that represented the tires, a gun ship gray for the jet exhausts for the Rafels and Super Etendards, and for the air intakes on the Etendards, and finally I used an aluminum for the folded wings I created on one of the E-2Cs. This was donw by cutting the wings at the fold mark and then glueing them in place on top of the wing. The adjoing edges were painted aluminum.
In addition there are two large deck tugs, four medium sized deck vehicles, and one small vehicle for pulling weapons trailers. All of these were painted yellow, with black tires, and aluminum bumpers.
Here's how that task went.
Once that was complete it was time to place the decals on all 24 aircraft. The kit comes with a decent set of decals for the markings, which mianly consists of the French aircraft ensignia on each aircraft. In adidition, there were tow ensignia and "MArine" decals for each E-2C and the helicopters. I also placed the French ensignia on the side of each SUper Etendard, behind the main wing, between the trailing edge of the wing and the horixzontal stabiloor.
Once this was completed for all aircraft, it was time to arrange them on the deck of the carrier. I came up with the arrangement shown in the last photo of this section.
Once the aircraft had been completed and I knew the arrangment, I glued them to the deck.
all of these steps were toime consuming. Glueing the 24 aircraft together and letting them dry. Painting the aircraft the various colors and letting them dry inbetween each. Adding the very small decals and letting them dry and then applying decal set to those deacls after they were dired. And then finally, glueing the aircraft to the vessel, letting that dry, and then doing touch up paint and work to the vessel before adding the final two coats of dull coat over everything.
But the results are pretty nice:
And...here are a few close ups of the Island and the deck:
So, there you have it, the French Nuclear Aircraft Carrier, Charles de Gaulle,
Now it's on to building two 1/400 scale Lafayette FFGs by Heller together as escorts for this baby.
