This is my first article I wrote for ARC. I saw the small aircraft carriers part in the gallery, so I thought I could send in some pictures of my (nearly) 1/72 mock up fleet of ships.  

I am an 18 year old guy from Switzerland and I begun with modelling about 10 years ago. My first kits were a Russian Su-32/34 from Revell Germany and a Tomcat from the same manufacturer. But I became quickly a fan of the Tomcat (and the United States Armed Forces), so until now I bought and built up to 100 US fighter jets of the US Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Army. When I had a little Squadron of Navy jets completed, I decided to build a carrier for them. I think I designed and built up to 4 carriers in the last 6 years. Everyone was better than his predecessor. CVN 80 “Repulse” was the last one and I made it entirely of wood which I bought in a Do-it-yourself shop.

Click on images below to see larger images

This carrier was about three and a half meters in length; actually it would have been something about 240 meters long. Not the size of a Nimitz-class carrier, I know. But to exactly reproduce a Nimitz-class carrier, it would have been more than four and a half meters long! That was too much for my budget.  

The carrier consisted of two parts, one two meters long, the other a little bit more than one and a half meter in length.  

I must say, in the end this carrier was scrapped because of lack of space in our cellar. That was a sad day.

The very last ship I made was an Amphibious Assault carrier derivative. I named it LHAL 1 “Endeavour”. LHAL stands for Helicopter Attack Landing Light, which means, I had to limit the size of the ship. It was about 2.25 meters in length, actually about 162 meters. This ship I made of wood and the sides of some plastic sheets I found in a Do-it-yourself shop. It has a hangar bay and a well deck. But, unfortunately, this nice ship also had to be scrapped, of course, because of lack of space.

I sent also some other pictures which show the entire fleet. All other ships are made of cardboard and cardboard boxes!

(On some pictures you see the predecessor of my LHAL, also made of cardboard!)  

Now, I hope you enjoyed my pictures.  

Daniel