With all the great selections of aircraft in 1/144, are there not any hulls or kits available for carriers in that scale? Ive been searching the web and cant even find any plans in that scale . perhaps someone here may know?

Tim, nice idea but I think any in 1/144 will be scratch built just think of the size. I know a 1/144 Bismarck was announced a year or two ago but other than that it's just subs and destroyers to the best of my knowledge.

1/144 is still mostly an airplane scale. Large-scale ship modelers mainly stick to the conventional architectural/museum scales of 1/96 and 1/192.

how about plans? Ive seen plenty of drawings of the side and top, but nothing showing the front/back/bottom thats useful to make plans from

Based purely on size I doubt you'll see a kit anytime soon. A 1/144th scale Nimitz would be over 7.5 feet long. Even a short bow WW2 Essex would be over 6 feet.

interesting notion. Ive been building Navy carrier planes in 144th lately. It would be sweet to have a carrier to display them on.

six or seven feet long and over a foot wide, that's a big piece of furniture, in fact it could do double duty as a coffee table!

The Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg TX has a model of the Nimitz in 1/72 (IIRC), its an impressive piece of work.

Well, lookie what popped up:
http://www.centurywings.com/model_144/uss_nimitz_1978.html

that's amazing. Apparently they want to provided a fully finished model, no mention of price - if you have to ask etc.



ok, got it.

I'm optimistic about seeing larger scale ship kits with the success of the 1/200 Arizona and the 1/144 Fletcher, but I think the market will remain limited for the foreseeable future because of the size limitations. I'd have a hard time imagining a 1/144 CVN, or even a U.S.S. Missouri in that scale. But, we can hope.

Bob

Yike!

Make sure you have lots & lots of spare cash around if you want this thing.

First of all. at 252 cm. length ( over 8 feet & 3 inches) - you might need to renovate your house to have room for the thing.

And note all the "extras".

1. aircraft
2 .tractors and deck gear
3. deck crew / aircraft handlers
4. flight deck markings

I shudder to think about the bottom line for this thing with a full air-group and a busy flight deck..

- and what if the hanger deck also needs to be decorated ?

I dont think itd be too expensive if it were perhaps just the hull , deck and maybe the tower structure, all without the small details, just the base shapes. Then over the years just add details craft figures etc.. not really that different than hobby trains ..and if I think about it, how much have I already spent on kits over the years that would surpass the cost of something like this. Thanks for the Century Wings link. I'll email them and see if perhaps the base kit could be made available.