Hi everyone

I saw this on Airfix's website on their news page Specially commissioned HMS Queen Elizabeth Carrier Model

I suggest if we want to see one in styrene then we need to get onto Airfix's facebook page and politely voice our support

Nice article Russell and a very clean scratch build. It is not the World's most beautiful ship though is it? I wonder how they thought up the design of the islands and elevators?
The JSF's parked on deck don't really provide a warm fuzzy feeling either, Holland has stated it's intent to buy this overpriced piece of glitch ridden hardware in what is probably the biggest robbery since the Millennium bug and the introduction of the Euro.

Hi Julian

I've been following these vessels for a while now, and I guess this is what happens when bean counters make design decisions as opposed to the people who are actually going to use the ships.

I can see the logic in moving the air control tower aft to allow better control of the sky, and the con forward for easier command of the ship. The elevators are a standard on US vessels these days and free up deck space for ranging and so on.

What really doesn't make sense was the short sighted decision to save a few pound by not having an angled flight deck and EMAALS CATOBAR with the carrier variant of the F35, the C. This was going to be worked into the vessels by the conservative gov in the UK back in 2010 but they back flipped the decision and reverted to through deck and ski jump. Even when the US offered to pay for the EMAALS system!

Now the RN are stuck with 2 ships that will only ever support STOVL or worse VTOL aircraft for the next 50 years. The result is that they need to buy the B variant of the F35 (B) which costs considerably more than the C, has a shorter range, and smaller weapons payload. Thusly it's doubtful that the UK will ever be able to furnish both ships with the full aircraft compliment they were designed for due to the added cost.

The real stick in the eye for the RN though is that it seems the RAF will be the ones in control of the eventual air group when it materialises. A folly already tried back in the 30's resulting in a failure.

As you can tell I'm only familiar with a small amount of back story on these ones

Nonetheless it would be great if Airfix tooled this one up and got it to market.

PS Australia has also commited to 2 full squadrons of F35's but at least we're going the A variant...

Hi Russell saw this on the Brit modeler site Dave the model builder was there at the launch to hand this over to the ships Commander he also gives a small insight into how he built it using some well known bits from other models not just Airfix bits I,am not an aircraft man so do not know much about what the ship will carry just think that we were without a recognized aircraft carrier for far to long because of this useless government we have to run the country
And no I did not vote for either of them because one side does not know what the other is doing there that got that off my chest can sit down in a dark room and hide now


Keith

Hi Keith.

Dave's done an incredible job on this hasn't he?

Without getting too much into the politics, we can only hope that with the change occurring in UK voting habits towards UKIP that next year's SDSR will be a lot more favourable towards the senior service than it has been...

Lots of good material here if you are interested in further reading