I was in my LHS earlier this week, and not only was Sara on the shelves, they had the aircraft, including the Vindicator in stock as well.

You have NO idea how hard it was to walk out without having purchased that beauty!!!

Tom

Let's see. You live on the Outer Banks, and I live in Michigan.

Still interested????? :-) :-) :-)

Actually, I'm very lucky, there are two very nice LHS within a 10 minute drive from my house, and BOTH are between the house and the office.

Tom

I'll be like a college kid -- come home once in a while, pillage & plunder, then leave again, all on your dime ...

John

OK, the Saratoga docked at my place today ...

1st Look, quick impression.

Typical Trumpeter construction -- meaning flight deck in 3 pieces -- fortunately one could hide this with a full deck of aircraft. Other than that, seems OK. Not many parts given lack of AA guns & all that wartime stuff.

You get 6 each of 4 a/c (F3F,SBU,BFC,TG2) -- these are in clear plastic !!! I assume this so the clear struts won't show. I've never liked gluing/working clear stuff because it is so hard so these should be fun.

I think half or more the kits parts are the aircraft ...

There are decals for all these aircraft, but the registration for the national insignia and sqaudron codes is so far off as to make them unuseable.

The problem I see is that the kit doesn't know what it is. Now I'm no expert, but did a little research & came up with the following.

The Sara got a half-dozen .50 cal AA MG in 1936 (2 on an 8" turret, 2 at foremast, 2 abaft funnel -- the last 4 replacing rangefinders. But the kit has none of these weapons, thus making it before the .50 installation. I do not know the exact date but she was in drydock in September.

The Sara swapped it's F4B for F3F in mid-36. Seems like it ought to have to .50's or have F4B's ??? Or possibly the confug reflects Jul-Aug period ?

The USN changed schemes July-37 so sqdn numbers would mirror their CV hull number, also they went to standard tail colors. Thus VF6B, VB6B, VB2B, VT2B became VF3,VB3,VS3,VT3 and grew white tails (VF6B & VB6B were red, the others already white).

Now the Sara may never have appeared with all these a/c in this manner as it went in drydock in July & came out in Sep/Oct -- by then the SBU were being swapped for SBC's and the TG2 for TBD's.

You ask if there is a point to this ?

The Trumpeter color instructions have white tails on all aircraft. Again, this means the kit is post 1 July 1937 & should have the .50cal AA.

However, the decal sheet has the pre-Jul37 sqdn codes !!! But even these are not right as there are two VS squadrons (diff side #'s) & no VB.
Now if the VB & VS weren't wrong and if the decals were actually useable, then one could simply do some red tails & drive on with a mid-36 -> mid-37 config, leaving open the question of the .50cals.

Anyway, the biggest issue is the decals being toast. I guess I'll be looking for 1/350 insignia and codes !!! At my age & eyesight ???

I'm not going to start this for a while so we'll see what shakes out ... I do want a pre-war CV with a deck crammed with biplanes ....

John