Hey out there,
Thought I'd post a quick build log of a idea I've been pushing around for awhile. At our local boat club a couple of months ago (Maritime Modelers, Cerritos, CA), a fellow club member had brought a 1/12 scale lcvp landing craft he had been working on. He lamented that he'd wished he picked a different scale as there was nothing military avilable in 1/12 scale. Jokingly I asked if it was for sale, and before I turned around it was mine
. I had been wondering what one of these craft would look like if it had been bought "war surplus" and turned into a transport hack for a inter- island construction company. I set about stripping the hull down to a shell; it had been built using door skin and some kind of foam glue
. After deconstruction, I boxed in the sides of the cargo well and made a new ramp with polycarbonate (Lexan) plastic, as well as making a new floor and side armor plates out of styrene, adding the anti slip strips, and decking over the aft end. I cleaned up the engine room, changed the motor, put in a new speed control, and a old Robbe "multi sound" unit and speaker. I hid the main drive 12v sla battery in a large crate, and built the smaller crates, barrels, reels, and pallets. all of the other details came from the spare parts box (mostly doll house items). Much to my surprise I didn't need to add any more weight
. She runs well, if not overly fast (the full size only did 9 kts). This was going to be a "quick project between "serious projects (they all turn into serious don't they
). As of now the bow ramp doesn't operate (I'm not very good at "monkey motion"
), but we'll see.
Mark