We’re up to Volume 61, and in this set of ten we’ll take a huge jump forward. We start with the internal hangar deck.
There’s something new in this one; “etching parts.” It’s the term for a thin sheet of metal (maybe aluminum) that has been partially burned away to leave the parts you need to work with. In this case, they are tiny handrails.
A couple of them are scored so you can bend them. They all go into small holes in the deck plate as seen at right. But they’re metal and the plate is plastic, so normal glue won’t cut it. It’s time to haul out the dreaded super glue again.
The safest way to attack this problem is to apply the super glue to the back of the plate so the little metal legs catch it when you insert them. Putting glue on the legs themselves is a recipe for trouble, since it will almost certainly spooge out and infect the visible side of the plate. By infect, I mean BURN. It erodes the plastic. That was one of the nightmares I faced on previous models. Fortunately, this one was designed for a smart solution.
While that’s drying, the next thing to do is set up the safety barriers. They’re plastic, and you’re meant to coat them with stickers. The stickers wrap around the top and sides. I really hope Hachette did some homework to pick an adhesive that’s going to stand the test of time and not separate or dissolve off. I’d like to see the stickers still locked in place a few years from now.
The barrier walls snuggle right up to the hand rails, and I use the same glue trick to mount them into place. After the appropriate drying time has passed, they’re holding up OK. We attach the wall from Vol. 60 and we’re ready to move on.
Vol. 62 gives us the other wall. This is the flipside of Vol. 60.
The pieces sandwich together, and the lighting test works fine. The new wall gets attached to the hangar deck plate and that’s it for this volume. However, I notice that both walls are tilting outward a bit. It seems problematic now, but they’ll straighten out when the hangar is placed into the hull.
More hangar parts arrive in Vol. 63. Weird looking bits this time.
The two large pieces both get square metal tabs super-glued to them. The top deck will have magnets to match these.
The light grey part gets another LED sandwich and a lighting test. A-OK. We set it aside for now.
Finally, the large black piece gets attached to the hangar deck as en extension. Once I see its complete shape, I understand where it will fit into the hull. That extension leads to the port side runway.
Vol. 64 doesn’t look like much, but it’s the part we’ve been waiting for to finish off the display stand. Specifically, the main circuit board to distribute power.
Before I can install it, I have to put the “protrusions” on that I skipped earlier. The support pillars go on at either end.
Next, I have to install the volume knob from underneath. But there’s a problem; the hole is so tight that once I get the knob in, it won’t turn. I hunt around for a solution in my wife’s woodworking studio and find exactly what I need; I wrap some sandpaper around a marker that’s just the right size and use it to ream out the hole until it’s wide enough to take the knob. And yes, I wrote that intentionally. You’re welcome.
There we go. That’s a happy knob. It fits just right and rotates perfectly. Do you have a happy knob that properly fits into okay I’ll stop now.
Next it’s time for the big moment. The circuit board drops into place at one end of the display stand. The instructions say to put the lid over it right away, but the Hyuga modeler’s blog I follow says that will make everything harder to plug in.
I see right away what the blogger was talking about, so I go ahead with all the plugging in. Most of the wires lead to features within the stand itself, but the biggest one (bottom center) goes up into the support pillar that delivers power to the ship.
At right, the lid goes on and all is well.
Now we can take the biggest step and attach the floor. This covers up all the guts and it’s VERY satisfying to put on.
Lastly, the battery drawer slides in and the stand is complete. This opens up some other big moves that have been anticipated for quite a while.
Back in the 20s, we were given a bunch of exterior parts that got assembled but had nowhere to go. They were put aside specifically because they attach to the bottom of the ship. Until the stand was assembled, it wasn’t safe to put them on. But now it is, starting with this “descender” that looks a little like a third bridge. We begin by attaching radar “ears” to either side. They look flimsy, but there’s a fair amount of tension holding them in place (in addition to glue) so unless something really hits them hard, they’ll stay put.
While that’s drying, I’ll put on the large ventral piece that goes down the center. For the first time, I flip the hull over to reveal the working area.
Right: the ventral piece has four lights on it, and the labels for the fiber optics have almost fallen off in the time it’s been sitting on the sidelines. They’ll all fall off when I try to stuff them into the hull, so they all get secured with tape. This is not a rare occurrence; I’ve seen it with a lot of the labels during this build.
The optics go into their requisite holes and the whole piece snaps into place. Done.
The “ears” are dry on the “descender,” so that goes on next. Screws will secure it, but they have to be applied from inside the hull, so I’m just taping it on for the moment.
Now, for the first time, I can place the entire ship onto the stand. This is a nice moment, you handsome beast.
After securing the “descender,” we get to attach these two guys. They look like external fuel tanks, which would make sense on a carrier. No lights on these, so they just screw into place from the inside. However, I’m noticing an issue…
The ventral piece was supposed to snap into place, but it’s sagging at one end, so some glue will have to seal the deal. The ship comes off the stand, gets flipped over again, and we take care of that. Vol. 64 is finally done. All this action was made possible by a simple circuit board. Those rascals at Hachette can sure keep you guessing.
Vol. 65 gives us the parts for another distributor box. Will it lead to as much progress as the last one? Not yet.
Putting these together is super simple. Then you just install it inside the hull.
The ship has to go back on the stand permanently at this point. At left you can see the power coupling. Once the ship is on, four screws attach it to the support pillars. They can be removed if needed, but it’s safer this way.
At right you can see where the new distributor box will go. It will act as a hub for everything inside the hull.
To give you some context, here’s where all the power points are. The blue circle is where the coupling is located. All the yellow boxes are distributors for lighting, both LEDs and fiber strands. The red box is the power hub I just put in. Big cables are coming up that will connect them all together. There’s a little more construction work to be done first.
Vol. 66 returns us to the hangar deck with more pieces that will give us some recognizable scale indicators.
First, there are two pieces that connect to the left corner. The flat wall is supposed to be glued to the side, but that angling I noticed earlier is proving to be an obstacle. I can’t follow the instructions with this issue, so I just mount the flat wall and hope it will correct itself later.
At right is the counterpart corner piece that has more going on. First, it gets a sticker.
Then there are more metal “etching parts.” They attach to the corner piece to form a stairwell. Super glue is needed again, so I go back to the technique of applying the glue to the other side. It takes a little while to set, but it works.
The whole piece gets attached to the opposite corner, and the angling becomes an even bigger problem; this time the piece MUST be attached to the wall by a rectangular overhang that bonds to the wall. I just secure as well as I can to the wall and the floor…
…and tape it down overnight. The next morning it has sort of worked. I put the last metal piece on and it’s done. It’s a little janky and feels like an idea that didn’t quite measure up to someone’s imagination. But it’s time to move on.
Vol. 67 is a BIG one. Not just because of another big part, but because it will allow us to take a BIG step forward.
Easy stuff first; this is the back wall of the hangar bay. There are two tiny red pieces to glue on. They sort of look like fire extinguishers. It seems like an odd detail to focus on when there are so many other possibilities, but OK.
Next, there are two smallish stabilizer fins that attach to the lower stern. Each has a single fiber and get attached to the long slot you can see at right. For this, I need to flip the ship over again.
While I have it belly up, I notice that the support pillar near the bow partially covers up the big number on the intake. That’s sort of a bummer. I also see that the two belly hatches near the stern are going to be hard to reach, as I suspected. Maybe not worth the effort.
The fins are supposed to glue on rather than screw on, which seems like lazy engineering. Especially since they’re vulnerable to impact (an unfortunate feature of ALL Yamato ship models in existence). It’s designed in such a way that I can attach it with super glue, so I go ahead and do it. It all stays where it’s supposed to and tape goes on until it dries. Easy stuff done.
Now the hard stuff: gathering and capping fiber optics. The two I just fed into the hull from the little stabilizers are the last ones. They’re all present and accounted for. The instructions tell me I’ll be creating no less than seven bundles and plugging them in. I somehow pick the hardest ones to start with, the bunch labeled “SL.”
One by one, I horse them all into the holder and squeeze the cap over them. One of them wants to crimp, so this has to be done a few times before they all obey.
The other bunches are all collected and capped for a total of four near the stern. I make it sound easy, but it’s the most hardcore part of this entire build. None of them wants to be tamed, and you’ve got to very carefully clear them away from fibers that have already been secured so nothing gets pulled, pressured, or twisted. It’s vital that they all reach their destination with no tension, or they might pop out on their own.
At right, all four bundles have been plugged into the distributor box (which already had several in place. It still looks like a mess, but now it’s an organized mess.
Left: moving up to the midship area, three more bundles are captured and capped. That’s all seven.
Right: Everything has now been plugged in. There are NO empty sockets. That means NO more fiber work, at least within the hull. MAJOR sigh of relief.
After that, the rest of this volume is a breeze. A big relay wire gets installed next. This runs from the power hub all the way back to the distributor box at the stern.
Then the rear of the hangar deck goes in, covering up the distributor boxes and that big swarm of fibers at the stern. There’s enough space below it to keep them from being pressured, which is good.
The back wall of the hangar bay goes in next, and we see that this is a multi-layered doorway to the rear launch platform. After that, a strip goes down between the deck and the elevator door. Now it’s clear that the back half of the hangar bay is meant to function as a giant airlock for egress.
Now a great big reward: the entire hangar bay slides into place and, as I hoped, its walls are pressed inward by the sides of the hull. They’re as vertical as they need to be now. The finishing touch is the grey piece with the LEDs attached.
It goes on over the front portion of the hangar bay to provide a light over the runway port. Nicely done, Hachette. And that’s Volume 67 in the can. Whew.
Vol. 68 gives us some cleanup work and some major wiring.
The cleanup work consists of a few strips of plastic to cover the edges of the hangar where it connects to the hull. When they’re all glued on, there isn’t a screw head left in sight.
Now we’ve got three large cables to deal with, all different lengths. The instruction book does a poor job of distinguishing them, so to be sure I don’t screw this up I take a close look at the available slots. There’s a different number of pins in each one, so all I have to do is match the wire count with the pin count and label accordingly.
It’s hard to clearly photograph the end result, but all three cables are now connected. One goes from the main power source into the hub. The other two go out of the hub to a distributor box. The last step is to plug in three smaller connectors to the hangar lights. The instructions skipped that part for some reason. But there’s nothing else that needs to happen first, so it’s safe. And 68 is now done.
Vol. 69 delivers a very recognizable component (the control box) and something else. There’s nothing to do with the control box yet, so it goes off to the side.
The other pieces go into the hangar bay. The instructions say to glue them in, but two of them snap in securely so I’ll leave the other one loose for now. Later, they all be connected by fighter palletes, so they should together on their own. This volume may have set a speed record. Not even one minute to complete it.
And now Vol. 70. The simplest one since we started. Just one part and a couple screws. It’s the circuit board for the control box.
We just drop the rubber bits into the face from Vol. 69, then secure the circuit board in with one screw. It might have taken slightly longer to finish than Vol. 69, but I didn’t time it.
And there we are. This is what we have to show for 70 volumes of work. Just ten more to go. Ready for the home stretch? I sure am.