David Kopielski of Chicagoland won Best Aircraft Carrier in 1:350 Scale at the 2019 US IPMS National Convention with his build of the USS Carl Vinson CVN-70 in her 1983 World Cruise. The first seven photographs were taken by me through
plexiglass at the Nationals but the rest of the photographs were taken by Dave and sent to me. Dave states of his build, "I started with the Trumpeter 1/350 Nimitz CVN-68 kit and converted it to the USS Carl Vinson CVN-70 as she was at the start
of the 1983 world cruise (her maiden deployment).  All differences as well as the hangar bay details were scratch built. I purchased extra aircraft sets to fill ship with all 86 aircraft. The decals for the hangar bay and aircraft were made by me.
The ship is also illuminated with over 500 feet of fiber optic lines and 40 LED’s.  Photo-etch sets were used on the ship and for all the aircraft. The ship is also accented with resin CIWS and deck tractors.  3-D printed hangar doorways and
Tilley Crash tractor. A total of 777 hours were used to build."
Dave has his own web site, David's Scale Models. With a build time of over 700 hours, Dave had plenty of time to take photographs of the steps he took in the build. He took over 300 photographs of his build of the Carl Vinson, which can be seen
at his USS Carl Vinson CVN-70 Build Log. Not only do you see the photographs but also Dave gets into all of the specifics of the build. Dave also has his own decal sets of carriers in 1:350 and 1:700-1:720 scale and also a line of assault ship decals.

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