USS Macon/Arkon

[gamer Mac]

USS Macon/Arkon





Is an American rigid air ship that was also an aircraft carrier. There is a program about it on discovery tomorrow night at 9 o’clock on Sky.








I have had the idea of using this as a base for my Sky Rangers in my pulp games




Now the ship its self is to big to build. My idea is just to build the hanger deck.




I was intending to make a 2’ x 2’ board to represent this area of the airship.
I will build the lifting gear holding a plane in the centre of the board and some sort of hanger arrangement for another plane.



Plane I am going to use

What I am stuck with is how to represent the sides of the airship.
I take it will be some sort of metal webbed structure. I was thinking if I could build a couple of curved sections on two sides of the board to represent the inside curves of the airship interior. I could mount walk ways on these structures for characters to go on during the game. There would also be fuel tanks and some sort of flight control/Radio room.
I don’t have a clue how to build this easily and hopefully cheaply (I am Scottish after all ). Has anyone any ideas for the metal web material?
This idea is a long term idea. I won’t be starting it for a while. But when I seen the program was on tomorrow night it made me think about it again. Also you can never be too early collecting material for scratch building.

[Westfalia Chris]

Amusingly enough, yesterday there was a programm at 9PM on Arte on the same topic. Don´t know if it´s the same documentary, but if it is, very much worth watching, if only for the period footage, and there´s a rather nice CGI section portraying the Macon´s crash in 1935.

And come on, in 1/60th scale, it would only be a mere 13ft/4m long! Surely that´s doable!

(Actually, they have a 1/100th scale Akron at the Zeppelin Museum of Friedrichshafen. Darn spiffing thing, that.)

On how to construct the side walls: I´d suggest cutting a number of spars (maybe one every 4-6 inches) from wood or plastic, then drill through them to simulate a Dural girder look. The mesh between could be done with mesh... er... or maybe some of those fabric fly netting they nowadays sell for use on windows (here in Germany, at least). I´m unsure if the hangar insides were covered with cloth or something similar. I think there was some footage in the documentary, so look out for that one.