It All Starts Here...

This is a large project that will require good quality plan sheets.  A source of such plans is The Floating Drydock.  For the Spruance class, The Floating Drydock offers Navy's builders plans.  These offer more details than needed by the modelers, but very helpful non the less.  Another source of plans is    Sirmar.  Sirmar offers a plan set for the U.S.S. CHANDLER a KIDD CLASS G.M. DESTROYER (1985).  If you get either of these suggested plans, a few changes may have to be made buy the modeler depending what ship in the class you are modeling.  The plan set I will be using came from The Scale Shipyard.  I got the plans when I purchased a CG-47 hull from him several years ago.  Lee offers plans with some of his hull, he is not a plan service. 
 

Wish List

With your plans on the way, now you can spend some time making a list with all the options you would like on your model. It helps very much when you know where you’re going before you even start building the model.  Items to think about are what type of motors are you going to use?  Are they 6 volt or 12 volt?  Do you want to add working lights, radars, gun turrets, etc?  Are you going to set up independent controllable propellers?Answering these questions will help you give you an idea of how many channels you will need on your radio system and how many speed controllers you will need.   Other things to consider are items like: Are mostly display the model? Are you going to enter it into competitions? Do you just want a model to patrol the local pond?  Answers to these questions will greatly affect not only the amount money you end up investing but also the time you will spend building your model.  As for my model, I do not plan to enter any competitions but I do like a nicely detailed model that I am not afraid to do maneuvers at my local lake.