Atomic Powered Carrier

by **Silverback** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:50 am

Paramount Industries produced a model kit based on a Spectrum aircraft carrier. Were any technical details on this vessel ever created?

Cheers
Silverback

by **Silverback** » Fri May 26, 2006 12:22 pm

Here's the link to the web page that talks very briefly about the Atomic Powered Carrier model if it helps to jog anyones memory.

by **Mary** » Fri May 26, 2006 10:43 pm

Silverback wrote:Here's the link to the web page that talks very briefly about the Atomic Powered Carrier model if it helps to jog anyones memory.

I see the original article was written by Bill Earle. Now there's a name from the past; he was a member of APA-Century 21 back in the early/mid-90s when I was running the thing. If Bill Earle wrote the original article, you can be sure it was well researched and worth reading.

;-$

For those of you who are wondering what an APA is, a short explanation (as well as one on the evolution of fan discussion groups) is below:

APA, short for Amateur Press Alliance, was a round-robin effort that had its heyday in the days before the Internet. Every member would produce a contribution, make enough copies for all the members and then mail the package to a "Central Mailer" (me) who would collate all the various contributions, create a cover and general pages, and then mail it back to everyone at their own expense. I would also supervise the members' postage accounts and keep the members in line if they got snippy with each other etc.

It was a lot of fun until the Net came along. First fans kept in contact by joining an electronic mailing list (when subscribed to said list, members would type messages which would get automatically forwarded to everyone else who had subscribed), then newsgroups after that, and eventually fora like this one.

The mailing lists were a novelty but soon became annoying when you'd find a couple dozen messages in your inbox, especially when there wasn't a flat fee for online access. Imagine having to pay to download a bunch of "me too" messages...

Newsgroups were popular for a long time especially with dialup accounts, then when people wanted to share pictures the blogs and forum sites became popular.

But I'm running at the keyboard, sorry for going off on a tangent... :oops:

Hope someone out there found this interesting...

by **Silverback** » Sat May 27, 2006 2:16 am

So no 'fan effort' was ever made to detail the Atomic Powered Carrier then I take it?

by **chrisbishop** » Sat May 27, 2006 4:57 am

Not that I'm aware of... Mind you, other people might answer differently to this question. Give it a few days, for someone to answer that!

My personal impression - and tell me if I might be wrong, someone - is that this craft might have been inspired by the earlier 'incarnation' - so to speak - of what Spectrum HQ should be: a high powered sea-faring carrier? I think there were a number of dismissed designs for that HQ, before 'Cloudbase' was finally adopted...

by **shaqui** » Sat May 27, 2006 5:25 am

chrisbishop wrote:My personal impression - and tell me if I might be wrong, someone - is that this craft might have been inspired by the earlier 'incarnation' - so to speak - of what Spectrum HQ should be: a high powered sea-faring carrier? I think there were a number of dismissed designs for that HQ, before 'Cloudbase' was finally adopted...

It's certainly an interesting theory, and Colonel White does refer to Cloudbase as 'the carrier' in the first episode.

But here's the original colour artwork:

by **Silverback** » Sat May 27, 2006 6:33 am

Wow, that artwork looks so cool! Never seen that before, where did it come from?

by **shaqui** » Sat May 27, 2006 7:02 am

It's the cover art for the kit box.

by **Silverback** » Sat May 27, 2006 7:39 am

All we need to find now is someone with the original kit box and see what blurb that either the box or the leaflet contains about the carrier!

by **21st Century Boy** » Wed May 31, 2006 9:04 am

Hi, I`ve got one of these, stashed up the loft somewhere. There`s also a matching kit of cloudbase. The kit is smaller than you`d expect, the box measures about 5" by 4". The kit is designed to run in water by means of a rubber band powered propellor. Mine is the Imai version, so all the box blurb is in Japanese (what little there is of it). When I get chance I`ll dig it out and post some pics.

by **Silverback** » Wed May 31, 2006 9:43 am

That's a shame about it being in Japanese! From the artwork already posted I'm estimating that the carrier looks to be about half the size of Cloudbase or maybe a little less. Good estimate do you think?

by **Silverback** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 11:15 pm

Don't suppose anyone has found out any more about this vessel then? Not been able to find the suggested article by Bill Earle either. :cry:

by **pod7** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 1:28 am

I have one of the Paramount Industries editions still unassembled in its box and the assembled example shown in my article at http://www.darkstar2.demon.co.uk/models/andermod.htm . There's nothing with the box to suggest the inspiration for this craft and I tend to agree with the suggestion that it may indeed have been based on an early design for a sea-going craft which eventually developed into Cloudbase.

Bill Earle

by **Silverback** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 12:47 pm

I wonder if, theoretically, the atomic powered carrier was possibly a joint operations platform between W.A.S.P. and Spectrum? At least then it'd make a great crossover point between the two series! :grin: