Even if the experts come, it's still useless

"Alright, alright. Oh, that reminds me, Principal Bai asked me to join the Children's Palace science and technology competition, saying I need to make a project. I almost forgot. Let me go find some materials first..." Hearing that his father was about to launch into another lengthy lecture, Hong Tao immediately found an excuse to slip away; otherwise, he would be trapped listening for an hour and a half.

During the afternoon training session, Hong Tao had already figured out what kind of project he should make for the competition. This creation had to demonstrate the highest level of an elementary school student, yet not be too advanced; the materials had to be easy to source, and it had to make people recognize at a glance that it was superior to other entries, ensuring he could secure an award or something for the school.

Initially, he planned to make a microwave oven. It was something he had built during his university days in his past life, and it wasn't difficult to make—essentially using sheet metal to fabricate two boxes: one for the microwave transmitter and one for the oven. When in use, the interfaces of the two boxes would be aligned, and boiling an egg or heating up meals would be a breeze, with practically no radiation leakage.

However, after pondering further, he realized that an elementary school student building such a device seemed a bit too advanced. Moreover, high-power microwave transmitters were very hard to come by; even if he could source one through his father's academic friends in a university laboratory, there was no guarantee it would work, and the price wouldn't be low, making it uneconomical.

Thus, he changed his train of thought and decided to build a large-scale model of an aircraft carrier. This wasn't entirely novel among elementary school students—the Children's Palace had a model-making class that built simple rubber-band-powered airplanes and the like. Of course, his had to be far superior to theirs; otherwise, how could it win a prize? Therefore, he planned to build an aircraft carrier model that not only had a realistic appearance but also incorporated a propulsion system, and ideally, a remote-control system as well. If even this couldn't win an award, Hong Tao would simply be out of ideas.

As a jack-of-all-trades, Hong Tao had also dabbled in model-making for a period in his past life. Some models were purchased online and assembled at home, while others involved finding blueprints, sourcing materials on his own, and crafting them entirely by hand. Later on, when everyone started playing with methanol-engine model aircraft and entering various competitions, he felt that stuff was too expensive and energy-consuming, so he stopped playing.

He had once crafted an aircraft carrier model by hand, modeled after the World War II USS Midway. It took him a total of about a year and a half from start to finish. Just as the hull was completed and the surface painting was done, leaving only the carrier-based aircraft and miscellaneous details like tiny figures, flags, and anchor chains to be arranged, his interest waned. Ultimately, this one-meter-plus giant was treated as junk by his wife and tossed into the trash can. In his wife's words, "Can't you ever finish a single thing you start?" Every time this happened, Hong Tao would shamelessly retort, "Don't I finish every time in bed?" Following that, his wife would refuse to cook the next meal...

This time around, Hong Tao didn't plan on putting in that much effort to create a strictly scale-accurate simulation model. For one, time didn't permit it. For another, there were no ready-made blueprints or reference materials available; computers and the internet weren't around to provide that convenience, and the library certainly held no materials on the minute details of an aircraft carrier.

According to Hong Tao's plan, the aircraft carrier could still be quite large, because smaller ship models were actually more troublesome to make. If you were to build a 30-centimeter-long simulation model, many parts on the ship would require splitting a toothpick into four thin slivers—far too delicate. A slightly larger size made processing much easier. However, the details would rely entirely on his own memory and imagination; proportions didn't matter much as long as it looked the part overall, and the teachers at the Children's Palace had certainly never seen what a real aircraft carrier looked like.

If time permitted, he also intended to install a few small electric motors inside, along with a battery box tucked away in the ship's belly. If he could buy a servo motor, he could even use a simple remote-control system to regulate the motor speed and rudder direction. That would make it absolute perfection.

"Paulownia wood? We only use hardwoods for carving here; wouldn't using paulownia be inappropriate?" When Hong Tao asked his eldest brother-in-law to help him find some dried paulownia wood, the brother-in-law assumed he was trying to cut corners by using soft paulownia to pass it off as hardwood for the private restaurant's interior decoration.

"It's not for that. I'm using it myself. The school asked me to join a competition, and I plan to make one of these. I'll need these carpentry masters to help me out with a few small tasks like cutting boards and gluing things together; I can't handle those on my own." Acting like a senior engineer, Hong Tao clutched a roll of blueprints. When unrolled, it densely depicted various components, dimensions, and structural diagrams. This was specialized drafting paper his father had specifically procured for him from another teaching and research section at the school. As long as his son was moving in an academic direction, his father was willing to satisfy his wishes even if it meant stealing, and when it came to this competition, Hong Tao's father was entirely on board with both hands and feet!

"What on earth is this? A bathtub?" Holding the blueprint of the hull section, the brother-in-law turned it over and over without figuring out what this object—over a meter long, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom—was supposed to be.

"You're hilarious. Who takes a bathtub to a science competition? Look at this page, it's a ship!" Hong Tao was so exasperated his nose nearly crooked. A blueprint that took him a whole week to draw was actually being called a bathtub; it was a severe blow to his self-esteem.

"Hahahaha, what kind of ship is this? Why are there airplanes on it? Fine, fine, I can't keep up with your brain. Go ahead and mess around with it yourself. If you need anything, go ask Master Wang to help you. I'll go buy the wood for you first. Half a cubic meter should be enough, right?" Looking at Hong Tao's rendering, the brother-in-law's mouth split into a wide grin. In his view, having a bunch of airplanes neatly lined up on a single ship was utter nonsense!

"Don't buy that much! I'm not making furniture! Just two boards and two five-by-five square beams will do!" Hong Tao couldn't continue communicating with his brother-in-law; professions were indeed as distant as mountains.

"Master Wang, could you make me a workbench measuring two meters by one and a half meters? Just put it in that empty room next door. And while you're at it, could you take a look at this... these two boards need to have a curve bent into them. If that's impossible, can we piece together a curved shape?" Without any intention of continuing the discussion with Hong Tao, the brother-in-law had long since walked out the door. Holding his stack of blueprints, Hong Tao went to pester the carpentry master currently remodeling the restaurant, leaving the veteran craftsman wincing. Despite merely being a model, it was far more troublesome to make than furniture.

From that day on, the vacant room on the upper floor became Hong Tao's workshop, with him holding the sole key. A makeshift workbench stood in the middle of the room; aside from its planed, smooth surface, the rest of the wood was entirely unfinished. Protruding from this very workbench were over a dozen small wooden sticks used to anchor the overall shape of the ship model—a little trick taught to Hong Tao by Master Wang on how to shape wooden boards. Of course, only wood with relatively soft textures and long fibers like paulownia was suitable for this method; most ordinary woods couldn't be manipulated this way. This was also why the vast majority of materials used for building aircraft carrier models were paulownia: first, it was lightweight, and second, it possessed strong plasticity.

Every day after school, Hong Tao would run over here to add a little more to his ship model brick by brick. Larger components could be taken to the adjacent room to be processed with woodworking tools, while smaller parts had to be carved meticulously with a small utility knife, especially the carrier's superstructure. Although it didn't need to be one hundred percent to scale, Hong Tao still preferred to make them closer to reality.

Building ship models, particularly scale simulation models, is meticulous work that tests a person's patience and dexterity. Having been tempered by his past life, Hong Tao had reached the state where he could sit by a reservoir for a whole week without catching a single fish and feel no sense of urgency, so he felt quite confident about building this vessel.

The current issue was the servo motor. Ordinary toy motors were available at the department store for just over 3 yuan each, and they could be used as long as they were paired with a simple gear train to reduce the rotational speed. Gear trains weren't hard to acquire; scrap yards had plenty of discarded clocks and other items, and by scavenging and dismantling them, he could always piece one together. However, Hong Tao had scoured several large department stores and electromechanical shops without managing to find such a servo motor. In the end, Hong Tao had to appeal to his father, asking him to approach his old physics professor friend at the normal university to see if two could be procured from their university laboratory.

Time slipped away day by day under Hong Tao's little carving knife, and before he knew it, summer had arrived. Hong Tao's aircraft carrier model was basically finished. The hull measured 1.2 meters in length, and from the keel to the top of the mast stood over 70 centimeters high. The deck not only accommodated seven or eight MiG-15 fighter jets, but even featured catapult systems and arrestor wires, along with several tiny wooden figures holding miniature flags stationed at various posts to act as flight deck officers.

Right now, Hong Tao was undertaking the final step: outfitting and painting. This task was also quite troublesome. At that time, paints weren't available in a wide variety of colors, let alone canned spray paint; every single shade had to be custom-mixed using a few base colors. Once a color was mixed, the painting had to be completed in one go, because the human brain isn't a computer, and no matter how hard one tried, color discrepancies would inevitably arise between batches. Moreover, to prevent the soft texture of the paulownia wood from absorbing the paint unevenly, a thin layer of clear varnish had to be applied first. Once that was completely dry, the colored paint could be brushed on top.

Regardless of the hassle, before the vacation began, Hong Tao finally completed his project. Using red paint, he inscribed the ship's name "Dongfanghong" (The East Is Red) on the bow, along with the hull number 001. A large red star was painted squarely in the middle of the flight deck, flanked by two smaller red stars at the front and back. Hong Tao figured this qualified it as thoroughly red and expert; from the name to the livery, not a trace of American imperialist influence could be found. In fact, even if an expert from the U.S. Navy were to show up, they wouldn't be able to recognize it as an American carrier—after all, what kind of aircraft carrier comes equipped with torpedo launchers and large-caliber main guns? Hong Tao had added them all simply because he thought they looked cool. (To be continued...)