How One YouTuber Scratch-Built a 23-Foot RC Aircraft Carrier With a Working Catapult

A YouTube creator, Julius Perdana, used a film-inspired concept to build a functional remote-controlled aircraft carrier: a 23-foot-long, 1/48 scale USS Nimitz. Inspired by the 1980 movie The Final Countdown, Perdana aimed beyond a static model, targeting at least one flyable RC aircraft that can launch from the deck and be recovered with a landing wire. To keep the 7-meter model transportable and stable, he used a foam-board waterline hull and a weighted keel. Early sea trials ended with a failure when wind lifted the unweighted hull, causing it to fly more than 30 feet before crashing and snapping its mounts. Mechanical complexity included a deck elevator, where he ultimately used industrial linear bearings and a rack-and-pinion setup after earlier methods jammed. The project’s centerpiece was a working catapult built with CNC-machined stainless components and a tuned rubber-band system. Perdana test-launched an RC B-25 Mitchell, and planned a 32-aircraft airwing featuring F-14 Tomcats, A-7 Corsairs, and E-2 Hawkeyes.