...or find another friend to get vet pack and xpert pack as a graduation gift from :P

Those gunners wont be able to handle the 12" really well till prolly the late 60s.

First, congratulate you recieve a PCA.Your default gunners are lvl 55,so I suggest that you
should use the 8" gun.When you get higher level or get more vets.Then you can use 12"Gun.

^^ what he said. Over the weekend is a vet conversion rate increase. Invest in a couple of
expert packs and get your gunners up to 100 vets/mostly full experts and boost them. This
isnt so important later on, but at the early and mid levels before your gunners reach the cap
(where only levels matter and vets dont) it can relieve alot of frustration to BVE them.
Otherwise you will hav e a hopeless spread that will do nothing but frustrate you.

An alternative setup is to take off the main guns and swap the 5" on the tslots for 3" Ds or Ns.
Then take it to AA whore in GB for good exp and free experts. If you havent already learned AA,
dont worry. Just check out LKs guides stickied at the top of the page or go to nf-guides.com
and read the anti air gunnery guide. Thats basicly how I learned.

Burn off your experts over the weekend.

with your gunners 11/11 not fully bve, i'd say use 8"s if u are playing blitz.
but again, i prefer the regular US CAs if you are using trip 8" guns since the one extra
gun will help a lot in terms of damage.

if you plan to jump straight to GBs, use the default trip 12 Ls (light shells of course),
or you can just play pure AA if you think you cant handle fighting other BBs yet.

It's really a choice of preference where you are, your gunners CAN use the default 12"
L's (Guam Guns), though your spread won't be great. Another choice is to go with one
of the 8" sets, and while you will have less range your spread SHOULD be more
bearable. Try both setups out and see what works with you.