Midland1965

Apparently, according to an article in the latest issue of Warships World, "Harpoon 1C will be fitted to "selected" Type 45 Destroyers from 2013". Also +1 for a Lynx or, soon, a Wildcat. My understanding is that, whilst a T45 can operate a Merlin, all the Merlin are planned to be allocated to the T23s with sonar 2087 and the operational carrier.

After the scatch building a lot of extras for my build of the Airfix 1:200 HMS Suffolk, I thought I'd have a go at a complete scratchbuild. I wanted something fairly small and boxy so a Hunt was ideal then I found a very clear side and plan drawing of a Hunt III in Norman Friedman's "British Destroyers and Frigates - the Second World War and After". My first step was to scale the drawings down to 1:1200 with multiple copies on an A4 sheet. I then spray-glued sections of drawing to plasticard to use as a template, building the hull up in layers and shaping the shear by eye. With Suffolk, I was never very happy with the porthole positioning so for this one, I used the side-view as a template, marked the centres with a needle then drilled out with a 0.35mm drill in in pin vise. I couldn't face scratch building the 4" and quad 2 pdr guns so ordered some from Clydeside. The castings are very clean and just needed a little cleaning up but I'm debating replacing the barrels with wire to keep them more in scale with my scratch built Oelikens. There are just a few details to complete now - depth charge racks and launchers, anchors, 2 more Oelikens and some stowage bins. I hope to have enough time over the holidays to complete it. Another factor in choosing a Hunt III was that there was no lattice mast so I could get away without any PE. Even so, the lack of PE details for the X-shaped bridge supports and depth charge racks is a definite disadvantage. I've downloaded some CAD software and, in the longer term, hope to get some PE made for such features and maybe for some of the light AA (individually shaping cocktail sticks, plasticard and 0.2 mm wire for loads of Oelikens can be a bit too much like hard work). Thanks for looking.

Actually Hood was armoured as well (or better) as the preceding classes of RN battleships. Nobody designing RN battleships in WW1 expected long range hits requiring strong deck armour. Hood's side armour was good but she never got the upgraded deck armour that was added on to Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, Valiant and Renown (IIRC, some of the other partially modernised ships also got some upgraded deck armour). Any of the unmodernised QEs or Royal Sovereigns would have been equally vulnerable.

I found some good references for the HACS in the end - Mk.I with radar and the later style cover rather than the folding pram lid. They were easily made from plastic rod, thin strip and some brass wire. The 8 barrel pom poms were a different matter. The first photo shows the Airfix 1:1200 block representation from the HMS Hood model in the middle and, for comparison, the Airfix 1:600 from the KGV kit is on the left. My first attempt didn't look right and several other goes to individually place the barrels were just far too fiddly (8 pieces of 0.2 mm dia wire, 0.8 and 1.3 mm long to arrange on a 1.3mm wide piece of plasticard). So I took the earlier advise and ordered some from Clydeside. They don't have any photos of these on their website so I was a bit apprehensive but I think they are pretty good. I also finished the Walrus with a photo etch prop and decals for the wing roundels. The decals were rather out of register and I had to repaint the red but at least the blue is nice and circular and the overall effect is better than I could have achieved with concentric paint blobs of blue and red. I haven't decided whether to rig or not. I like the idea of having some rigging and an ensign but, after the experience of making the mast-head radar, I'm not sure I'm ready for that level of detail. In the meantime here is the 'not quite ready for inspection' whole thing. Thanks for looking and thanks for the advise and encouragement. I've started on a scratch built Hunt III as my next project - I hope it won't take as long as this one!

Very impressive. I love the swell on your sea base. Looking forward to the next update.

A bit more progress. I'm not sure whether the Type 281 radar on top of the masts was a good idea. They have ended up looking a too chunky but they were so fiddly to do that I'm certainly not taking them off. I wanted to get a really clean finish but, in the close ups, it looks like I've put the paint on with a trowel and some of the edges are rather wooly, especially where I have tried to overpaint mistake. I think for next time, I have to be much more disciplined with the painting and airbrush as much as possible. Just need to finish painting the Walrus and scratch build the Octuple PomPoms and HACS Mk.1. Thanks for the links and comments and thanks for looking.

GHQ in 1:285 are far better than any of the 1:300, with Heroics and Ros the best of the rest. Skytrex do a nice 1:200 range I'm not sure about 1:150 but there are certainly 1:144 tanks - World Tank Museum for example Try googling 10mm and 12mm.

I have a bit more progress: The masts from the kit looked far too thick and blobby so I've soldered up replacements out of 0.5 mm brass and some steel bristles from a wire brush. The majority of the ship is together now and I have started on the camouflage. At arm's length it looks pretty good but the close up lens can be very cruel! Two obstacles remain and any help and advise would be gratefully received: 1. The MS3 just doesn't seem to stand out against the pale grey. I'm using Valejo paint and following the colour advise on http://www.ipmsswamp...Equivalents.pdf which advises Panzer Ace 323 but, as you can see in the above photo which is pretty true to the actual colours, that is barely distinguishable from my 507C light grey, despite my darkening of the PA323. I'm wondering if my 507C is too dark. Can anybody advise? 2. I still have to make the high angle directors for either side of the bridge but I'm struggling to find any good photos let alone any scale views. Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

After a frustrating time stripping everything back to bare plastic because I had botched the painting, it is starting to look more shipshape. I've decided to build it as late 1942 because I have multiple picture references for that time and it has an unusual colour scheme. I've finished making the bridge sections and a new 8" director that better matched the photos. After various attempts to carve new shelters to fit between the 4" guns (the kit ones were way too big), I've finally modified those from the kit by cutting them out, sanding them to the correct height, making them narrower and cutting a 4 mm section out of the middle then sticking them back together. I'm going to paint these parts individually before assembly so I've tacked them to a bit of sprue to stop them flying off when airbrushing and to make handling easier. By late 42, Suffolk had lost its 0.5" machine guns but gained nine Oerliken 20 mm. I've made the gun tubs from a narrow strip of aluminium foil wrapped round a wire. The guns themselves are by shaping the end of a cocktail stick as the tapered base, making the shield from a 1.2mm wide strip of thin plasticard with a 0.3 mm hole drilled in it cut through to a slot. The gun itself is represented by a 2 mm length of 0.2mm diameter wire. These are just about as small as I can manage but still substantially chunkier than true scale. I guess one of the things I'm learning as I go is how much to try to work to scale and how much to accept more of a cartoon / caricature. In 1:1200, I suppose you have to simplify a lot and just aim for the overall effect.

According to D K Brown in Rebuilding the Royal Navy, a requirement was for the T22 to be as good or better a sea boat as the Leander so the hull form chosen was very similar. However the T22 was a lot bigger and with different proportions so you couldn't really use the hull of one as the basis for the other, Leander just served for inspiration at the initial design stage.

Thanks for the replies. I've done a bit more work on the bridge and funnels and have started painting as some parts will be inaccessible later and I've come to a problem - what colour should the deck be? The kit has the upper deck and quarterdeck planked, though the instructions show it as sea grey - surely nobody would paint the teak deck, would they? Friedman has an aerial view from August 1941 (page 234) with the deck looking very dark but an aerial view of Cumberland in Raven and Roberts (page 246) clearly shows a dark deck in front of the breakwater and lighter elsewhere, whilst one of Suffolk (page 249) shows the main deck and quarter deck lighter than other presumably grey painted decks. I've seen models with a variety of colours. I rather liked the idea of a wooden deck, just to give a more colourful scheme and because the moulding has a plank effect that would be tiresome to try to remove. Does anybody know for sure?

Thanks for the replies. DIY photo etch is an interesting idea. I imagined the set up costs would be prohibitive but £30 to £40 for a 1-off A4 sheet seems remarkably good value - you'd get a lot of 1:1200 on that. Time to try to remember how to use CAD! I've found a quite inspirational 1:600 build by orionv on the Airfix Tribute Forum, http://airfixtributeforum.myfastforum.org/...about13190.html and suddenly the blurry photos and the plans in R&R and Friedman make a lot more sense. I'm re-doing the funnels now to better represent the outside pipework and the air intakes between the funnels. The next job is to scratch build a new bridge. I'll post some more pics when I have some progress worth showing.

This is my first post here so hello, and my first warship model for many many years. In posting here, I'm hoping for some constructive criticism and advise. With memories of childhood ship modelling, I couldn't resist buying a couple of sets of the re-released Airfix 1:1200 Sink the Bismarck ships. In my memory the kit of HMS Suffolk was pretty good and I planned to do a more or less out of the box build with a bit of extra detail then do a more ambitious conversion. However, comparing the kit to plans and photos in Raven & Roberts and Friedman's books on British Cruisers, there seem to be a lot of inaccuracies and I've found myself making more and more changes. The bow shape around the knuckle seemed quite wrong so I've been doing some filling and sanding to try to get a sharper edge. There are no portholes in the kit but these seem very prominent in photos so I got busy with a 0.3mm drill. My first go at the anchors was swamped with too much super glue and I'm still not really happy with the result in close up but from a distance it looks OK and I'm not sure how to get a better result at this scale, bearing in mind they are about 1.2 x 1.5 mm. The deck around the 4" guns and the gun positions seem way out, so I've re-made that part from plasticard based on plans in R&R. That leaves me the problem though of how to scratch build the lockers between the guns with their awkward angled tops. The bridge also seemed wrong and I'm part way to re-building that but struggling for good reference photos. With a coat of undercoat to show up the defects. Is there any PE (or other detail parts) available in this scale? I'm really not sure how to go about the light AA from scratch.