JohnWS

Welcome back! Looking forward to future updates. John

Beautiful job on the camo, Jon. Very distinctive. John

Is that 'cause I'm old & rusty? Rob, I'm really glad you had a good visit & especially being able to tour Sackville. Downtown Halifax has a great mix of old & new. We've been known to visit a few pubs there, as well. lol That's a good photo of HMCS Moncton. Most photos don't capture the green hew of the Canadian grey colour as well as you have. My wife & I are still planning on visiting the west coast RCN dockyard at Esquimalt in a couple of weeks. Looks like there will be at least one RCN frigate docked there to visit. Thanks for posting. John

Nice job beefy. John

I really like Tamiya's plastic quality & detail on both the PT 15 & Perkasa boats. PT 15 has the advantage of having the Eduard PE set as well. Looking forward to following along and seeing PT 15 come together. John

Awesome! Congratulations & best wishes on your retirement beefy. John

As a follow up to the discussion in the previous posts, it's time to build a couple of Inflatable Decoy dispensers for Regina. I used the following photo taken on one of the RCN frigates as a guide. Using this photo & others found on the 'net, I scaled down the photos to approximate the 1/350 dimensions for the dispenser & accompanying blast shield. I ended up using .062" (1/16") diameter Evergreen plastic rod for the dispenser body, .020" diameter plastic rod for (what looks like) a compressed air cylinder mounted on the side of the dispenser tube, and pieces cut from plastic sheet for the dispenser stands & blast shield. The dispenser's nose cone is an integral part of the decoy, becoming an anchor for the decoy once it is deployed in the water. To replicate the conical shape of the nose cone, I used an old friend - wine bottle foil. The final assembly is shown in the following photo. Next, I need to scratch build two large horns that will be mounted at the base of the main mast, and build flag halyard rigging hardware, e.g. cleats. etc., for the main mast. Thanks again for looking & following along. Stay safe! John

Great job on Daring, Jon. Luv the detail & the clean appearance. It's just not modern warships that lack character. Being an car guy, I feel the same way about modern cars. New models seem to all look the same, no matter what the brand, with minimum chrome & having flat screen dashboards. New warship & aircraft designs are tending to all look the same as well, no matter the nationality. Weapons & other character building detail are mostly hidden by radar reflecting bulkheads & panels reducing radar signature. Very blah. One of the reasons I choose HCMS Regina was that her camo paint job set her apart from other ships in the fleet. John

Get well soon Rob. Sorry to hear about your loss & excited to watch its rebirth. BTW, make sure the window is open before you start throwing things around. John

For sure! One of the many benefits of being a member of Britmodeller. It's aways a good day when you can learn something new. John

Mystery solved! Thanks to everyone who replied. Thank you Ant for your feedback. On close examination of the hazard nameplate, top access port, & mounting framework (as shown in the following photos), the mystery object on the RCN frigates is the Naval Inflatable Decoy System IDS300 that Ant identified 👍 & that is also carried on some USN & RN warships. John

Yes it isn't very big. Approx. 10' across at its widest point at the back. Being remote controlled, I guess it only needs to be big enough to squeeze in the gun, ammo & a maintenance person. 🙂 John

Thanks Jeff. It certainly stands out amongst my other Navy grey models. I'm afraid the gold in that necklace wouldn't cover the cost of the gasoline needed to make the trip to the local pawnshop. lol All sorts of possibilities - garbage, empty beer bottles, dirty laundry, officer cadets (not that someone would do that) John John

Moving along, a short update & a question for you. In addition to the deck fittings and decals, I've finished adding the anchor chains, 57 mm gun turret, and the anchor to Regina's forward deck & bow, as shown in the following photos; My wife graciously donated an old gold chain necklace for the anchor chain. This finishes off the foredeck with the exception of the deck railings & some rigging. I plan to add these at the end on the build. Next, I'll be adding equipment & weapons to the bridge superstructure decks & roof. But, in the mean time I have a question. I've been unable to identify the functions of two pieces of tubular looking equipment located on the decks aft of the bridge wings. One is mounted on each side of the ship. These are shown in the following photos. Can anyone help me in defining what these things are and/or what they're designed to do? I'm assuming they're not torpedo tubes, laundry chutes, or 16th century cannons. Unfortunately, Mr. Google hasn't been much help. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again for looking in. Your 'likes' & comments are always appreciated, as well. Stay safe! John

Great job! A beautiful ship & I love that sea scape. John

That looks like a very busy two weeks Kevin, with very impressive results. Looking forward to seeing future updates. John

'Its the not the Destination, It's the journey.' In this case, the destination looks pretty good too. Another masterpiece Steve. 👍 John

Really nice detail work Rob, especially the PE & scratch building, e.g. the 20mm gun & the winch. HMS Spey & HMS Tamar, Batch 2 River-class offshore patrol vessels, visited the USN's Sand Diego base in October, 2021. They're very smart looking vessels & apparently very seaworthy to make the trip to the US west coast. John

Well, old age sometimes has its perks. My wife & I were at an out-of-town family winter get together this past weekend. While we were a away, our town was hit with a major winter storm (high winds & a 12" heavy snowfall). We came home yesterday thinking we'd have a lot of snow shovelling & blowing to do just to get into our driveway. Much to our surprise, two of our neighbours had dug out our driveway & sidewalk (not an easy task) & it was clear sailing for us when we got home. What a relief! We're the oldest residents on our street, & apparently our neighbours took pity on us so we wouldn't have to do much snow removal on our return. Very good neighbours indeed. John

Thanks Stuart! Unfortunately, it's happening to us all. lol John

Hi, again! A colourful update. Since my last update, I've added an additional 29 scratch built black bollards, fairleads, mooring chocks, & cleats to Regina's deck. These were not included in the model kit. Also, I've added the following water slide decals; - hull numbers (black), - modified flight deck guide lines (white, yellow & black), - main gun & Phalanx gun hazard markings (red), - flight deck letter markings (white), - maple leaf funnel emblems (red) and - modified foc'sle transfer/replenishment markings (yellow). The flight deck lines & the foc'sle markings decals needed be modified due to changes added during Regina's modernization refit, and to fit properly on the model, respectively. In addition, I made (red) circular hazard markings for the three new scratch built Multi Ammunition Soft-kill Systems (MASS). These were added as part of the ship's modernization refit. I punched these decals from spare model aircraft decal sheets. Here's a few photos showing Regina as she sits now; Next up, I'm finally going to start attaching the scratch built details starting on the bow & working my way back to the stern. Thanks for the 'likes', comments, and patience for following along. Stay safe! John

WOW! Another awesome build Rob. That 1st photo looks like a colourized version of the photo of the actual ship. IMHO the weathering can't look any better. The figures really add to the realism of the presentation. Did you use a microscope when painting the figures? John

Nice Stuart. Not an easy job, even at larger scales. Well done! John

Nicely done Rob. John

Well said! I'm leaving the railings on Regina to the very last. Hopefully, I'll have built up enough courage by that time to start adding them. John