Chewbacca

I've seen professional shipbuilders' models that aren't this good. This is truly amazing and an inspiration to us all.

More figures added though despite me thinking earlier that I had printed enough, for those who have ever been to a Navy Days you will hopefully agree with my assessment that on reflection it is nowhere near sufficient! I've used almost all of my walking figures and the jetty is pretty much empty bar a small queue and a couple of lone photographers. I think I've posted before that I still clearly remember being on the flight deck of HMS DIDO at Chatham in about 1969/70 with the ship listing a fair few degrees and the OOD closing the gangway to new visitors for safety having been told that there were over 3,000 on board, most of which were stood on the starboard waist watching the basin displays. I also realised when adding these that I missed a trick in that none of the screen doors are open - I should have opened up probably the door on the quarterdeck and at least one of the bridge doors. Too late now I'm afraid. I also didn't consider the upperdeck route carefully enough as I will end up having a crossover which is never a good idea. The next batch of 45 figures is curing under the UV lamp, there's a follow on set currently printing. Thanks for watching

Started to add the figures but ran out of time to do many more as I was cooking dinner. Apologies for the quality of the images - must get the SLR out to take the next batch and not rely on the phone camera! (Before anyone asks, yes there is a roof still to go on the left luggage tent)

I've built many BELFASTs over the years (and a conversion to earlier Town class) and IMHO is one of Airfix's better 1/600 kits though as others have pointed out, there are lots of things wrong with the mouldings. This is looking very good though. I seem to recall watching a documentary series on Channel 4 or 5 a few years ago on great British ships and BELFAST was featured in one of them. There was IIRC some good colour footage of her at Normandy which might be helpful if you can find it on catch up TV. Actually Jeff it wasn't a whiff. BLAKE did do trials with a GR1 in the late 1960s

That was the one I was thinking of. Thanks for reminding me of the name. Shame they're no longer trading.

Have finally finished painting all of the figures! Lost count in the end of exactly how many but I think there are in the region of 230 or so left with at least another 20 odd somewhere on the floor. This isn't a great photo I must admit but it does show them all. Next job is to start fitting them because I think that will be easier before I fit the rigging, And I tried out the new Pledge yesterday. This is 2 coats. Still slightly satin but that may be because at the scale I'm working at, the 3D printing does have a slightly rough finish. I'll try another couple of coats tonight. It certainly does dry clear. Thanks for watching

No, that's a different image again but it does show the same area quite clearly. It's definitely post '82 as she's got the 20mm Gambo on the stern which was fitted for her Falklands deployment immediately after the war. I wasn't aware that she was ever used as a navigation training ship. That role was undertaken by HMS TORQUAY throughout the 70s and early 80s (and I still have nightmares about my first assessment week onboard which I failed for trying to be too clever!). I think the reason that she wasn't fitted with Type 199 was that being one of the last Leanders to be built, the Navy had realised the limitations of that particular system and stopped fitting it. She was destined to be converted to Exocet but that was canned under the Nott review in 1981 as a savings measure. My build is here: Though I think the best build log on here of an Atlantic Models cold war frigate is probably @Ex-FAAWAFU's DIDO build:

Interesting question. As far my records show, APOLLO was never fitted with the Type 199 variable depth sonar although if you zoom in on this photo of her at the 1977 Spithead Review, it does appear to show some sort of well where the sonar would have been, albeit with the transom fully plated in. There is a very clear photo on page 101 of Ships of the Cold War Fleet (Clive & Sue Taylor), albeit take a little later in her life, that shows there is a guardrail around the forward part of where that well would be with a Gemini RIB on a cradle. I think that supports what we are seeing in this photo. She definitely had the Mk 10 Limbo mortar in the late 70s as both the Spithead review photo and the Ships of the Cold War Fleet show and given that she was never converted to carry the Lynx, I think she kept the mortar until she was sold to Pakistan in 1988. You've rightly picked up on the later aerial fit on the foremast. The one you want is the one with the cone top which is, IIRC, UA13 which was a very early Electronic Support Measures equipment. The earlier FH5 aerial is HF direction finding. Of course if you want to be really picky, APOLLO was a broad beam Leander whereas CLEOPATRA was a standard beam. So you need to add 1.7mm . If it were an injection kit I'd say that's quite easy but I don't fancy doing it with a resin kit. You'll have fun with this though. I'm just finishing my first Atlantic Models kit (HMS PUMA) and it has been a really enjoyable build (albeit frustrating because I'm over-complicating it somewhat).

There was a company over in China (sorry, can't remember the name) who did the correct linked cable in various sizes but they disappeared about 12 months ago. I'm not aware of anyone else doing it.

Thanks for posting that Pascal. A reminder of a great action in the finest tradition of the Royal Navy. A few of those photos were new to me as well. Interestingly, I prepared a presentation for the Royal Naval Association last year entitled War in the Fjords and although the central theme was the rescue of King Olaf and Norway's gold, of course I included this as part of the presentation. There are conflicting reports from the other survivors, some of whom claimed that Lt Cdr Roope did not in fact order the ramming but that they had lost steerage by that point due to action damage and that GLOWWORM was effectively just continuing on her last known course. At the time of the ramming, I think Ramsey was down aft trying to get the second set of torpedo tubes to bear. I guess none of us will ever really know but whatever the details, the mere fact that Roope thought it appropriate to take on a 10,000 ton 8 inch cruiser with a tiny 4.7 inch destroyer should never be forgotten.

You're absolutely right Jamie. 32 years in the RN including command of a T42 during which time we came out of a 12 month refit in which the paintwork was stripped right back to bare metal and primed/top coated (had to do that, there was mainly rust underneath ). I always though it was simply known as "ship side grey" and that someone in a factory somewhere knew the right formulation so that my ship was the same colour as all of the other ships in the squadron until I started reading your and @dickrd's posts on here. Incidentally, we had an amusing story about that repaint. We were in the covered dock in Devonport and I knew that the plan for the company entrusted with the work was to paint her in the last week of August and then move her out into the basin over the bank holiday weekend. It turned out that they didn't finish the painting but to meet a contractual payment they moved her out anyway. And so I came back from a week's leave to find much of the upperdeck still in bare metal and of course being August bank holiday, it was raining. They painted the decks anyway in the rain and, funny old thing, it all flaked off within about 3 months just after we went to sea. I managed to get them to repaint it free of charge but the day they had planned to start, it was again pouring down with rain. We had just finished colours and I was talking to the Officer of the Day when I saw a dockyard matey on the flight deck swinging a device around on a bit of string. I asked him what he was doing and his exact words were (bear in mind it was raining heavily) "I'm checking the humidity to see if we can paint today".

When I started modelling many moons ago, I got something like 50p a week pocket money and you could get the Series 1 kits in a poly bag from Woolworths for about that. When my children stopped getting pocket money (my youngest about 5 years ago, she got £10) so with 5 years increases on that it's certainly in the ballpark. For me the standout is the new Buccaneer. I picked up one of the double box issues when the last one came out; built one and put the other in stash because I couldn't face doing another one though I desperately want to build it as the Buccaneer to me is the ultimate British jet. So I will get one of those. And I've always had a soft spot for the Anson since building the original 1/72 kit years ago. Nice to see FEARLESS and DEVONSHIRE re-released for Falklands 40 though as others have said, the Falklands Task force set would have been better as it includes a T21 and Leander, both of which were well represented in the South Atlantic. Would have been really nice though to see them joined by QE2 and Canberra but I don't know if Airfix still have the moulds. Both are going for silly money on Ebay. And again, perhaps re-release ILLUSTRIOUS with an extra sprue to include the parts to convert back to INVINCIBLE. I'd also have taken a new tool HERMES in 1/350 . But for me the downside were the Spitfires. Do we really need any more? I think I saw one new mould (1/24) and two re-issues. Yes I know people will buy them and so I get it from a business perspective but I just don't understand why people buy them when just about every manufacturer have multiple options.

I still don't get this fascination with German aircraft carriers. Weser was a project that was never finished, never went to sea and never saw any action. Why is that more likely to sell than say a 1/350 RN subject that has never been kitted in that scale (or indeed in many cases in any scale). Don't get me wrong. I know that there are some who will buy it - Trumpeter will have have their business case signed off and understand that they have a market or they wouldn't invest in the tooling and good luck to them - but it almost strikes me that there is pathological fear of kitting new RN subjects. It'll be great to see VANGUARD and even a new POW but there are so many subjects that I am sure would sell just as well as a ship that was never completed. I'll get m'coat

Thanks Terry. Tried all over yesterday and nowhere locally seems to stock this or indeed anything like it - Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Home Bargains, Wilko. So managed to order a bottle of this: from Mr Amazon. At least with using it initially on 3D printed parts, if it doesn't work I can always print some new replacements and won't have lost anything. I'll report back on how it is.

We sadly lost a good friend in the Chewbacca household on Tuesday. An old friend of nearly 17 years who's been there for almost all of my models in that time since I returned to the hobby. Yes, my trusted bottle of Klear finally dried up . I was going to put a coat on the vehicles that are going to be parked on the Jetty before I put the Royal Navy decals on this weekend, but it was like treacle. And so my dilemma now is what to get in its place. I know that Klear was reformulated (Pledge floor polish I think, then Pledge with wax) but having read multiple threads in the https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/forum/85-modelling-tips/ forum about replacements I am very confused as a lot of the products referred to there seem to be the overseas trade names. According to my local supermarket websites, none of them stock any form of liquid floor polish. What's the current consensus of what you can get in UK as a Klear replacement? Thanks

I think I now realise what it was that was suppressing my mojo: the thought that the next part of this build was to paint the figures! I don't enjoy figure painting at the best of times even in larger scales and I think the prospect of painting 300 odd (I printed another 50 over Christmas in slightly different poses) of these little critters was filling me with dread. I think figure painting is the closest that you can get in this hobby to real art and I was very proud of the fact that I came second to bottom in art at the end of my first year at secondary school (actually I was gutted; I wanted to come bottom but was pipped to the post by a friend who went onto to become an eminent maths professor at Cambridge). But I made a start just before Christmas and am making slow progress. One of the challenges for those who can remember back to the late 60s/early 70s was the psychedelic colours that people used to wear. And of course most modellers are not going to have a ready supply of lime greens, fluorescent pinks and bright oranges in their paint stocks. It would be a lot easier if they wore clothes that were 507A or extra dark slate grey! For those who are blessed with not being old enough, watch Austin Powers as that will give you an idea of what I mean. At least the ship's company figures are predominantly all over black! This batch is now 90% complete - just got the shoes and hair to go - with an X-Acto to give an idea of size. And no, before anyone asks, I'm not going to paint the whites of their eyes! ! can just about manage that in 1/72.

Thanks . Never come across that before despite years of operating alongside the US Navy both Atlantic and Pacific fleets but looking at the dates, while I was predominantly at sea they flew the blue jack and I never worked with any of the ships entitled to fly the First Navy Jack while they were the oldest in commission.

Modern pusser's war canoes carry so little paint and cleaning material that they cannot do anything while deployed unfortunately. This is a very impressive model. The one comment I would make if I may - and I apologise for pointing it out given that I speak not one word of Vietnamese - is that she is HMS DARING not DARLING @junglierating is right bout the Merlin/Wildcat. The RN has so few Merlin available to embark in frigates and destroyers that they usually tend to embark in the T23s where their ASW capability can best enhance the ship capability. The T45 are fully capable of carrying the Merlin and I am sure have from time to time but interestingly I could not find a single photo online of a Merlin on a T45 flight deck or stowed in the hangar. Lots of graphics showing that they can, but no actual photographic proof that they have.

Simply outstanding. I really don't know how you get that much detail into a scale so small. I once made a comment in another thread that was debating the pros and cons of maritime scales that I thought 1/700 looked a bit toy-like because the masts and gun barrels were all way to thick. I now fully recognise that that is now erroneous given the quality of both the Flyhawk range and models such as this.

That really is a superb model that when photographed at the right angle and with the right backdrop is hard to distinguish for the real thing. I must ask though. What is the large red/white striped flag. I can see it in the photo of the ship herself but have never seen anything like that before. Best rgds

I like that a lot.

There were embryonic plans to fit Sea Wolf to the T42s but they never came to anything. I think they realised that Phalanx was probably a better option. I would have thought they'd be fairly straightforward to scratch build. They're basically boxes.

I did Ex BALTOPS 88 embarked in HNlMS Abraham Crijnssen while my steamer, PENELOPE, was having a boiler clean after some young MEM opened the wrong valve and contaminated the feed water inlet. Our Captain thought it would be a good wheeze for the RN to show solidarity with our NATO cousins despite the fact that PENELOPE was on Q Pier in Portland about 6 miles from my house! I did take a fair few photographs while we were there but they're all hard copy and I will need to try to find the box they're in before I can even start scanning. But I'm off now for a few days so I'll see what I can find.

I'd endorse that Jeff. I returned to modelling 16 years ago after a long lay off after my teenage years and did so after a nasty road traffic accident in which I was recuperating at home and temporarily relying on a wheel chair to get about. My wife picked me up a Bismarck in our local Hobbycraft but just like you, I opened the box and couldn't bring myself to build it. A couple of years later I gave it to my son who was then about 10 years old and his 3rd kit (after the ubiquitous Spitfire and Me 109); even he commented "this is a bit rubbish isn't it". Now I must confess I am neither a fan of nor an expert in Bismarck kits but I will say that I have seen a couple of cracking Revell 1/350 examples at local model shows pre-lockdown. How much work was needed to get there I do not know.

Very simple solution to that. Waterline the model. The vast majority of the bulge is below the waterline so there is very little bulge to cut away once you've taken a razor saw or Dremel to the boot topping. I did it in my conversion to DORSETSHIRE - this shows how little needs to be removed. But I do fully acknowledge that waterline models are like Marmite; some love 'em and some hate 'em.