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Those of you who know me have already heard about the ludicrous Crisp medical story of 2021, which meant that Ark Royal and P-38F builds ground to a shattering halt for most of the year. Finally, however, I am in a position to start building again, but I find that my mojo to pick up exactly where I left off is wobbly - ironic, given the fact that the P-38 was itself a build kicked off by medical emergencies. After a few days of desultory re-planning and gentle sanding of Ark boats, I have decided to do something completely different. A few of you possibly spotted where I was going when I asked for reference photos just before Christmas (thanks, Evert-Jan!), but for those who didn’t… At Telford I spent a happy half hour talking to the two lovely Dutch guys from Naval Models, and acquired one of their lovely 1/350 S-Klasse / Kortenaer Class “Standard” frigates. My best Naval friend (I’ve been his Best Man… twice!) is a Dutch officer who did an exchange tour in HMS Broadsword when I was Flight Commander in 1989-1991; he will be 60 in a couple of months, so this his present, and will be built as Hr.Ms. Bloys v. Treslong, the ship he joined when he returned to the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Dutch Navy) after his time with us. The kit is very similar in style and quality to Atlantic Models’ RN kits - resin with PE. I’ll be building her pretty much OOB, though I’d say the kit’s main (only major) weakness is the fact that it lacks railings or flight deck nets… so I’ve added one of Pete’s generic “Modern RN railings” sets. And a Master brass barrel for the OTO-Melara gun, cos brass barrels always look better than resin. I actually started 5 or 6 days ago, but so far (as with all resin kits) it’s been wall-to-wall sanding to remove some pretty chunky casting plugs, so nothing interesting to show you. Anyway… The hull, cast in one piece (I’ve sanded away some of the bow-mounted sonar dome to give a bit of stability - she’ll be in a sea scape): Details of Fo’c’s’le: …and Quarterdeck: …in both cases showing some clean-up still needed but excellent quality casting. The various superstructure sections after several hours of work to remove casting blocks: Plus closer view of bridge: …funnel area without and with turbine downtake section (which was different in different ships of the class, so not cast in one piece); …and the aforementioned OTO-Melara 76mm gun with the Master barrel (plus resin shell case ejector carefully shaved from the resin part): …and finally the Goalkeeper CIWS - half-way through building this I realised that the Airfix Lusty has Goalkeepers which are unused in my Ark 5 build, and their barrels are rather nice, especially with added PE bling: So that’s the story so far. Nice to be back. More soon Crisp