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Hello all. Last Christmas my son gave me this kit as a very nice present, and, wonder of wonders, I actually finished it within the calendar year. I normally end up putting new kits into the stash only to be discovered years later! I wanted to do something different with this model. I could not afford the photo-etch set for this one this time, so I built it entirely OOB. I did take a bit of a liberty and painted it in the 1944 scheme illustrated on the side of the box, but I am fully aware that the configuration had changed between then and 1945 which was how the model was fitted out. It's my model and I built how I want to, built how I want to, you would do to if it happened to you! You could make a song out of that methinks... Anyway, I really wanted to give Colourcoats paint a really good tryout. I had built a Short Stirling and used their Dark Green and Night Black and got on well with them, so now it was the ideal canvas to try a disruptive pattern on this, largish model. I only brush-paint (unless I use white when I upgrade to a rattle can!). I promptly went to the Soveriegn Hobbies website and downloaded their colour notes for KGV, and decided to do the disruptive option despite the fit differences. I had already completed my set of Colourcoats RN paints (two days before @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies announced his new NARN series of updated RN Colours), so I knew I probably had the right ones. I tried to follow the guide on the box for colour demarcations, but used Jamie's notes for the actual colours. I thinned the paints with Colourcoats own thinners, and they worked a treat, but oddly I found that the lightest colours covered more completely than the darker ones! I strongly suspect that was me causing that, but after a couple of coats for the light gray and light blue, and three for the dark gray and dark blue, I was well and truly happy with the results from this brand of paint. Top marks Jamie! The kit itself was great, not much flash and quite nicely detailed for me, but I have to admit that in the end I wished I had been able to get the etch to raise the bar a bit. It looked 'wrong' without any railings, and as for the cranes, well... Anyway, here is what I ended up with, one quite colourful ship, and a large one to boot! I did have to take some (more) liberties with the camouflage scheme as I could not quite figure out how the colours wrapped around athwartships (if that means side-to-side) for the for and aft superstructure colours. These models were ones that my brother and I used to drool over when we were gazing through the catalogues back in the day, and I am very glad my son treated me to this one. Thanks for looking, Ray PS - Looking at these pictures, I have realised I still need to paint the anchor 'chains'! Doh!