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Dodo Models 1/700 Royal Australian Navy Armidale Class Patrol Boat


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Model making has been on hold whilst I conducted some detailed research in to Storm Grey for my next project. This required me to make a visit to Australia……, well not quite, model making has been on hold and I didn’t go down under for the purposes of research. My work required me to go away to New Zealand, where I have been for the last couple of weeks (hence no model making). Anyway on the way back to the UK I managed to stop off in Sydney. And as might be expected I took the opportunity to look at the RAN ships alongside at Garden Island and the Attack Class patrol boat preserved at the National Maritime Museum.

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Before I went away I had decided that my next project in my stash reduction exercise would be the Dodo Models Armidale Class Patrol Boat kit which I had ordered from E-bay:

http://www.dodo-models.com/

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Unfortunately there wasn’t an Armidale Class Patrol Boat alongside in Garden Island as I had hoped but I did get to see Storm Grey close up which turned out to be very valuable because photographic references on the internet can be very deceptive.

Going back to the model kit, as with the RCN Kingston Class MCDV the Dodo Models Armidale is very comprehensive and highly detailed considering the scale of 1:700. The photo etching is finer and much more delicate for the Armidale which worries me slightly but if done well it will mean the final model will look good.

The following photos show the model kit components:

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Detail of build progress to follow soon.

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Looking forward to seeing how she comes together. The Navy website has some great reference photos to help you along, plus if you can get it the Aussie tv show Sea Patrol is great for reference.

http://images.navy.gov.au/fotoweb/archives/5011-Royal%20Australian%20Navy/?q=armidale&sa=yyy

One hint with the PE, when you get to pe part 15 (the four circles for the radar thing) cut it in half so you are only trying to get he mast through one hole at a time instead of trying to line up both holes

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The transition from Storm to Haze grey has already begun - I wonder whether the Armidale Class (ACBP) will be so painted before they're replaced?

I'm glad you got to see some interesting ships during your visit. To the best of my knowledge, ACPB are rarely seen south of Cairns.

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Looking forward to seeing how she comes together. The Navy website has some great reference photos to help you along, plus if you can get it the Aussie tv show Sea Patrol is great for reference.

http://images.navy.gov.au/fotoweb/archives/5011-Royal%20Australian%20Navy/?q=armidale&sa=yyy

One hint with the PE, when you get to pe part 15 (the four circles for the radar thing) cut it in half so you are only trying to get he mast through one hole at a time instead of trying to line up both holes

Thanks for the advice, it is much appreciated. :thanks:

The transition from Storm to Haze grey has already begun - I wonder whether the Armidale Class (ACBP) will be so painted before they're replaced?

I'm glad you got to see some interesting ships during your visit. To the best of my knowledge, ACPB are rarely seen south of Cairns.

I assume the Armidales will be painted Haze Grey as they go through their docking cycles and I suspect it will be a while before a replacement is decided upon.

To be honest I would have been surprised to see an ACPB at Garden Island but it was a one off opportunity for me so I was kind of hoping.

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:popcorn::popcorn:

Kev

Your wait is over, here is the first installment.

I have started construction this weekend and what follows are my observations from the build so far.

First up a word of warning, I started by sanding the base of the model to remove the excess moulding material. There are some very fine castings on the hull moulding (the bridge wings and bollards) which do not appreciate a ham fisted approach to sanding. As a consequence I ended up spending a significant amount of time fixing the damage I had inflicted. :chair:

Any way that said, I started on some of the major PE components. The photo etch although very delicate is impressive and quite easy to work with. Some of the components built are the boat davits:

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The Quarterdeck vent boxes:

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and some of the miscellaneous Quarterdeck fittings:

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I also added the vertical ladders to the hull moulding.

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These are not shown on the instructions in the kit and so I undertook an internet search for images of Armidale class patrol boats and turned up some excellent reference photographs for both fitting and paint schemes.

I especially like this image:

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and this one:

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which have helped identify some of the gaps in the instruction sheet.

That's it for now, thanks for looking in. :thanks:

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Thanks for the advice, it is much appreciated. :thanks:

I assume the Armidales will be painted Haze Grey as they go through their docking cycles and I suspect it will be a while before a replacement is decided upon.

Looks like the replacement will start to be delivered before the end of the decade.

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http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/projects/patrol-boat-replacement

Very nice, very delicate, work on the kit.

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I had a thought..........

So I went and checked.........

Your nuts.... ......... that hull is 81mm (that's just over 3" ) long. That's just over double the length of the gun barrel I'm currently working on.

I take my hat off to you :goodjob:

Kev

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Looks like the replacement will start to be delivered before the end of the decade.

88BB877D-1DEB-4D87-A31B-B31826C62A6F_zps

http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/projects/patrol-boat-replacement

Very nice, very delicate, work on the kit.

Thanks for this, I have been aware that a replacement for the ACPBs was on the cards but did not know when it was going to happen. A couple of years ago I was engaged in a ship design that was used to give the RAN project team a concept of a replacement solution. I have to say that our design was no where near as attractive as the current vessels but it did have a flight deck and would be made of steel. Both of which are important factors for the replacement ships. As you probably already know the ACPBs are made of aluminium and are starting to crack which is starting to cause some concern.

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Kev, Beefy.

I concur with your assessment of me, :mental: I have decided it is the only plausible reason why I put my self through this. I hope the end result will be worth it though.

Edited by Paul E
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Bob,

I think the Armidale class are quite an attractive looking ships which is one of the reasons why I decided to get this kit despit it being quite dainty, I do think that a 1:350 scale version would be quite a popular proposition.

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This weekend has been quite productive helped by the not too good weather. I have managed to get on with more PE detailing, this time the masts.

The main mast yard arms are very delicate and took a while to get into position, this has given me a valuable insight at which point in the build I want to integrate the mast, which is as late as possible to avoid repair work.

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I took Forlornhope’s advice when assembling the fore mast and split the disk antenna into two halves, which made things much easier.

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If I did this again I would not have followed the instructions and cut the upright antenna (Part 44), instead I would have drilled a hole in the centre of the five pronged antenna (part 18). This would have removed a weakness in the structure.

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Here’s a picture of the completed foremast with a Pound coin for scale.

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Finally for this post a picture of some the main parts dry fitted together.

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Next up painting.

Thanks for looking.

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Thanks for the comments about the PE work it is just practice; I am improving with each model I make. Anyway here is part 2 of last weekend’s model making.

I am glad that I discovered Britmodeller as there are so many useful things that can be learned from fellow modellers, amongst them colour schemes. Royal Australian Navy ships are currently painted N42 Storm Grey with N63 Pewter decks (this is changing to USN Haze Grey). To be honest that would not have meant too much to me apart from looking at paint chips and photographs. However having had the opportunity to actually look at the colours in the flesh and Forlornhope hope sharing his experiments http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234996793-dodo-models-1700-canadian-navy-kingston-class-mcdv/page-2 did I actually appreciate what they looked like.

Firstly the decks; these are a lot lighter grey than I was expecting and I took a photograph on the museum ship HMAS Vampire which shows the contrast between the Topside and Deck greys.

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I settled on Humbrol 140 – Gull Grey as a close match for the decks:

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I re-sprayed over the masked off deck areas with the same colour so they will not to be affected by bleed through then I spray the top sides grey (well that’s the theory).

Next I added some of the key hull fittings that will get painted topsides grey:

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and I prepared the other small assemblies for spray painting.

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Then it was down to the business of determining how to get a paint mix to be a near match to Storm Grey. So taking Guidance from Forlornhope I centred on 3 Tamiya colours; XF76, XF12 and XF25 and applied a bit of trial and error as can be seen below:

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I finally settled on a mix of 2ml of XF12 and 0.5ml of XF25 and the results are as follows:

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And finally with masking tape removed:

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The colours look like a reasonably close match although there is quite a bit of tidying up to be done. Particularly where some reason the paint delaminated on the boat deck despite my meticulous preparations.

That's it for now, enjoy. :thanks:

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Paul I,am learning a lot from this and your other builds using PE gives me the heeby geebys hope to get back to my KGV build soon when I get a bit more confident with the brass stuff

looking good so far mate

Beefy

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I was told that there are variations in Storm Grey on the real ships, time of day/ position of the sun, time since last hull paint all have an affect. So close enough is good enough. Even though I am using the proper storm grey paint I should add some white to it as the colour is a bit too strong in 1/700 if that makes sense. Hell I used RAF Ocean grey for my decks.

Looking forward to seeing how she finishes up, as I said its good to see how someone else puts one of these together and you have done a much better job with the forward radar thingy setup than I did for any of mine.

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Nice work Paul.

That's coming along swimmingly.

You will find as Callum has said in shows with different light, model ships will change appearance. so near enuff is good enuff.

foxy :coolio:

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Thanks for the feedback guys, I wish the paintwork looked better but the macro lens of the camera is very punishing as it shows all the blemishes the eye cannot see.

Anyway I have decided that before I damage the paint work further that I should mount the hull onto its base. Before doing so I needed to decide on which of 14 ships in the class I wanted to depict.

The one thing that is missing from the kit instructions is which pennant (hull number) on the decal sheet goes with which Name Plate on the PE sheet. Here is a table which fixes that. I have also included a column for the ship call signs if signal flags are desired.

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The name plates are quite a prominent feature and appear to be made from cast letters mounted on a wooden board. I achieved this effect by initially spray painting the name PE nameboards with the base grey colour and then applying a brown wash over the top. When this had dried I used a super fine sanding stick to strip off the paint from the letters.

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Having seen the photograph in detail I decided to apply another brown wash before fitting.

I have elected to model HMAS LAUNCESTON on the basis that my wife used to live near Launceston in Cornwall

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I have also decided to add a few minor enhancements to the bridge wings such as navigation lights and signal lights and the Toplite Electro Optic Director on the front of the bridge roof.

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Unfortunately I have managed to lose the anchor somewhere and at 1mm square it is a bit hard to find. I manufactured a replacement and that too tweezer pinged into oblivion :doh: so fitting the model to its base ended up being put on hold.

Progress will resume shortly.

Edited by Paul E
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