Kits please

[patmat2350]

Congrats on picking up the boat line, we've been waiting for someone to step up and fill the vacuum left by Graupner.
But please consider kits! Not everyone simply wants to pop an RTR out of a box... many of us still enjoy the thrill of the build. I just finished KY's Fairplay 30 kit, it was a challenge, with lots of customizations and upgrades that would have been really hard if I had to start with a finished model.
And KY's European subjects are not unwanted here, don't just load up on USN subjects.

[herrmill]

I'll second that motion (no pun intended...)! Pat has some very sage advice so bring on the kits, Alpha!

Think outside the box on whats currently not on the market such as a Fletcher or even a Cap San Diego kit. I'd love to see some scale sail kits such as a Bristol cutter.

[Alpha]

We have the Fletcher, do you mean the Flower? I loved sailing the Flower, as well, it's on my short list.

patmat2350 Absolutely, as I mentioned in the Warships Requests thread, we're bringing in KITs, also. We started with RTR because we wanted to make these first series of boats something people could begin sailing in less than 15 minutes after opening the box. But I'm glad to see we have many KIT builders out there, too.

Please show us more of your Fairplay tug and your extensive customizations! That's one of the boats we're bringing in.


The complexity of these KITs vary widely depending on the specific factory and the specific model. The Bancroft 1/200 scale Battleship Yamato, for example, is one of the more complex for anything shorter than 50". We opened the brand with an RTR setup because not everyone wants to spend a couple hundred hours finishing one of these themselves. But, there are those of us out there who actually love that part! We'll have you covered, too.

Here's a peek at a Bancroft 1/200 Yamato KIT:



We're spoiled these days by the hull and deck being molded together as one single piece, as shown in the box. Most of the building in the good ol' days centered around building the hull and then planking the deck. But even the deck in this model is laser cut and laser etched in one piece that slips over the molded without any cutting required.



The brass PE (photo-etched) parts is where the bulk of a builder's time will be spent. Highly recommended is a PE bending jig tool. The foredeck and aftdeck are large brass sheets, but all the others PE parts (railings, barrels, stores, antennas, arrays, cranes etc) are tiny! Not shown here are the various hollow molded parts such as turret bodies, superstructure sub-assemblies, and smaller solid molded parts such as capstans, anchors, seaplanes, etc). Those need to be mounted and painted.



The rigging is slow and tedious, but not overly difficult. Just go slowly! The railings and barrels are probably the most difficult part for building the stock KIT, along with truing some of the saggy portholes.



Thankfully, the manuals are well done, easy to read, and comprehensive. Shake and bake, and you'll end up with something like this, or with some extra work to install lighting and moving turrets and a smoke system, something even better!

[patmat2350]

OK, here are a few things I modified on my tug, which were much easier when starting from a kit than a pre-built model:

1. Added "belly tanks" for ballast storage. This tug is heavy, and needed a lot of lead shot... you want to contain this stuff, and I HATE having loose junk rolling around in the bilges.

2. Rebuilt the Schottel drive mounting. Won't get into all the detail here, but the factory set up would work, but would likely fail the wire leads in time. I understand that my modification will be adopted by the factory, gratifying.

3. Detailed the wheelhouse interior. The factory design was believable but not correct.

4. Added LED lighting all over, including on the mast. This required building my own mast in brass.

5. Added rotating radars... with the radars out on those platforms, this required watch-maker details!

Radars video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMSyR7RwL0Y

.

[Elbee]

patmat2350, Wow! I'm pretty sure you've heard/read that before. Very impressive build/mod. Yeah, would like to see the build on the 'rotating radar'. Bravo Zulu, Sir, and welcome to "The Squawk." Best, LB