Well, I finally received a sample of the new Hood kit from Flyhawk. There were supposed to be multiple copies (for donation to the Hood Association) but unfortunately only one was sent. Hopefully this will be remedied shortly.
I have no plans to dive into a build immediately (I have to finish the model of a SPAD XIII first!), but am now in the process of looking the kit over in detail. Thus far, after an initial look, I unfortunately have found a small error:
Part: Boat deck (part “J”)
Error: Both forward/outward corners of the wooden planked area protrude forward past the expansion joint. On the actual ship, the planking ended at the expansion joint. I have no idea how this was overlooked by me during the many reviews of the drawings, but fortunately it’s an easy fix: The simplest way to address this is to not paint the offending areas wood colour. Instead, paint them a corticene colour. Another, more detailed option would be to scrape/fill the offending areas and re-scribe the expansion joint (then paint appropriately). If using a wooden veneer, simply trim the offending areas off. Either way it’s easy.
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I also have a warning about another part (Deluxe Edition): There are several photo-etch pieces that are to be mounted vertically around each funnel. They appear to be funnel stays, but in reality were pulleys/lines for painting and maintenance. The pulleys were permanently mounted around the top of the funnels (below the flange), but the lines were not. Sometimes they were left rigged, sometimes they were not. For instance, in the famous 1940 photo of Hood being painted (port side), they are in use. In the later (and also famous) 1941 views looking down on the boat deck, they aren’t in use. So these are purely OPTIONAL. I suppose the bravest of us can at least attempt to mount just the teeny tiny pulleys without the lines (Good luck with that…bring a microscope!).
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Other than that, I’ve yet to see any glaring issues thus far.