The Ship Model Forum

Since everyone will start to build Slavas from Trumpeter you'll like following photos for your build.













Updated 05-29-2009.

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http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery/users/Andrey-Zhukov/user-index.html

Excellent photos!!! Thanks for sharing them. I might get one Slava one of these days...however, I still have Kirov from Trump's to build!!!!

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"Build few and build fast,
Each one better than the last"
John Fisher

Are you using WEM colorcoats, or Humbrol, or what?

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Sean Hert

Yep Timmy. Was a great Russian special on the Update, wasn´t it?.

350z, I like your projects a lot. A shame they seem to be able to think just in 1/700. I would love a Slava, a Kresta , Krivak and so on in 1/350!.

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I will miss you Werner. Fair winds and following seas.

Hmm, Andrey you seem to pump these babies out like a bakery does with bread!!!! Already a new one in such an advanced stage!
Very nice indeed! How many Soviet ships have you built up till now?
I will indeed build a Trumpy Slava soon, if it reaches our stores, but not in this configuration I think. I'll be going for Admiral Ustinov, in her latest configuration.

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The merchant shipyard

Hmmm, 1/350 Soviet stuff.... I got a paper model of Udaloy, and I figure in 3 years or so I'll scratch a 350th. Speaking of which, does anyone know if there are any significant changes in the hullform between Udaloy I and II?

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Sean Hert

Ha! I'm very SLOW builder. I enjoy the process and cannot put more then 3 Hrs a week on it. My concept is simple. I'm doing 2-4 models at the same time. I paint all hulls and letting them dry well while finishing
detailing on last ship from previous batch. When I started details on Slava I painted 3 new hulls - Kara, Kresta II and Kresta I.





Good! Marshal Ustinov is on photos that called Slava-Top-1 through 6. If I build Trumpeter I better go with newest unit in a class - Varyag that has Top Plate instead of Top Steer.



I'm using Gunze Sangyo acrylic paint. My local hobby store has it so I don't have a problem to buy it. I don't like Tamiya, never tried WEM. Humbrol enamel is nice but dries too long.
Gunze is something between ordinary actinic and enamel.
It shines and is smooth as enamel and dries faster then enamel but still not as fast as Tamiya or Testors.

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What a surprise

Oh, so that's the way you do it. Well it looks nice this way though! A real shipyard!

For Varyag, you'll have to add a small sign on the Vulkan launchers too then!


http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=102359
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=102360
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=102360
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=102363

That's her in Jakarta (yesterday or so, coming back from the Indo-Russian exercise also involving Samara SSN and two Udaloys), you can see the small rings added to the launchers, which are not present on the normal Bazalt launchers. I wonder what the device behind the Pop Group radar is, never noticed that before...



Loading Bazalt for Moskva, in Sevastopol.
Here she is at sea:

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The merchant shipyard

Last wednesday I bought the Trumpeter Slava for 14.49 euros. I also
have the Kombrig kit which includes PE for the radars and a decal set
(I've written an in the box review which can be found in the SMML
archives) and I have decided to build all the subassemblies of the
Trumpeter kit and to compare the two kits. Let me state beforehand that
I have nothing to do with either manufacturere and that I have both
positive and negative experiences with kits from both manufacturers
(yes, Kombrig makes mistakes; I have a Parzizhkaya Kommuna which is a
disaster) .The first impresssion is a bit worrying. The lower hull of
the Trumpeter kit does not fit under the Kombrig upper hull as it is 5mm
short in lenght and about 2 mm in beam. Out comes "The book", Warships
of the USSR and Russia 1945-2000 by Pavlov and Friedman. The Trumpeter
kit is about right in overall beam (which should be 30 mm) but about 2
mm short in length compared to published sources (Pavlov and Friedman)
while the Kombrig kit is about 1 mm too large in overall beam and right
in length. Trumpeter's upper hull has a sharper knuckle so the
difference becomes more pronounced at waterline level. Kombrig's hull
seems to be about right compared to the drawing in Pavlov. I have
compared this drawing and the pictures of Marshal Ustinov in 'Slava
Udaloy and Sovremenny' with the hulls of the two kits. While the
difference in 'sharpness' of the hull may be correctable this is not the
case with another hull shape problem. The Slava class have a very
recognisable forward deck form which has parallel sides up to the point
where the Bazal't missile cannisters end and a gradual turn of the deck
sides until the forward end of the hull. Trumpeter's hull starts to turn
too early and is more arrow-shaped when seen from above. When seen from
the side the original vessel has a slight 'S' form towards the bow.
Kombrig captures this shape beautifully while Trumpeter has a simple
sheer cure which starts to go up too far forward. As a consequence of
this the forward superstructure, 130mm mount and missile cannisters sit
too low. This is very noticable when you see the two kits side by side.
There are also small fit problems between the deck and the hull, the
deck is severely scratched and has a few sink marks. When I glued the
upper hull and lower hull together I ran into some small fit problems.
Once glued together the result looks rather top-heavy as the lower hull is
really that small. So small in fact that with some minor surgery the
lower hull will fit under a Kombrig Kara (pr.1134B) or maybe even a
Kresta 2.
One thing that is better in the Trumpeter kit is the approach to the
Bazal't missile cannisters which have the space between the support
structure and the bridge superstructure open instead of closed as per
Kombrig. But due to the hull problems the shape of the support
structures is wrong. Also, the fire control radar for the Fort (SA-N-6)
SAM missile is much better in the Trumpeter kit. The rest of the
superstructure looks nice, overscale ladders but that seems to be the
only problem. There is off course the difference between a resin kit and
injection molding to be accounted for. The 20 part approach to the
funnel/radar tower structure by Trumpeter gives a nice result (with
typical Skywave over heavy surface detail) but it is not in the same
league as the beautiful one piece casting by Kombrig. This is basically
what you pay for when ordering a resin kit. Smaller parts are a mixed
bag with the Trumpeter kit. The 130 mm gun mount is nice (finally!) and
may end up on my Frunze (also Trumpeter but with a different weapons
sprue). The helicopter is much better than the old Skywave Ka-27. The
Kombrig kit includes a Ka-25 so I cannot compare the two. The Osa-M
(SA-N-4) missiles and launchers are nice and the missiles are the first
in 1/700. The Fort (SA-N-6) VLS launchers are nice in both kits,
Trumpeter gives you the reload structures while Kombrig does not. The
fire control radars for Osa-M are plain plastic cubes however. Trumpeter
gives you the right set of ships' boats while Kombrig does not (Kombrig
includes the boats for a Sovremenny). Astonishingly the RBU 6000 rocket
launchers in the Trumpeter kit are attached to the sprue by a sprue gate
that starts at the rocket tubes! This make them unusable. Kombrig RBU's
and 30mm guns are ultra-sharp and in scale. Decals are wrong with
Trumpeter in having only white letters instead of the gold-ish color on
the original. And no letters for Slava. Kombrig has better decals but
also does not include 'Slava'. Radars are curved pieces of plastic in
the Trumpeter kit but that is normal in 1/700 injection molded plastic
kits. Kombrig gives you the radars in stainless steel PE. The Kombrig PE
is difficult to work with however as the steel used is too thick to
be able to give it uniform curvature. So both the Trumpeter and the
Kombrig kit need the GMM Soviet Cruiser-Destroyer set. Trumpeter's
instructions are very good, the Kombrig instructions are no more than a
starting point for research and include a serious mistake as the Top
Steer radar is drawn the wrong way.

Conclusion:
I am disappointed. For about 15 euros you get a nice weekend project
which will result into something that kind of looks like a Slava from a
large distance. Maybe my resources or wrong or I did something wrong in
measuring the kits and interpreting the pictures, but I really think
this mistake is serious enough to recommend the (60-ish euros) Kombrig
kit over the Trumpeter kit. The hull shape probably cannot be corrected
and the problem goes on in the rest of the kit. I really like the
availability of injection molded plastic kits which we didn't even dream
of 5 years ago and I do hope Trumpeter will go on releasing 1/700 Soviet
vessels. And judging from the Kirov's (which are very good) they are
able to release well researched and accurate kits. It is just that I
cannot recommend the Trumpeter Slava.

Pieter Cornelissen
Delft
The Netherlands

ok, so there goes the idea of buying a Slava....
Kuznetsov's also there, I'll buy that one and see what it comes too after that.

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The merchant shipyard

Roel. I think you can go for Trumpeter Slava anyway. I like Combrig version of Slava myself but first of all because I like resin more then plastic. But Trumpeter Slava it not bad looking kit overall and cheap.

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http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery/users/Andrey-Zhukov/user-index.html

Well, to be fair, the decal sheet also doesn't include the names Lobov, Chernova Ukraine, or Vilna Ukraina; these are *supposed* to represent post-USSR ships, IMHO.

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Sean Hert

So basically the Slava kit is good, but only received a bad report due to the comparison to the Kombrig's? I'll go for Kuznetsov this afternoon, I know the Slava's are there and very cheap, but I'll wait until someone really built that and see for myself whether it is acceptable or not. I still have to complete the Velikiy and Queen Mary 2 anyway. Have a bit of a problem with Velikiy as I don't know whether that main deck is really black or just very dark brown...

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The merchant shipyard

Yes, Chervonaya Ukraina (name from WW2 light cruiser that sunk during seige of Sevastopol) is a maiden name for Varyag.

Here is nice photo of Varyag.

http://i43.tinypic.com/wchfuo.jpg

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http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery/users/Andrey-Zhukov/user-index.html

Roel,
I did not say anything on whether or not you should buy a Trumpeter Slava. Had there not been a Kombrig Slava on the market I would have built one myself, and maybe tried to correct the hull shape. When I restarted in the hobby in 1996 I bought a Skywave Allen M. Sumner and corrected the hull (which is far worse than the Trumpeter Slava) and modernized her superstructre to a FRAM II only to find out that Jim Shirley (predecessor of JAG) had done that also and much better in resin. This was before I was using the internet so I simply did not know wbout the Jim Shirley kit being available. I'm very glad that this time it was the other way round.
The review was written, like all short reviews I write for SMML, with a simple set of standards in mind based on the notion that I want to see and accurate miniature in 1/700 (the introduction of Rajandra's list has a good discussion on standards and I basically write with that discussion in my mind) . First in decreasing amount of importance is basic hull shape, second is superstructure shape, third is small parts shape, fourth is decals and fifth is instructions. The reason I do it this way is that correcting hull shape is usually more difficult than superstructure shape etc.....
Slava and Kresta 2 are special cases for me as I have been collecting information on them for more than 20 years so maybe I'm harsher than in other cases. Still, the hull shape problem is serious. The review then comes down to the following choice: Do you want to spend about 20-30 euros for a better hull and superstructure shape?

Does anyone has close pictire of device in a circle?
It is missing in Combrig kit and I don't know if is is in Trumpeter kit either.

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http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery/users/Andrey-Zhukov/user-index.html

Looks like an unrep station, if I had to guess.

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Sean Hert

I'm not sure what the structure is either, but it can be found in the Trumpeter kit.

I think it is part #16 but photo of the sprue from the review by Sean is too small. Photo from the real ship is way more useful. I hope Roel has something.

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