The Ship Model Forum

Hi All,

Being a fisherman as well as a modeler has some strange side effects at times. I like to keep abreast of all things fishy that may relate to my other hobby, I fish out at Lakes Mead and Mojave here in Las Vegas and usually once or twice a month will venture out to the left coast for some fun on the high seas. As a result of all this frivolity I take the E Mail Monthly NOAA magazine that lists all the current and upcoming regs and rules that they are considering or have enacted to preserve our fish stocks. I have discovered that they have a pretty good little fleet of vessels that are designed to explore, document and map our coastal waters that all of us taxpayers have invested in. If you would like to take a break from things military in your ship building routine you might slide over and check out some of them. They currently have designs that go as far back as the 1950s' all the way up to the most modern and advanced vessles afloat. They recently laid down the keel of their newest vessel the "Picses", part of a group of four similar ships.

http://www.moc.noaa.gov/

You can click on the individual thumbnails of the ships and it takes you to a ship specific webpage where you can find all sorts of information as well as PDF's with full specs on each. The next time you would like to whip up something uncommon, give it a shot.

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Jay Massey
treadhead1952
Las Vegas, NV

NOAA vessels have been "quiet workhorses" and the research being done is potentially of great benefit. Tho I am not a "modern-day" modeler, I do think several NOAA ships would be of interest, at least as interesting as many USCG vessels.

I hope this post gets some more attention!

Thanks for the comments Dan. While Revell and few other makers have brought out some civilian vessels, for the most part I think the military builds catch more attention from the history aspect, where the workhorses are less attention getters. They just sorta quietly plug along doing their day to day jobs.

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Jay Massey
treadhead1952
Las Vegas, NV

Hi Jay,

Your posts caught my eye as my father was a commissioned officer in the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which was later renamed the National Ocean Survey and incorporated into NOAA. If you have not yet found them, I thought you might be interested in these pages:

http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/ships/shind1.htm

They contain hundreds of photos of NOAA ships past and present.

One rather interesting ship that my father served on in the late 1950’s was the Pioneer, the former Navy USS Mobjack, a Barnegat class WW2 pt boat tender. I have the 1/350 ISW kit of the Mackinac, which I will someday convert to the Pioneer.

http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/historic/c ... eb0235.jpg

My dad was a modeler and got me started in the hobby. He told me that in 1960, when the Surveyor ( a ship which he later commanded) was being built, that Revell had actually expressed some interest in producing a model of her, but that unfortunately never happened.

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Steve Sobieralski
Tampa Bay Ship Model Society

Hi Steve,

Thanks for adding those great links to the collection.

The more information that can be found will prove helpful to one and all when researching a build of one of these remarkable ships. Just looking through some of the photos taken by crewmembers while underway shows the rough conditions that these little vessels undergo while performing their tasks that serve us all.

Good luck with your build project and I look forward to seeing it come alive.

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Jay Massey
treadhead1952
Las Vegas, NV

They all look pretty modern, much like our Navy vessel BNS Belgica.
Would indeed make a fine subject!!! But I guess it's indeed true that such vessels get much less attention, just like minehunters in fact...

I do think there would be a market for some real merchant vessels, like tankers etc. Just due to their sheer size and relative unknownness. There is however none such kit on the market except for the rather crude IMEX container and RoRo vessels.

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The merchant shipyard

Hi- Now I know she,s not NOAA but I came across a model that bears mentioning here.The maker is HASEGAWA.The ship is 1/350 and is the antarctic research ship SOYA.I mention her for three reasons .One,she comes in two kit versions,Two she is interesting looking and three it is easily convertible to some of NOAAs older(NO LONGER IN SERVICE)combination Icebreaker/research ships. The actual ship was built for the RUSSIANS prior to the outbreak of WW2. They didn,t get her and the ship survived WW2 to become a handy base to convert for research purpose.I saw the actual ship in 1959 in SASEBO, in a civilian yard.Remember now she was built in 1938-39!! she is an attractive little model. give it a look see. commodore4

While NOAA has not yet made it to production scale model releases, several Japanese research vessels have been released in kit form. In addition to the 1:350 Soya models referenced in an earlier post, there are some kits of note in 1:700 and 1:450 scale as well.

Seals Models makes two 1:700 scale models of Soya. I am building the plastic version; there is a second kit, more expensive, that might be resin cast or include PE. Beautifully made kit; the level of molding detail is impressive. Will bring some nice color to a shelf full of greys: http://www.hlj.com/product/INTSMP-06N

Interallied makes the Japanese Antarctic research vessel Shirase, which I have on order via Hobby Link Japan. This vessel served JMSDF research purposes from 1981 to 2008. A successor ship has the same name. Quick description of the kit and photo here: http://www.hlj.com/product/INTSMP-09. There are several versions of this kit as well.

Nichimo apparently makes a 1:450 scale version of the Shirase, according a a quick search at HLJ.

This is obviously far from the most active Calling All Ship Fans category, it's been nine years since the last post and almost 14 years since I made my single post. My reason for a second post so many years later is a discovery I recently made on the internet (amazing what you find sometimes) that I thought I would share in case anyone, besides me, might be interested.

This is a link to a downloadable PDF entitled The New Surveyor:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... T20hP3qm3Q

It was written in 1960 by Admiral H Arnold Karo, then director of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey (which became part of NOAA in 1968), to celebrate the commissioning of the latest addition to the Coast Survey's fleet, the USC&GSS Surveyor. The PDF contains a very detailed technical description of the ship and her capabilities, but the real reason I am posting this is that it also includes what appears to be a very workable set of plans for the ship as built. These include an outboard profile, inboard profile and all deck plans. Unfortunately there are no hull lines or sections, but some extrapolation should make construction of a fairly accurate model hull possible.

As I wrote in my post back in 2006 my father was a commissioned officer in the C&GS/NOAA, and he commanded the Surveyor 1965-67, so there is a very personal connection for me and I am contemplating starting a 1/192 scratch-built model in the very near future.

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Steve Sobieralski
Tampa Bay Ship Model Society

Tks Steve for the link. Looks like good gouge if & when I ever decide to venture into the realm of NOAA vsls. I'm slowly advancing towards more scratch built components in my models and always looking for something different. I try to stick with non-naval vessels. I'm currently converting an old Revell Russian Spy Ship/North Seas Trawler into a 1960s era soviet Okean class AGI. A great project while practicing my social distancing skills.

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Joe
An Old, Retired Coastie!