MartinJQuinn wrote:
Nice work. They were fine looking ships.
Thank you, they were indeed.
pascalemod wrote:
Came out beautifully, very smart looking ship. The green lower hull makes them looks very unique!
Do you have a build thread?
Thank you! Sadly, I didn't document this one.
pascalemod wrote:
I see that it is OOB but if you went all in, would you change anything except radar?
Well, apparently the WEM aftermarket is supposed to be for all three ships - which I had not known.
I would have to get my references out to track the specific dates of radar installation - they were installed from mid-1942 onwards. This means that the fishbone camouflage patterns as well as the as-commissioned configuration won't need radar.
These 1/700 kits come with a small PE fret that has the stern crane and some funnel fittings. The only really critical omission imho is that lack of a catapult. Here is a grainy picture of it from HobbySearch:
I really like the Shipyard Works
Roma upgrade set - I have one for my 1/700
Roma. Plenty of differences between superstructures. Shapes of the platforms, configuration of equipment, as well as the famously reconfigured bridge windows. Lots of pieces that you would have to leave on the fret.
Which is why I'd probably just bite the bullet and see if I could find a WEM set at a good price. This won't happen for a while - as all my other kits of this class, bar the aforementioned
Roma, are in 1/350. I don't have
Vittorio Veneto in 1/700, so I might conceivably get the WEM set if I get that kit to do a late war 'Allied' scheme with the grey rectangle over the belt (the only scheme I've not got a kit allocated towards).
Although, truth be told, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I'd invest in better flags (Trumpeter for some reason doesn't bother with proper Italian naval flags for any of its RM offerings...) and I need to find a rigging solution that is more delicate and better suited to running grounding lines for aerials. I typically use silk thread for my ships, but the gauge is a bit big for this scale, so I went down to a very fine thread used for tying fishing lures. Maybe time to experiment with Lycra.