1/350 Marshal Shaposhnikov
Hi everybody,
I was able to get some extra time this week so I got a lot more done than I thought I could. The entire superstructure assembly is finished except for the second Eye Bowl, which still needs its dish.
Here is one of the finished deck guns. I wanted to attempt to add climbing rungs, but my idea didn't work very well, so I just resorted to adding ladders for all the climbing areas.
And here is the other side of the gun. For some reason, Posh only uses 3 of the four antenna mounts in the area behind this gun. Some others, use all four mounts. Posh doesn't have the delicate looking wire antenna on top of the tower, instead there's a simple cylinder fixture. Also, while some have a railing around this deck, Posh doesn't. The only stars provided in the kit are used on the helicopter so the star on the bridge is from the decals for the Kuznetsov carrier.
This is how the bridge has turned out. It seems weird, but Posh doesn't have any railing around the front cross sword. I guess it's ok to fall off the roof of the bridge, just don't fall onto the hanger deck.
The blue and white shield is a guess on my part. I couldn't see the real one clearly on any of the photos.
The bird and anchors symbol is my first attempt at making my own decals. It's a little over sized, and too dark, but I wanted to be able to at least see some of the details, and printing it on a clear backing, muted the colors a lot.
I can't tell how many of the 8 antenna mounts in this area is used by Posh, so I decided that buzy is better, and used all 8.
Pictures seem to show that the small tower in between the foremast and the kite screech tower, is no longer there. However, it was there in the time frame I'm trying to represent, so I put it on. It will remain empty though, because from what I can tell, Posh never got any electronics equipped on that tower. That's probably why the tower was eventually removed.
Lastly, you can see my slightly over sized communication dish on top of the foremast.
I've gone ahead and finished the rigging. I really wanted to try their "wire cylinder" style rigging, but couldn't come up with anything that was round and that looked delicate enough. So I got all 6 wires that are needed for it, but they are just in straight lines and joined at the center. Then 6 more go from there and join down at the deck area. I've also added some little flags to spice things up a bit and give the ship some character. Although I probably left a few out so they probably aren't correct.
I was worried but it looks like the deadline wont be a problem after all.
Thanks for looking,
Dan.