1/350 Flower class HMS Anchusa (Mirage Hobby)

[ModelFunShipyard]

Greetings fellow modellers,

after a very long hiatus in the modelling world as a hobby, rather than as my day job, I took the chance of a few days of rest to finally finish the first model I completed in five years or so. Sadly various things in life contrive to not allow me much time to spend on actually enjoying models as a hobby. However, I just completed the Mirage Hobby HMS Anchusa I picked up ten years ago at a garage sale, and I have a few words of choice. Apologies if the following will sound a bit like a rant, but hear me out.
As I said, I bought this around a decade ago for a very good price - which is the reason I bought it in the first place. I had looked at the 1/72 Flower by Revell for years, but could never bring myself to actually cough up the money for it. When I saw this for, I believe it was, like €10-15, I immediately grabbed it, thinking it would have gone well with the rest of my 1/350 fleet.
I don't know how many of you have had experience with Mirage Hobby kits before, but it was a first for me, and boy am I sorry about my choices right now. When I opened it I thought it would be a quick and easy build, after all it has few parts for a 1/350 kit, how hard can it be? WELL.
Sprues are definitely too thick. I mean, just look at the picture:

Mast alongside from the same kit for comparison

Those sprues and attachment points were my nightmare throughout the build. The large-ish parts I didn't have any problems with, but when it came to the davits, yards, and the like, several of them broke while trying to get them off the sprue. So I put the snips aside, and used an X-acto knife to gently take them off. I still broke quite a few. It has never happened to me in my modelling career before, to have such thick connection points on such delicate parts, and after trying several methods to try not to break stuff, I think I can be justified in my anger towards this kit. I don't know if other Mirage Hobby products are better or this bad, but I'm sure as hell I won't buy another. The butchered depth charge racks after clipping, you can see three out of four legs are broken, two cleanly so. And I can't stress this enough, I tried to gently get them off rather than snipping them this time - fortunately I had some spares from another 1/350 kit:

Regardless, I obviously finished the build, even if the locating holes for most of the deck fittings were so shallow that I had to wait for the glue to dry a few minutes before taking my hands off the vents, or they would just fall down; a lot of parts didn't even have a locating hole, you just had to eyeball it and hope to get it right. Call me Mr Picky if you will, but that was not a very relaxing modelling experience.
I will say, I do not enjoy painting as much as I do assembling a model, so I will be the first to tell you my painting skills are definitely sub-par. I don't think I even got the Mountbatten pink shade right, but the lighting conditions of these photos probably are a bit too bright as well. I also like to hand paint stuff even if it doesn't give the much better, and sharper, finish of an airbrush, because I find it more relaxing (I have got one, I use it for the larger models).
I had given thought about rigging it, but by how thin these mast and flag pole are, and the questionable quality of the plastic, I don't think I want to take my chances in case one or the other breaks.

It's not the best result, but I'm glad it's finished. I just wanted to get this over and done with, so I could move on to bigger and better things. Now, to thin down the stash some more!

[MartinJQuinn]

Cute!

[ModelFunShipyard]

Thanks @MartinJQuinn, one of the reasons I wanted a Flower in the collection!