1/350 Kirov (Trumpeter Modified)

[Charles Landrum]

I had the fortune of visiting Otlichnyy when she made her historic visit to Norfolk, Virginia in 1989. The black on the deck is a non-slip coating applied over the red painted deck. It is sticky like tar and gives the sailor traction even when wet. often it is not evenly applied and a red stripe along a bulkhead is left uncoated. I understand that traditional rough non-slip surfaces like those on US ships which are epoxy will crack and flake up in the extreme conditions found in Northern Russia.

As for paint fading in a marine environment UV and salt both have an effect causing the paint to bleach out (lighten) with time. The paint also becomes flat, loosing its sheen.

Hope this helps.

[Sauragnmon]

That would explain why the dark decks are only ever seen on the weather deck of the ship - rarely does the water get up above those decks, so the antiskid would be extraneous at that point. It doesn't appear to be a constantly used coating either, or possibly paint is applied over it to give it some measure of protection from wear. Or else, it has a limited service life and isn't applied on ships that aren't being deployed? If it's sticky like tar, I would imagine it wears rather quickly under salt and boots, especially if not applied evenly, though the fact that it has that kind of tacky nature would mean the coarse salt residue would equally get stuck or ground into it, furthering the traction on the deck, at least until the whole thing wears off from too much concentration.

Since salt does affect paint wear, one is left to wonder if that's not the sign far more than UV, of the weathering difference in the paint of the Russian Fleet's ships. The darkness of that grey could well be potentially as bad for fading out from salt wear as some other paints that have been used.

Just a few postulations.

[carr]

..

[GTDEATH13]

Are you going to add the supports to the aft end of the housing? Because if you intend to you have to move it even further back in order ti allign it with the lower deck...

I hate Trumpy's clear parts for the supestructure... My Udaloy has them and they

[carr]

..

[Timmy C]

I'm not sure why they don't just the mold the windows open - they're certainly capable of it, as indicated in their Sovremenny kits.

[carr]

..

[Sauragnmon]

I couldn't help but notice the inside lip on the breakwater, interestingly enough. The detailing you added is, as always for your work, phenomenal man. Absolutely inspiring to see all the work you're doing on this Kirov.

[carr]

..

[Charles Landrum]

Bob, Glad you are resuming your work on Kirov - it is a great in-progress build and you workmanship is first rate. I asked for and received the 1/350 Kirov for Christmas and have the GMM PE set. First I have to finish Akagi though.

As a retired US Naval Officer I offer one bit of terminology for you. The stopper is the assembly that holds the anchor chain for quick release, maintenance, or added safety. The quick release hook at the end is the Pelican Hook (looks like a pelican beak). In the US Navy two stoppers hold the chain, the housing stopper closer to the windlass and the riding stopper near the hawse pipe. One quick way to lower an anchor is to remove the housing stopper, release the brake on the windlass, and put all the weight on the riding stopper. A sailor than takes a sledge hammer and knocks open the pelican hook at the bail assembly allowing the anchor to fall and the chain to run free. On a CVN this is quite exciting!

keep up the good work

[Thomas E. Johnson]

Great work!

If the Trumpeter kit is this inaccurate, I will probably not bother building one.

[carr]

..

[carr]

..

[Charles Landrum]

Bob,

I don't know if ship modelers are not as exacting as aircraft modelers, we just don't see the availability of kits like the aircraft guys, so we are more accepting. Even the most critically acclaimed ship kits are a trade off between detail and "pattern making". I am thrilled to see the type of kits available these days. Assuming that most pattern makers do not have perfect information, I understand that there will be shortcuts or conjectures. I never would have believed that anyone would have released a Kirov for instance. I for one am willing to correct missing or incorrect detail. My USS Hayler DD-997) (still unfinished) has many corrections including omitted waveguides for instance. I ended up adding a lot of detail to the Dragon USS Buchanan (DD-484) as well. So I am in your camp and derive great satisfaction from adding the missing or incorrect detail. The only unbuildable kits are the ones where a superior alternative is available. Now enough chatting, I want to see progress on that Kirov of yours!

ATVB,

Charles

[Neptune]

It depends on what you need. I built my Peter the Great pretty much out of the box, although I had plenty of pictures and a good eye for detail , I just made a couple minor modifications and that's what it was.
An aircraft is easy enough, 15 odd meters of steel with a fairly simple and predicatable shape. A ship is just totally different, often over 100m of steel with fire hydrants, hoses, bollards, ballast and fuel tank vents, overlfow trays etc. All nicely hidden behind bulwarks and superstructures. That just means you need a huge amount of pictures and plans to make it accurate (or visited/worked on it yourselves). Because even plans, including builder's plans, may be different from the real thing. Airplanes are quite similar all together, they roll in large numbers out of the factory of a relatively short period of time, while ships, even sisterships are often built over longer time spans and hence with a lot of difference among the sisters. That means that pictures of one ship can often not be used to model her sister or with great caution... Practically all your pictures, all around the ship, should be of that same ship at the same period of time, simply impossible, certainly in the past, when foreign Navy visits were much less common than nowadays.
For a company in order to make a good price and profit, they can not afford to make for every seperate Kirov a different mold, although in fact, necessary to make them accurate.
Even in 1/100 I'm not as demanding as Bob is for his 1/700 Kirov, although on my gas carriers I am certainly as critical, the availability of more reference material on these also causes that.
I found the Trumpeter Kirov quite ok to build out of the box. I only built the forward guidance radar and some hatches from scratch. The rest came out pretty nicely. And for a good price.
If you are really critical, it's best to start scratch building.

Bob, great job, as always. I admire your hard work, you'll definitely have the most accurate Kirov of all !!! You have quite some skill, I'm already curious about your next project!

[carr]

..

[Neptune]

Agreed, partially at least.

First of all, I forgot that you're building in 1/350, I built it in 1/700, hence it cost a lot less than yours.
Secondly, I think the 1/350 version came after the 1/700 one, not sure, but if they just up scaled it, then of course there will be more inaccuracies.

However, one thing you have to take in account. Time frame. These kits are already some years old now. Don't forget that those pictures you can so easily get, are coming from people like me, collectors who go in certain places where google doesn't go. I've also shown you the good source, where ex-Soviet people share their pics, not a place where google will lead you either. And even in those places, up till only few years ago, they didn't share such pictures either.
Back when those kits were coming out, a google search on Kirov brought you maybe 1 or 2 good pictures and that was about it. Afterwards the forums started booming, Chinese started stealing pics from everywhere and placing them on their sites in the open and that's how Google gives them so easily now. Try to find a dry dock picture of an Udaloy, up till only two years ago, it was practically inexistent, now a couple are around and so people start copying it around etc.
Main point is, back when they made the kit, they probably didn't have those pics around, not even with a thorough search, and when you have to work from a few sketchy pics it's a lot more difficult to get things right.

That of course, and the main thing that Trumpeter prefers volume over quality, they'd rather pump out 30 different kits, USN, RN, whatever, in lower quality than make one good model a year. Very easy, everybody who was even moderately attracted to a Kirov bought their Kirov, accurate or not, by cutting development time, they could also create a Slava, in the same time as a normal company would pump out a high quality Kirov, that Slava too, was sold many times, to anybody who was remotely interested in Russian ships. So practically they weren't losing any customers by lower quality, by the time anybody wanted to compare the qualities of different kits, they already sold many... Same counts for everything that followed, I guess that's their policy. And in areas where kits are already available, like a battleships which Tamiya also has, they just sell it much cheaper, because the time they invested is again much less than other companies.
It's only after a while that their reputation will start to work against them, and even then, only in limited form by the people who really care about accuracy...

One of the reasons why I'm just scratchbuilding whatever I want to whatever amount of detail I want (unfortunately not yet up to the quality standard in finish that I'd want ).

[carr]

..

[Christian Bruer]

Hi Bob,

great job on the forward deck

[carr]

..