VVS modelling

There’s nothing worse to me than some incident happening when you are in the final stages of finishing the model. And that’s exactly what happened with my Cole. As I was giving it the final Gloss Coat of Gunze Mr. Color Super Clear, the white decal for the helicopter pad all whirled up. The decal literally melted in contact with the lacquer, something that hasn’t happened to me before. I find it even more strange, that other decals were not affected.

The damage

I tried solving it as much as possible by carefully painting the markings using white and deck grey. The result isn’t stellar, but under a coat of weathering doesn’t look half as bad.

Anyhow, the model is now more or less finished. What remains to be done is finish the water display base.

Mainly finished with painting and decaling (helipad and bow white decals were too wide!) it was time to start with the procedure I fear the most – rigging and setting up the fences.

Using Uschi van der Rosten 0.02mm rigging wire, some Loctite gel superglue, tweezers, optivisor, 3rd hand tool and lots of patience and time, I’ve finished the rigging. I also set up a few fences – below the front CIWS, around the antennas on rear stack and helipad mesh fence.

Work continues at slow pace. As you can see on the bottom photos, the plastic bits and pieces are starting to get the shape of the ship now. The more I look at this model, the more mistakes, or better yet omissions I see, that were made by Cyberhobby when designing this kit. One of them is the missing bow anchor – luckily there’s a couple on Flyhawk’s PE fret, so I just drilled the hole in the bow and installed one. Installing miniature PE pieces is troublesome but not as much as handling the kit – a few have been lost to carpet monster already – luckily none are too noticeable. I am no expert on ship building so I’ve picked up the paints according to the photos. While I am quite satisfied with the hull colour of choice, the deck one proved more tricky. On photos, it changes from very pale grey to quite a dark one, depending on lightning situation. I’ve gone for a lighter shade and then darkening it a bit with oil colours and at the same time also adding some shades to the raised objects and I quite like the end result. Next step will be decals, followed by more of the shading, detail painting and a bit of weathering.

Ok, with Ye-150 done, it’s time to jump back on the USS Cole! Not literally, of course 🙂

CyberHobby forgot to add the three vertical beams on the hull – using 0.3mm sheet styrene, I cut three thin rods to represent them… Not entirely correct (they should be rounded), but better than nothing.

Quite some time went into building the ship mast. Unfortunately I am not entirely satisfied with the result (some bent pieces), but unless looking at it from really close, it looks quite good. I will probably add additional railing to it, when painted.

Sideview – as I write this, the ship rests painted in primer and I really look forward to painting her.

Every once in a while, I try myself with something out of my comfort zone in all aspects of my life. Modelling is no exception. While I have built a few modern submarines in the past few years, the last and only ship I’ve built was Italeri’s 1:700 HMS Hood and that was some 20 years ago.

A couple of years ago, I got a good deal on Cyberhobby 1:700 USS Cole/Typhoon SSBN combo and to complicate things even further, I’ve bought a photoetched set of Flyhawk models. Working with such tiny PE parts in 1:700 will certainly present a challenge.

USS Cole (DDG-67) is an Aegis equipped guided-missile destroyer named after a Marine sergeant who was killed during the battle of Iwo Jima. The ship was delivered to the US Navy in 1996 and became worldwide famous just 4 years later. On 12 October 2000, Al-Qaeda executed suicide attack on USS Cole in the Aden port, Yemen, killing 17 soldiers and injuring 29 more. After repairs, the ship was brought back into service in 2003.

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Eastern Atlantic (Sep. 14, 2000) — The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Cole (DDG 67) underway to the Mediterranean Sea, approximately one month before being attacked by a terrorist-suicide mission in the early morning hours of October 12th, 2000, while refueling in the port city of Aden, Yemen. U.S. Navy Photo (RELEASED)

At first look, Cyberhobby kit looks like a nice representation of the real deal, especially considering the scale. I am no expert in ships so I cannot vouch for its accuracy though, but on first look, it looks the part. I will point out the things I notice, as we go along.

First step was to make the damaged hull – sanding the inside of the hull to thin it as much as possible, then cutting out a piece and bending the remaining parts inward.

A piece of plasticard was used to create inner wall.

Thin copper and solder wire of different diameters was used to recreate the installations, seen on photos.

Side view of the “damage”

And the PE fun has begun!