Help with my Christmas list

[Mead93]

I’ve recently become fairly interested in ship building and while I love the larger fleet battleships they are outside of my budget right now until I decide I actually like ship building and can be a bit successful with it.

I recently bought the DE USS England kit and plan to build it in the new year as my first ship adding a WEM PE set.

I’ve also had my eye on the trumpeter Graf spee which I will add for sure. I am looking to tackle ships in baby steps however and the plan is to build the England in the new year and then befor moving up to the Spee build something of intermediate size. For this I am looking at getting a destroyer. So far I have been looking at the DKM Z30 and Z39 offerings from trumpeter and dragon respectively, and the IJN Kagero from Tamiya. I also looked at the HCMS Huron/ HMS Zulu but this appears to not be as nice if a kit

However, being new to ships I’m sure I’m missing some cool destroyers that could be build.

[RDT1953]

Although it is currently un finished I started the Dragon Buchanan a few years back and it is a very nice kit .
I also have the Tamiya Kagero , again very nice and I have gobs of aftermarket stuff for both .

[Canmedic]

Assuming the Huron/Zulu is the same base kit as Eskimo, you may want to take a peek at this

Tribal class HMS Cossack 1/350

After a long, long break caused by real life i am back to shipbuilding. I am increasingly interested in the smaller craft from destroyers down. I have still two half-finished “Flowers” on the slipway… For a long time i wanted to start my tribal class “Eskimo” but the errors in the kit (bow shape, boats, Pom Pom) kept me from doing so. After the demise of WEM i found it a bit difficult to get the necessary parts and scratchbuilding a quadruple Pom Pom sounds not like fun for me. So i will start…

Not sure where you’re looking to land on the accuracy scale, but @Shanghaied put a pile of work into this.

[Mead93]

Yeah I had seen this thread and review somewhere that pointed out the issues, and that what steered me away from those kits

[Mead93]

The Buchanan looks to be a solid option!

[Mead93]

Also considering the Academy USS Indianapolis if anyone had thoughts about that kit

[d6mst0]

I just finished the HMS Zulu and it is a fine kit, no fit issues and was easy to modify in its configuration when she was sunk.

Mark

[Biggles50]

Just send me Fore Hobby’s 1/72 S-38. Thanks in advance. Oh…and Merry Xmas!

[McRunty]

@Mead93

For this I am looking at getting a destroyer.

My answer to this is always the same. For armour, Tamiyas M-41 is a perfect entry level vehicle. For ships, Tamiya’s USS Fletcher is a perfect entry level ship. Its a good size, goes together well. Can be modeled as any number of different ships (so different camo’s are available) and it has a good selection of Photo Etch kits available to match different skill levels and wallet capacities. You really cant go wrong with her.

@d6mst0

I just finished the HMS Zulu and it is a fine kit, no fit issues and was easy to modify in its configuration when she was sunk.

If I had to build her again, I would honestly leave the sheer issue on the bow alone. From a distance, the few degrees of missing rise are not that noticeable and the work needed isn’t worth it. That’s just me and I know its a huge deal breaker for a lot of people.

The most egregious issues for me are the ships boats, the Pom-Pom and the screws. Its not like Trumpeter doesn’t have quad pom-poms since they are found on their HMS Roberts kit. Also how they screwed up the screws (hehe) is beyond me. The good news is that fixing these issues (unlike the bow) only requires an application of $$$ to fix