HMS Alliance
Fool that I am I went and bought the A Class submarine HMS Alliance as I had already made the other British submarines that are available in the series. 2 of them were very good and 2 mediocre but with work are also nice kits.
Work started by removing the printing scaffolding and reprofiling the rear hydroplanes. At this point I was contemplating how to display the model! I had toyed with the idea of trying to put it in a display case as if it was under water. Discarded that idea as it's a biggish boat to experiment with. Then as I was looking on the internet and saw how the real boat is displayed so decided on that. That meant opening 2 doors in the side of the boat and making 2 entry/exit gantry's. Once these doors were opened, I added a small amount of internal detail using some of the printing waste and milliput and 2 doors made for fitting later in the build.
<
<
<
Prior to joining the hull sections, I added some building plastic piping to the hull mid-section of the boat to aid/strengthen the hull sections when joined.
<
Before joining the hull sections, I set about refining the details on each section. Starting at the bows, as supplied the bow is far too blunt so needed to be sanded to a sharper profile also there is no evidence of the bow torpedo tubes so started there.
<
There are some really deep trenches on the hull but more particularly on the conning tower/fin. These were filled using car body filler before adding some panel line detail.
<
<
<
Hull sections were now joined and blended together. There are no bilge keel strakes in the kit, so these had to be added. I scripted deep lines on the hull in the position of the strakes to give a good strong joint for the Pasti-card I was using for the stakes.
<
There are extra vents on the top of the saddle tanks, so shallow holes drilled and detail disks fitted into the holes.
<
The fin was now tackled. From photos it looks like the top of the fin has been waterproofed (why would you want to waterproof a submarine!!!!!) so have included that into my build. It appears that 4 clear panels and 1 ply-wood cover have been added. There is a bulge on the rear of the fin, so this was added using car filler again and handrail stanchions added.
<
The base was made using MDF and polystyrene foam using photos on the internet. Entry and exit gantries and handrails constructed from “Plastruct” products. (Not prototypical but effective as I'm not building an exact copy)
<
Photos on the internet show I can have a field day with weathering so have tried to make it look well weathered.
.
<
<
Hope you like my latest British submarine as I've certainly enjoyed making this series of submarines, but I am now waiting to get my teeth into my favourite British boat the new NeOmega P2000 “Archer” Class patrol boat.
The fun is still continuing