So, I decided to tackle another Fairy Kikaku kit. I've got so many I might as well make a dent in the stash of them. This time I opened up their "Australia Convoy Escorts (1)" (sic) kit....
Contained in the box are hulls split into three parts and rather crude representations of guns, funnels, bridge pieces, and ventilator cowls. In the case of HMAS Bingera there is a poorly cast aft gun platform and deck piece.
The first of the two ships to reach completion is HMAS Doomba. Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry on the ship: HMAS Doomba - Wikipedia
In this photo, HMAS Doomba is the hull closer to the camera. The little patches of grey Tamiya putty mark where the seams in the hull are. The hull in the background is that of HMAS Bingera.
My attitude towards this build was to do the minimum amount of work to get the kit together and somewhat presentable. Given how crude the kit is engineered, that's about the best effort I'm willing to put in. Nonetheless, I did attempt to make decent masts. Unfortunately, the mainmast to the left turned out to be a bit too tall.
As for an instruction sheet; there is none per se. There is a drawing in 1/700 scale of the ship with vague colour call outs for painting. They call for a dark grey hull and deck tan horizontal surfaces. Looking at photographs of the ship, I took a rough guess that it was painted in some variant of a dark grey paint in the Royal Navy's list of official colours. For the horizontal surfaces, I went with a dark grey colour I had used for the decks of a 1/700 scale kit of HMS Suffolk.
All in all the kit turned out to be a somewhat cute little ship....
The ship's depth charge racks, floats, lifeboats, and davits are from a sprue of WW2 USN parts. The small guns are from a set of Imperial Chinese Navy ship parts. The ship's pennant number was added by using a fine black marker pen with a stencil cut from masking tape.
I should be finished with the 1/700 HMAS Bingera fairly soon....
