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Kuznetsov and Sovremenny

The Project…

On starting this project, I decided three things, to open up the hangers doors and detail the inside hangers. Of course information is very sketchy, as it is in all Russian ships, and I got bits of information from here and there including YouTube. Second this carrier would look much more impressive accompanied by another vessel and I chose a Sovremenny class destroyer. Finally, a lighting system had to be fashioned out for both vessels. The ships had to look in a very busy situation.

It’s very unusual on a Russian carrier but imagination was paramount in this build to achieve the result I wanted.

Construction… I first started on the hangars. Fretwork was first built to support the said hangars which of course were totally scratchbuilt out of plastic card, plastic strip, different gauges of telephone wire and many and I mean many odd minute components from spent PC Motherboards, which come in very handy. Once painted and weathered and birds put into place, the lighting system was installed using minute 12volt bulbs with a very much lower DC current. All equipment near aircraft was scratchbuilt. L’ arsenal figures were used. Don’t know how many!

The hull was sanded clean. Trunking and piping as well as walkways and other detail were scratchbuilt. This was painted in both enamels and acrylic paint using the sponge method to simulate peeled paint. It was weathered in oils and pastels. Pictures available shows the paintwork of this carrier in a very dilapidated state

Next there was the island which was one big headache. Again this was sanded clean and apart from using the white ensign photoetch set a lot of detail was added to it which included aerial masts walkways, enhanced radar equipment and much more. This was painted, wired and weathered before fixing it to the top deck as seen in picture.

The top deck was a nightmare. It was painted in acrylics reason being to take the rough punishment in weathering, and after much grinding of my teeth, prayers, cursing silently in my head this was attached to the hull in three different pieces. The fit was atrocious. Gaps or shall I say troughs were filled with putty and sanded and retouched accordingly to blend in with the already painted deck. This was again weathered with oils diluted with white spirit to simulate the weathered and beaten look. The decals were another nightmare….they fell to bits and it used to take me a solid hour to fit the fragmented pieces of a single landing roundel together.

Patience was a must !!!! Mr Trumpeter’s name came up a few times during all this.

Next, another nightmare was attaching the island to the top deck, which included connecting the wiring system with an already prepared terminal. This was only achieved with a tenacious effort….handling the whole component from the radar dome, helped by my wife to get the thing in place. There were moments when I was going to scrap the whole project.

The part I love most is putting the birds, equipment and Personnel in place which will make the model look alive. The Kuznetsov in its better days had 2 squadrons of SU-33’s, Flanker-D, 5 Frogfoots, SU-25’s, and quite a few KA-25, Hormone, Choppers. A visiting squadron of assault KA-29, Helix-B, choppers was included to make the carrier look more busy and colorful. All artwork on the aircraft tails was hand painted and copies made out on transparent decal film. Canopies were sawed and placed in an open position including pilots. One SU-33 was opened up for more realism. All ordnance was scratchbuilt as well as all other equipment on deck. The ship’s defense system and radar equipment which was detailed was put into place.

Work was then started on the destroyer which was also further detailed on top of the Photoetch set available for the kit. This was very straightforward and most of the work incurred was on the paintwork and weathering of the vessel. These were then placed together on a seascape base fashioned out of tissue paper and a creamy mixture of pollyfilla and white glue. It was painted in household paint using the wet on wet system.

The project took about a year to complete, the carrier is not an easy kit to build, apart from being enormous, and there were many deficiencies in the kit which had to be sometimes rebuilt from scratch. But it was worth it, because the end result is what I really wanted.