Finally received my North Star MO-4 patrol boat. Took about 2 months. Wish I could say it was well worth the wait, but I'll let you decide: The kit came in a small slightly flimsy box with a CAD illustration on the cover: Instructions are large and un-cluttered. Now for the parts: They seem to be made (if not by North Star themselves) by some other Eastern European country. Forget about modern tech, and slide-molding. It resembles 60's or 70's standards: Weapons and some small parts. For some reason, the manufacturer decided to join the main guns . Some clean-up on the small parts: Notice the sprue gates extend into and onto the parts themselves - extra clean up. And close-up of weapons. A bit soft detail and conjoined guns! More parts. The ammo (?) boxes are not molded as a box, but divided diagonally! Why?? Deck detail. Not bad, but maybe a little soft: The deck and hull. The hull is not water-lined: The portholes look a little large...but not sure. The only resin parts - big difference in quality. And photo-etch: And decals for several boats: Hmmm...looks like Photo Bucket lost that image. Anyway, they are just white numbers for several boats. And the obligatory base: All in all, this could have been a better kit, if they had had a better styrene injection company. And the weapons should have been resin cast. North Star can do these much better in resin. Some (a lot of) clean-up required, and some TLC, could result in a nice model.

Glad to hear you got this one Biggs! Thank you for the initial assessment and pictures! I think I would agree that in this day and age, not o mention the 3D and resins productions NS can do, that there looks to be a few downsides to this. But I do feel you are correct, in that it has potential to buildup into a fine looking display! I look forward to seeing what you can make of it!! Enjoy!

Already started it after taking pics. It's taking a lot of clean-up and trimming, and putty for seamless fits. The weapons (12.5 mm MG, and 45mm (??) gun are slightly off register and extremely fragile. I'm replacing the gun barrels on the heavier guns with lengths of stretched sprue. I can foresee many pieces being discarded for scratched parts.

I'm rooting for you my friend!

You have my support, as well as the support of the workers. I love a good soviet ship but this North Star looks challenging (if not a bit frustrating). Желаю удачи!! Bryan

I tossed out the horrible little lumps that were supposed to be depth charges, and replaced them with short pieces of Evergreen styrene rod, then glued on the PE end pieces. More tedious are items that look like oil/fuel drums. They are in 2 halves - the small pieces that have sprue gates extending over the mating surfaces. Couldn't just toss these as they do have some detail. So...cut, file, and sand, then carefully align the 2 halves. When they're good and dry, I'll do final clean-up (hope I don't lose any as they are quite small) and add the PE end cap. Pity North Star didn't make this boat in 1/144 - the same scale as Revell/ICM U-Boat type II. The larger scale would probably also allow better detail and definition on the weapons and other small parts. These boats had some lively duels in the Black Sea. That would make an interesting naval dio.

"divided diagonally": By doing this you can get a 90 degree angle on the box. Doing the boxes as single piece would require "fiddling" with the angles since a box with 90 degree angles will not come out of the mold. If the "top" of the box is furthest away from the sprue gates then the sides going down from the "top" to the "bottom" of the box will not be parallell to each other, the box will have to be wider at the bottom, sort of like a truncated pyramid with very very steep sides but never vertical. / Robin

Funny...lots of other manufacturers manage box shapes without any taper, of course, maybe it's because they use this "new technique" called slide-moulding!

Yup, you need to get the parts out of the molds in one way or another (flexible molds, parts with sufficient release angles or multi part molds). Pick up any sprue from any manufacturer and take a real close look, with magnifiers or whatever is needed, and you will be able to determine which method they used. / Robin