ModelWarships reveiw

Vol. 2 - Issue 1 Winter 2015

Reviewed April 2016
by Steve Wiper

In this issue, covering many aspects of model assembly and modifcation, Scale Modeling Quarterly (SMQ) looks at a number of different topics, including a tour of a military history museum, the contents of the magazine listed on page 5.

This magazine starts off with a quick tour of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, located adjacent to the USMC base at Quantico, Virginia, giving the reader a quick tour of the museum and it's contents. That is something we all ask about. "Hey, how is that museum, I have been wanting to go there and check it out ?" Well, now you know a little more !

While This website's focus is obviously on warships, modeling and history, there are a couple of things in this magazine that are related, directly and indirectly. One of the indirect topics is the article on an armor subject. We all know that armor, especially tanks, are just smaller battleships, right ? Like myself, a warship enthusiast, many of us also have an interest in tanks, or land battleships ! This article caught my eye, not only because I have always thought of the Russian T-34/85 to be quite possibly the all-round best tank of the Second World War, but also due to this build's using a large amount of aftermarket items to finish the project. Great photos really give us a look at the progression of the build, as well as some fantastic weathering tips. As the article itself states, it is a nice distraction from the builds we are usually involved in at the moment.

click images to enlarge

The primary interest to this website provided by this issue of SMQ, was the article on building the pre-Dreadnought era US Navy battleship USS Virginia BB-13, from the "Great White Fleet" era in 1/700 scale from a Niko Model of Poland resin kit. Niko Models has been around for some time now and they produce a good quality multi-media model kit. This article walks one through the construction process with some very good photography. With resin, or multi-media kits, there are different methods of construction from the standard plastic kits most of us are familiar with. Those are pointed out in both the text and photos. The author of the article has pointed out several techniques for constructing such a kit, using different types of glue and paints. The application of photo-etch parts is also covered in this article.

The only part of this article that this author had a small problem with was in the construction of the seascape base. I personally did not care for the end result, but that is merely a preference on my part.

CONCLUSIONS

Also spotted a small flyer for ModelWarships.com at the end of the article !

There are several aircraft related articles in this issue as well. The build on the US Marine AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter was interesting in that the aircraft was painted in Parade Dress colors. An article about weathering sun faded aircraft paint surfaces offers some interesting results for the ultimate in model presentation of museum aircraft. And, the last aircraft related article was a quick build of USNs F-18 Hornet in the "Blue Angles" configuration.

All in all, I like this magazine, not just for the high quality heavy paper it is printed on, but for the fantastic variety of topics and extensive builds included in each issue. Highly recommended.

Thank you to the folks at "Scale Hobby Press" for providing the review sample. Check out Hobby Scale Press website for more details.