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Picked one of these up a couple of weeks ago and have been working on it as time permits. Fit so far has been pretty nice, detail is a wee bit inconsistant; crisp on the top and somewhat soft on the sides where the limber holes are. Hatches, such as for the torpedo tube doors are grossly overdone in my opinion, I'll be using them as templates to scribe lines before sanding down. There is no attempt to mold any of the tiles or some of the visible panel lines, such as around the escape pod.
It certainly LOOKS like an Akula, but there are some errors I can see.
The sail on the real thing has a thicker "trailing edge" at the top than at the bottom; it gets sharper as if nears the hull. The Alanger kit has a constant diameter. Not sure of an easy way to fix that. There is no line
The area aft of this looks like it has too much "turtle back" to me; there are parts that are too angled. I think some time with a sanding stick or file will fix it if you're willing to re-add the detail you erase.
The creeper motors are represented differently than what we've seen in pictures and plans of similar systems on other classes. In the Alanger kit the doors open and a pod with an un-shrouded prop extends down (sort of like an Azipod); what I've seen suggests a ducted prop that is mounted to the door itself.
There are some dimensional differences between it and the Blue Water Navy/ Yankee Modelworks resin kit, but as I lack official plans I don't know which is more accurate.
I'm having to spend some time on the hull joints but it's entirely my fault; I glued it with tons of tube cement as for some reason I seem to always have problems with splitting hulls, but I wasn't watching myself in the "hold it just right" phase and I gave it an underbite on the bow and a slight mis-match otherwise on the side joints.
It certainly LOOKS like an Akula, but there are some errors I can see.
The sail on the real thing has a thicker "trailing edge" at the top than at the bottom; it gets sharper as if nears the hull. The Alanger kit has a constant diameter. Not sure of an easy way to fix that. There is no line
The area aft of this looks like it has too much "turtle back" to me; there are parts that are too angled. I think some time with a sanding stick or file will fix it if you're willing to re-add the detail you erase.
The creeper motors are represented differently than what we've seen in pictures and plans of similar systems on other classes. In the Alanger kit the doors open and a pod with an un-shrouded prop extends down (sort of like an Azipod); what I've seen suggests a ducted prop that is mounted to the door itself.
There are some dimensional differences between it and the Blue Water Navy/ Yankee Modelworks resin kit, but as I lack official plans I don't know which is more accurate.
I'm having to spend some time on the hull joints but it's entirely my fault; I glued it with tons of tube cement as for some reason I seem to always have problems with splitting hulls, but I wasn't watching myself in the "hold it just right" phase and I gave it an underbite on the bow and a slight mis-match otherwise on the side joints.
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