Revell 1/72 Flower Class build - HMS Poppy (K213) R/C conversion

[ajrimmer42]

Morning chaps, been a little while since I posted anything on here. I mentioned a few months ago that I'd finally got round to getting Revell's awesome Flower Class kit. It's now nearing completion so I thought I'd post a build thread if it's any interest to you guys.

This is copy and pasted from the Flory Models forum on which I have entered it into their Operation Overlord Group Build, hence the captions on the photos, and if any text seems a bit odd lol - I've tried to edit it somewhat to make it make more sense. Anything in [square brackets] I've added just on here if any extra info was needed.

Enjoy


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[20/07/2014]

It was payday last Tuesday, so while things were slow at work I decided to jump on eBay to try and find some figures for my DUKW build [I built the Italeri 1/35 offering for the same Group Build, fantastic kit and I had a lot of fun with it - plenty of stowage!]

Unfortunately after that everything went a bit hazy and a Flower Class Corvette turned up on my doorstep yesterday. Whoopsie!




I've gotta say this is somewhat of a personal project, not in that I knew anyone who served on Poppy, but in the sense that this is something I have been wanting to do for a very long time. 15 years in fact.

I remember when I was around 6 years old I went to my local boating lake with my dad to sail my teeny little Nikko (are they still around?) R/C boat. There was this old chap there around the other side of the lake with what was, to 6 year old me, a battleship! I'm sure you can guess that it was in fact a Flower Class Corvette, and is still to this day one of the most impressive models I've ever seen. It had movable guns (with sounds!), lights, anchors, and even the ship's boat could be raised or lowered on its davits, all controlled from the mother of all R/C transmitters around the guy's neck.

I remember thinking to myself then, "one day, when I'm older and I have a job and money, I'm gonna build one of those."

So here goes nothing!


THE KIT:



It comes in rather a large box it has to be said lol




The hull is in 4 parts, with a Flory polishing sponge for scale




You will have to excuse me for not opening the sprues, I wanted to keep everything as safe as possible untill I need it. There's 3 sprues in each of those bags!




The thickest instruction booklet I've ever seen, along with the (redundant) Decals for HMCS Snowberry and USS Saucy (?!), plus the rigging/rope/cable, some clear acetate, plastic rods for the railings, metal anchor chain, and of course the flags.




The hardware! All commandeered from my Tamiya TT-01. The sport tuned motor may be a little overkill but the transmitter allows me to limit the power. Nothing wrong with having a little extra speed in case a U-Boat comes along... or some children in a pedalo. There's also 2 servos, one for the rudder and one for the front 4 pounder

Currently on order I also have:

The correct brass 3 bladed prop,
Brass prop shaft,
Micro rudder around which I will sandwich the kit rudder with some epoxy,
Universal joint to connect the prop shaft and motor,
Some ball joints for the rudder linkage,
Some plasticard; I'm predicting a fair bit of mild scratchbuilding,
LEDs and battery box, yep I'm gonna be lighting her up!
I'm also looking at perhaps getting a few aftermarket bits. I specifically didn't want to pay twice the price for the Platinum Edition of this kit as I didn't see the point in covering it with PE bits just for them to end up being pinged off getting it in and out of the water. I have in mind a Sirmar replacement armament set as the kit stuff is tosh, maybe a few crew, and possibly some railings. The kit railings are again, codswallop, but at the same time I don't want to be buying replacement sets if they're going to broken on semi-regular intervals. I will be having a think, and any suggestions would be much appreciated, bearing in mind I'm trying to keep to a budget.


HMS POPPY:

So, onto the ship herself. It took me a while to decide on which Corvette to base my build on. I didn't want to be doing any total conversions so I was trying to find one that was structurally similar to Snowberry, plus I was trying to find some of the less camp names, whoever decided it was a good idea to name warships after flowers?! With that in mind I came up with Poppy. Perhaps less camp than say, HMS Geranium, and certainly better than Candytuft... There are also a few good reference shots and a beautiful side elevation showing the camo scheme.

There is plenty of history behind her too. Built by Alexander Hall of Aberdeen in March 1942, she was part of the escort of the ill-fated Convoy PQ17, took part in Operations Husky and Torch, and was of course present during the Normandy Landings. Her D-Day diary was fairly uneventful as far as it goes but the following is what she got up to during June 1944:
Preparations for operation Neptune - convoy of pre-loaded coasters to Portsmouth - narrowly avoided collision with merchant ship at Spithead.
June 6th : D-Day - Neptune
Sheerness to Southend for convoy conference - sailed pm. Keyed up for action - uneventful trip as far as Dungeness - ordered to return to reinforce escort of later convoy. Sailed from Southend D+2
Sword beach: D+3 - returned with empty LSTs - regular routine to Sword, Juno and Gold beaches with coasters, LSTs and old ships for Mulberry harbour.


MODIFICATIONS:

So, onto the modifications I will be doing, aside from fitting all the R/C gear of course. The main difference between Poppy and Snowberry was the addition of 4 extra 20mm Oerlikon guns which were added on top of the engine room housing for Operation Torch in October '42, 3 of these can clearly be seen in this pic, the 4th being somewhere slightly out of the bottom of the shot as far as I can gather:



They shouldn't pose any problem to add, just a bit of plasticard for the platforms. The main thing will be the guns as, at £3.99 each for the Unimodel ones, it could start getting a little expensive. Plus I don't want to add all these superdetailed guns at the back when the rest are all rubbish, so I think it will be a case of replacing the lot. As I mentioned earlier, Sirmar do a replacement set which includes the front 4 pounder, the rear 2 pounder 'Pom Pom', along with the Oerlikons and I think a few Lewis guns and stuff, which I think is my best bet.

Other than that, the wheelhouse will recieve a little bit of detail as I intend to stick some lights in there, the aerial thingamajig on top of the ASDIC hut is also a different shape but that will be an easy replacement, plus the flag locker is absolutely nothing like the real thing, so as it's such a glaringly obvious thing that will be replaced by a lovely PE one I found.


So I think that's about it. I'm incredibly excited lol, I just hope I get it finished in time for November [The Group Build Deadline is November 23rd! Not long to go!]

TBC...