The Descendants

I've been terribly dilatory about posting something this month.  There's a few reasons, and some of them I think are fairly reasonable.  For openers, I've finally decided to really start taking care of myself like my doctor said to do almost a year ago.  Consequently, I'm walking for an hour a day either 5 or 6 days a week.  It's not the 7 days a week he wanted, but it's better than what I was doing.

I've also started a new hobby that takes up a bit of time.  About a year ago, I started taking fencing lessons.  I did it in college, and then didn't for 30+ years.  Well, much to my surprise the city here teaches it as an adult fitness course so I took it up again.   As I've taken more lessons, I've started fencing with a couple of different groups.  Along with this, my wife retired after 26+ years with the city and we've been enjoying doing things together.  All the above, combined with a bit of general laziness this New Year, has kept me from updating as much as I've wanted.  With this post though, we should get 2019 started off on the right foot.

The plan is to play the first Cod War game in March, so that is what I've been painting so far this year.  I've gotten another sidewinder trawler painted, along with a couple of Icelandic Coast Guard (ICG) vessels painted.  I'll put pictures of those up later, but honestly, they're not very interesting as the ICG vessels are just shades of gray.  What has me really excited is the chance to paint up some Royal Navy vessels.

The first vessels here are a pair of Type 12M Rothesay class frigates.  Honestly, I bought them from Shapeways thinking they were Type 12I Leander class vessels but I was wrong.  To make things worse, I didn't realize this until I had shortened the mainmast to put the distinctive Leander class radar antenna on them.  After kicking myself for my mistake, I decided to go ahead and put the antennae on the ships, thereby turning them into a sort of generic Royal Navy frigate.  The Rothesay class ships also served during the Cod Wars, so I'm not really out of bounds by using them.

To me, these ships are direct descendants of my British sailing ships (hence the title of this post).  That's one reason I'm excited about painting them, but the other reason is that they carry a really snazzy paint job.  Light gray hull and superstructures, dark green decks and a dark gray helicopter landing area with white markings make for a very distinctive looking ship.  You can see for yourself in the photos below:

HMS Plymouth (F126) and HMS Falmouth (F113).

HMS Plymouth

HMS Falmouth

Clearly, one of these ships isn't quite finished yet.  Plymouth needs to have the base detailed, and some final little bits done to her.  I added the radar antenna (that large dark colored block on top of the mainmast) and the extension on top of the foremast for both ships.  The foremast extension was done with .20 wire, so as to keep people from brushing against it; the Smooth Fine Detail plastic used by Shapeways is good at capturing detail but a little bit fragile.  Hopefully this will keep players from using the foremast to move the ships.  There were several whip antennae along the deck of these ships, but I haven't decided whether or not to add those.  If I do, it should be easy to use some brush bristles cut to length.

Sharp-eyed observers may note that the hull of Falmouth looks a bit rougher than the one on Plymouth.  This is partially due to some paint problems I had on Falmouth and partially due to the way the hulls on these ships are printed.  All three of these ships have some heavy striations due to the various angles on the hull.  I'm not sure why there weren't as visible on Plymouth, but I am presuming that the way I prepped the second hull might have helped hide them.  Problem is, I'm not sure what I did!

These aren't the only Royal Navy ships for this period I've got, and I will post the others as I get them done.  In closing though, I would be seriously remiss if I didn't admit that part of the reason for this post are my two virtual shipmates: Stew and Vol.  By making some posts on their blogs this month, they kind of shamed me into doing the same. 😬  Thanks guys, and things should be back on track now!