Hi to all, I’m getting back into building after a 15 yr break and my primary interest is in cars but I figured since I spent 9 yrs on 2 FFG’s I would like to build one. I found this kit at Hobby Lobby and I have also spent ALOT more on add on detail pieces. I have both the WEM and Yankee P/E sets plus some resin and upgraded decal sets. I will be building this kit as the OHP (FFG-7) as she was when I was aboard her in the early 90’s. This kit has some great detail in but has a number of things wrong right out of the box that I will have to correct. Please let me know what you think both good and bad and Thank You for looking.
Greetings and welcome to the forum and to ship modeling!
I will watch this build with a lot of interest because I just bought this kit. I served on only one surface ship in my Navy career, being a submariner. The work you did on the fo’c’sle looks very nice. Keep posting!
I built one of these in 1/700 as FFG-8, the McInerney (which is now headed for Pakistan, I believe). Now that it has come out in a more affordable plastic version, I may try one again. Looks great so far.
I built this ship last year. It was a very nice build. The WEM photo etch is a must. I also purchased a SH-2 Seasprite from them since the Flt 1 boats didn’t carry the Seahawk in the kit. The kit goes together pretty easily and putting the photo etch on was not that much of a hassle. Follow the directions and look at the illustrations on the photoetch closely and it fits like a glove. Good luck on the build
Iron Shipwright offers the decal sheet which used to accompany their resin & brass short-hull Perry kit. These are thinner & better printed than the kit decals.
Resin Shipyard will be offering a decal sheet for the world’s operators of Perrys. Flags & markings for Spain, China, Australia, Poland, Turkey, et al. Shothuld be available later this month
I finally got the Yankee P/E set and it sure looks good. There differences between it and the WEM set for the same parts, the main antennas look different and are a bit “thicker” on the Yankee sheet. The Instructions for the Yankee are sparse and vague IMO. It lists parts on the sheet that are NOT shown in the instructions and some parts listed are not on the sheet. The Yankee set has both masts but I’m not sure I’ll use them.
WEM makes good stuff - although I’ve only used their 1/700 PE, I’ve yet to go wrong with it. One thing to watch out for in assembling the SPS-49 radar (what you are calling the main antenna), it does have a very slight curvature or bow to it both vertically and horizontally, or along both axis’, so look at some pictures of the real thing before you break out the super glue for final assembly. I had a devil of a time getting the back lattice work on the screen for my Perry-class frigate build, hope it’ll be easier for you in the larger scale!
PE fabrication and installation is a skill which I recommend that you learn in a ‘larger’ scale. Once you develop some techniques and muscle memory then you can more easily transfer what you’ve learned to a smaller scale.
Of course now my 15 dancing thumbs don’t want to work as well in smaller scales - so I’m moving more & more toward 1:350 and larger scales
I have been working on the hull and some sub assemblies. I also started my first foray into P/E. I have decided that the kit masts look so much better than the P/E mast.
I like what you did on the stern, for the towed array and the Nixie decoys, looks spot-on from what I can see.
As far as using PE for the masts, 1/350 is, to me, where the “flatness” of PE starts to make itself felt as far as representing things that are usually round in shape, like mast structural elements. In 1/700 it’s just not as noticeable, and you can’t get past the sheer delicacy of the shapes. You may find that a combination of plastic and PE yields the best-looking results, with plastic for the round structural items and PE for the flat structural items like platforms and some braces.
