by Richard Wonderly
1/400 Aurora (Maquette)
This is the Maquette kit of the cruiser Aurora in 1/400 scale. I got this from a dealer in Florida who imports kits from Russia, although I understand this is just a re-issue of an old Heller kit. The rigging is brass wire, which is the only extra I added to this. The molding on my kit was good, with little flash and the parts fit well for something that is obviously made with old moulds. For the paint scheme, I chose pre-Russo-Japanese war colors based on a hand tinted photo on the official Aurora Website. Although their rigging is wrong, I don't claim mine to be completely accurate either, being bases on sketches from an old edition of Conways and Jane's reference books. And I realize the model has too many guns for the pre-1905 time period. I believe she only carried that many guns sometime after the start of World War One.
