A "holy grail" of sorts for me, as the Royal Norwegian Navy is one of my doctoral dissertation case studies and the procurement of the Nansen class features prominently. Many thanks to James at Dodo Models for mastering this kit! I started and finished it during the Great COVID-19 Self-Isolation period.

A few changes were made from the base kit:

• The PE communications antennae were replaced with wire for a less flat appearance, though sacrificing the taper.
• The 76mm gun mounting had its front slope extended all the way to the bottom of the mount. The barrel was replaced with a brass one from Master. A sliver of plastic added under the barrel for the casing ejector chute.
• The mast was modified on its port side to accomodate the scratchbuilt Reutech RSR 210N radar, which came with the refit to the ships that gave them the NSM missiles. This also meant adding two stand-alone supports for the rigging.
• The PE blast deflectors for the NSMs were installed despite not being shown in the instructions - understandably, they required a lot of thinning of the bulwarks that meet the corners of the NSM mounts so the latter can be moved with enough clearance to install the deflectors.
• The PE SRBOCs were re-angled to attempt replicating the multi-directional launcher installed on the ships.
• Liferings cut from wire.
• Safety 'rail' winding its way along the forecastle for sailors to clip on to made from wire.
• And perhaps the best part, assembled the NH-90 helicopter's main rotor so that it can spin freely by ensuring only the rotor cap was glued onto the shaft - great engineering here by James from Dodo! A video of this is in the last image/page.

Paints were Lifecolour: DKM 50 Hellgrau Silbergrau for the vertical surfaces and Dunkelgrau for the horizontals.

Rigging from UNI Caenis.

Gallery updated 2020-06-21

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