scuppered

Building the Arctic Corsair .

Flushed with the success of building a model of the Smit Rotterdam , my next project was to be the Arctic Corsair in 1:142 scale using the Revell kit . The finished model was going to a surprise gift to the guy across the road who is a retired trawler-man . I built this kit a few years ago , didn't make a very good job of it due mainly to my incompetence as the kit seemed to go together quite easily . Hopefully , now I've had a bit of practice , I thought I could make a decent job of it and it would make a nice gift .

I unpacked the kit , removed the two halves of the hull and the main deck and taped them together , sure enough , the fit was very good , with a bit of cleaning up I reckoned I would have the hull assembled in a couple of hours . Time for a cup of tea and a fag then down to business . After a short break , I dashed back to the " studio " as my next door neighbour calls it , all set to attack the beast with sanding sticks and glue . I looked at the parts taped up and somehow , it didn't look right . During my time at sea , I only sailed in a Trawler once although I have seen lots of 'em so I am no expert , but it just looked too skinny . Time for a bit of research . I Googled "Arctic Corsair " and came up with lots of information including dimensions .

The Arctic Corsair had an overall length of 191.7 feet and a beam of 33.6 feet, when I measured the model and did the sums it would have a length of 174.7 feet and a beam of 25.6 feet assuming the scale to be 1: 142 . Simple arithmetic shows that the length of the real Corsair is about 5.7 times its beam , the length of the model is 6.8 times its beam , that's roughly thirty bloody feet too long . The phrase " flippin eck " passed through my mind a few times .

It gets better ( or worse ) , study the pictures and you will see that on the model , if the main deck is the ground floor , then the bridge is on the first floor , on the real Corsair , the bridge is on the second floor . There are other differences that I wont bore you with but this kit will never look like the Arctic Corsair in a month of Sundays , unless I do a Ron and build out of wood and just use the transfers .

At the moment I am trawling the net to find something with a beam of 25. 6 feet and the same profile as the model , I can shorten the hull , do a bit of scratch building and end up with something that looks like a proper ship and not a figment of Revell's imagination . OR . I can build it out of the box and flog it to some mug for lots of cash at a car boot sale . Failing that , I'm scuppered .

Tony B.