Orel #6 Russian pre-dreadnought Retvizan

[cdcoyle]

Subject: Russian pre-dreadnought Retvizan 1902
Scale: 1/200
Publisher: Orel
Designer: Dmitry Hotkin

Retvizan was a Russian pre-dreadnought battleship built in an American shipyard in 1902. Retvizan was sunk by Japanese artillery fire at the siege of Port Arthur. She was subsequently refloated by the Japanese and put into service as the Hizen.

The model comes as an A4-size booklet with sixteen sheets of parts, two pages of diagrams, and a couple of very nice full-spread line drawings. Two pages of instructions are provided in Russian, Polish, German, and English. Mr. Hotkin has had previous designs published in Poland, and the kit very much has the look and feel of similar kits from GPM or Modelik.

The printing of the kit is very good, with only a few cosmetic flaws, albeit very small ones that are not readily apparent at a casual glance. The hull is in gray. The deck might be too yellow for some, but the underwater hull has a nice shade of hull red. The name at the stern and ornamentation at the bow are printed in metallicized ink to good effect.

The kit looks like it will produce a very nice model. It is rated a ‘3’ on a difficulty scale from 1 to 5. Additional info, and a couple of sample parts pages, can be seen at Orel’s website. At $11.60 US direct from the publisher, it is a bargain.

Regards,

[cdcoyle]

A barrel set and photo-etch set for Retvizan is available from GPM.

[gippolot]

Thanks very much for the info Chris.

I've thought of buying this... to add to my collection of unmade publications. It looks sweet.

Regards,
Andrew