Russian pre-dreadnought "Peresvet" [Orel 24/07,1:200]

[mOONwOKA]

Subject of this preview is Russian pre-dreadnaught "Peresvet". In russian it is called "eskadrenny bronenostes" which can be roughly translated as "armored ship of the line". The model is one of the latest offerings from Ukrain-based publisher "Orel" and is in rather usual scale 1:200. Designer is Jurij (or Yury, if you prefer) Gromyk.

Publication consists of:
1 page with historical notes (in russian)
8 pages of assembly instructions in 4 languages (russian, polish, english and german)
7 pages of 3D assembly drawings a la Halinski and 1 page of templates
8 pages of formers, printed on thin paper
16 pages of color parts, plus parts for modelstand, printed on cover page (i really hate this sort of sacrelidge)

Model represents "Peresvet" in grey paint, probably the way she (although Aleksander Peresvet was actualy male, hero of Kulikov battle) looked during Russo-Japanese war in 1904. You have to guess this, because it is not clearly stated anywhere. But since ship itself entered service in 1902 and the cover says "1904", this must be the case. Anyway, let's take a deeper look.

History of the ship is inconsequent. It starts with long babbling about technical requirements for the new class of ships ("Peresvet" had two sisterships). Then the story goes into Russo-Japanese war and ends november 24th 1904, when captain orders to flood burning ship to avoid magazine explosion. Then story suddenly jumps into 1916 - the Great War. How and when burning sinking hulk was returned to service is anyones guess... This last part of story is rather short, because january 4th 1917 "Peresvet" hits german mines and sinks. If you don't read russian, you are saved from trying to figure out, what the ship was doing for 12 years. I suppose, it was raised by japanese and listed in their navy for some time and later sold back to Russia, as this was fate of many russian ships, sunk during Russo-Japanese war.

Moving to parts, i never bother to count these, but with 24 pages you get a LOT. Level of detail looks promising - steamboats are even detailed with their own boilers and machinery. Another nice touch is metal printing - you get not only "bronze" screws but also illuminator rims. The overall quality of print looks god, but there are several flops a la Maly Modelarz. These can be seen in attached pictures - "Peresvet_2" shows strange white spots, while "Peresvet_3" is the evidence of color misregistration (which, luckily, is present only on some pages). Another issue is about 3D assembly drawings. Some of these looks nice, while some are so gritty as if they were supplied to publisher in extremely low resolution and were scaled up like hundred times or so for printing. On the other hand, graphical assembly coverage seems to be adequate, but this can be confirmed only when building the model itself.

Overall impression is good. "Orel" gets credit for continuous covering of russian pre-dreadnought fleet. This is a welcomed edition for anyone, who is not daunted by several imperfections and does like ships from this period.

I only wish there were more british ships of this era in model form...

[jagolden]

Looks like a large detailed model.
Awaiting the build thread when you get in to it.
I love the builds. There's much to learn and many ideas to take away to my own models.

And, I can vicariously live building these big ones through gutsy folks like you!
Hurry, Hurry!