The Ship Model Forum

Agreed, she is coming along nicely.

Coming along nicely.

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Quick stint with Houston in the photo booth.

At this stage I've only applied a wash, normally I would go over her with oils and get a more faded/worn look but I'm feeling pretty lazy and want to just get on to putting the rest of the thing together. Also, since the model depicts her not long after commissioning she would be fairly clean anyways. Let me know what you think.

The alternative is worse though. Skywave/Dragon has the hull shape wrong. So I will be filling and sanding for a bit.

[quote=Pieter post_id=1103074 time=1778848352 user_id=730]
Interesting to see that on Houston they have oversized raised plating. On my new CVL-22 it is oversized engraved plating except on the bow. I was a bit of work filling them. It is nice that Vee Hobby did not make Skywave/Dragon' s mistake of trying to get away with one full for both the CL's and CVL's though. Not that I'm not trying to hijack your thread, I like both kits and I do not have time to do a full review thread. Will make more pictures when she is finished. Lafayette1.JPG
[/quote]

yeah really confused by how much variability VEE has in their hull plating, on the Iowas and SoDaks it looks great, same with the Atlantas. On the Clevelands its acceptable for me but on that Independence it looks horrendous and really threw me off buying the kit. I get the feeling they took the Cleveland hull, modified it for the CVLs and more or less gave up on the fidelity of the plating on the new parts

Interesting to see that on Houston they have oversized raised plating. On my new CVL-22 it is oversized engraved plating except on the bow. I was a bit of work filling them. It is nice that Vee Hobby did not make Skywave/Dragon' s mistake of trying to get away with one full for both the CL's and CVL's though. Not that I'm not trying to hijack your thread, I like both kits and I do not have time to do a full review thread. Will make more pictures when she is finished. [attachment=0]Lafayette1.JPG[/attachment]

Hi all,
This is the newish USS Houston kit from VEE Hobby. Really nice kit featuring lots of slidemolding that allows everything to go together very easily. My main (albeit minor) gripes with it are the following:
- Hull plating is more stated than it needs to be
- No PE replacements for the oerlikon/bofors gun shields
- A bit more flash than you would expect from a modern kit
- Some small molding issues (e.g. the 152mm turrets are too tall on one side)

The included PE is reasonably comprehensive though I still opted for some add-ons including:
- 40mm bofors quad (bunker studio) and twin (muyi model) mounts
- 20mm oerlikons (serpent hobby)
- life rafts, boxes and OS2U kingfishers from various other chinese brands
Also intending to add figures (IONmodel) if time allows.
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A word on the AA guns: I was really happy with these save for the oerlikons which have some nasty overscale rivets, will consider a different brand next time. Comparing the bofors, the Muyi mounts seem to have a little more detail but are also a lot harder to remove from their supports.

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Currently at the weathering stage which i plan to keep very subtle. The plan is to have this done in time for Australian Model Expo 2026 where it will go against the very lovely Sverdlov currently in the gallery (https://modelshipgallery.com/gallery/cl/ru/Sverdlov-700-mr/index.html)
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