Modelik USS Arkansas

[Robert Woolley]

Hi all, I just received the new Modelik USS Arkansas. It was a monitor that was commissioned into the US Navy in 1902. It served for 20 years before being sold by the navy. It spent most of its service life as a submarine tender, as the need to protect US rivers, for which it had been designed, had disappeared even before it was launched. It was later renamed the USS Ozark, when the name Arkansas was needed for a new battleship.
It looks like a fairly simple model. It is very nicely printed. The cover says digital print. The colours are very rich, almost like paint with some of the colours, especially the red hull. It is a little bit shiny for my liking but that may not be obvious when it is made. There are two things about the colours that I am not happy with. The first is the Buff coloured parts are actually printed bright yellow. Since this buff colour was a feature of the upper parts of USS navy ships at the turn of the 20th century, I am baffled that they chose yellow instead. The other is that the upper deck planking is printed a chocolate brown colour. It just looks strange.
My biggest concern is the main deck. It has a metal plate pattern on it. It should be planked. Once again I am surprised that Modelik got this point wrong with the photos available.
There is a resin kit available of the Arkansas that has plating moulded on the decks. I wonder if this kit was influenced by it.
There are also a couple of details omitted, such as the structure around the bottom of the large ventilator.
Over all my impression is that it will be fairly simple to make, but will look like a toy unless a bit of scratch building and repainting are done.
It is a fairly cheap model. I got it from Orlik. It took just one week to arrive in Australia from Poland. Very good service.

Robert

[Gerd]

Hi Robert,
You are just describing the main issue for many (fortunately not all) models from Modelik. They are not very detailed, the coloring is sometimes strange and they are not always following the originals. Nevertheles it's an interesting model and with some creativity and skills it is possible to build a nice model.
Regards
Gerd
p.s. The Petropavlovsk from Modelik is a real highlight. Cheap, well detailed with nice colors.

[dje]

Originally Posted by Gerd

Hi Robert,
You are just describing the main issue for many (fortunately not all) models from Modelik. They are not very detailed, the coloring is sometimes strange and they are not always following the originals. Nevertheles it's an interesting model and with some creativity and skills it is possible to build a nice model.
Regards
Gerd
p.s. The Petropavlovsk from Modelik is a real highlight. Cheap, well detailed with nice colors.

second that ! I usually scan and correct colours with modelik, although recent ones are definitively great. Working on one of those ones and I'm currently using the kit himself.