Ron Bell Posted August 29, 2024 Report Posted August 29, 2024 Monogram produced several kits in around this scale of modern US Navy ships in the early 70's. They were pretty basic kits, but had some nice molded in detail and a few "working" features, such as radar arrays that followed guns and/or missile launchers. One advantage they had over Revell's offerings was that they were full hull models and not part of the "flat bottomed fleet". This is the USS Ramsey, a Brooke Class guided missile destroyer escort, later re-designated a frigate. The fit of the kit is not very good so it took quite a bit of effort to eliminate gaping holes and seams, however the one piece hull definitely made assembly easier than Revell's two part ones. The nicest part of the kit is the HS-2 Seasprite Helo athough I had to replace the main rotors due to their scale thickness. I also removed all the molded in railings and replaced them with PE. Now, the kit is supposedly 1/310 and there are no PE railings in that scale or even 1/300, so the best I could do was 1/350. They are, indeed, out of scale, but surely look better than the molded in ones from the kit. Stretched sprue rigging and antennae finished her off. It's not the best model around, but fills a gap on my shelf of ships of this era. 2
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