UrkVisser

Hi everybody, This thread is about Revell's North Sea Trawler kit in the scale of 1:142. It's actually Revell's oldest kit still in production. It came out in 1970 as the fictive 'Russian Spy Ship - Volga' and was offered as such for many, many years. But in 1973 it was also the 'Arctic Huntress' (Boyd Line / Hull), in 1980 the Grimsby 'Kandahar', in 1998 the 'Arctic Corsair' (which is now a museum ship in Hull) and since 2015 the Grimsby 'Ross Jackal'. The 'Ross Jackal's' sister ship the 'Tiger' is a museum ship in Grimsby and is the last remaining trawler of the 'Ross 'Cat Class' which were built from 1957 to 1960 there about. The ships of the 'Cat Class' were all named by children from a certain Grimsby elementary school. Alas one child thought a 'Jackal' was a cat! While another mistook the 'Zebra' as a cat! But Ross was a good sport about it all anyway and the 'Cat Class' ended up with a dog and a horse! But this model really is like the 'Arctic Corsair' which was over 50 meters long and therefore required to have a taller mast aft of her stack (international lighting requirements). She also had 4 hatch covers on deck. The 'Cat Class' trawlers were under 50 meters long so they didn't have this tall mast aft. And also they only had 3 hatch covers. But as a former Radio Engineer I love this model where I can also rig all of it's antenna systems: Medium Wave 500 KHz, Short Wave 2 to 30 MHz and by the 1960's also VHF vertical antennas also started appearing. But naturally CW was always my favorite mode as it could usually punch right through fading, noise, static crashes and atmospheric quirks whereas SSB would be most likely unintelligible. CW could also transmit 10 times further than SSB on a given power in Watts. Alas, the fishing trawler company owners wanted to save money by not employing radiomen which resulted in a huge loss of lives and trawlers. A trawler widow named Lillian Bilocca from Hull was a major activist against the companies due to this issue. Anyway, I will add material to this thread as I progress. Bye for now! UrkVisser

Old black & white photos of the original 'Bluenose' seem to show a longer boom aft than what I see on photos of 'Bluenose II'. Also the 'Bluenose II' seems to have a a stern which is more squared off than the original schooner.vBut the angle of photos can also create certain 'optical illusions' at times. I can't explain the scale problems here. The kit was designed by Walter A. Musciano' (1922 - 2019) who was the Chief Project Designer of the 'Scientific Model Airplane Company in New Jersey. He was also a talented Naval Design Engineer in New York for over 40 years and also author of 24 books. He definitely knew knew what he was doing but this kit will remain a mystery. I can't find any other build logs or technical information about this kit in internet other than the two forum threads I started writing about my experience with it. According to 'GPT-4o mini' the 'Bluenose 1921 is suppose to have a 12,2 meter (40 ft.) boom whereas this kit has a longer boom. Best Regards, UrkVisser

Hi everybody! I have a really old 'Scientific' Kit No. 164 - 'Bluenose' which I bought back in 1991. From what I've heard this was a popular kit from during the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's but the manufacturer went out of business sometime in the early 1980's. No scale is mentioned on the box or in the plans but I always assumed it to be 1:64 scale. However I recently feed various data into the Artificial Intelligence 'GPT-4o mini' and it came up with 1:77 scale. But other people claim 'GPT-4o mini' was wrong about the prototype 'Bluenose' from 1921 and claim the kit must be 1:72 scale. Naturally the original 'Bluenose had a longer LOA due to it's very long Main Sail gaff hanging well aft of the stern. While some photos of the 'Bluenose II' I've seen show this gaff ending before the ship's wheel (no doubt a safety modification). Can anybody tell me the true scale of this kit? Thanks! UrkVisser