HMS Kelly by king derelict - Flyhawk - 1/700 - PLASTIC

[Old Collingwood]

Excellent work Alan,   will you be adding this one to a sea scape base?

 

OC.

[king derelict]

On 9/13/2025 at 8:44 PM, Old Collingwood said:

Excellent work Alan,   will you be adding this one to a sea scape base?

 

OC.

Thank you very much OC. No I think this one will be added to the crowd of destroyers in the display case. I am keen to work on it diorama though.

alan

[king derelict]

The details are now in place. It was a bit of a frustrating day at times. Place a boat, knock off a set of stairs, lose tiny pieces of PE etc.

The boats and davits are in place. The PE fret has boarding ladders for the boats but they are almost invisible when added and it’s quite crowded around the boats so they have been omitted. The foredeck railings went on quite nicely but for some reason the main deck ones were a fight and one side is a little distorted.

 black wash has been added and a bit of dry brushed steel to bring up a few details like the tiny, tiny sights on the Bofors.

I was planning to add the pennant number decals but the sheet only provides G61 and G85 which are HMS Javelin and HMS Jupiter. HMS Kelly is F01. It’s a bit of an odd kit in that respect. The main sprue has quite a lot of bits left so I think it covers other J/K destroyers. The PE instructions are pretty basic and the paint guide is poor. Neither it nor the box art show any pennant numbers.
Tomorrow I will start the weathering of the hull.

Thanks for looking in, the likes and comments.

Alan

[Landlubber Mike]

Looks really good Alan!  Your paint job is fantastic!  Did you mask the bridge and the funnel and airbrush to get the different colors?  Or did you just hand brush?  I have to do something similar with my Akitsushima and am a bit worried about masking with the delicate PE attached.

[Old Collingwood]

That is looking Superb Alan,  I know I keep saying it  - but its 700 scale  I can not over stress just how small that it.

 

OC.

[AJohnson]

3 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

That is looking Superb Alan,  I know I keep saying it  - but its 700 scale  I can not over stress just how small that it.

 

OC.

Agreed, that is impressive at that scale. 

[king derelict]

20 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Looks really good Alan!  Your paint job is fantastic!  Did you mask the bridge and the funnel and airbrush to get the different colors?  Or did you just hand brush?  I have to do something similar with my Akitsushima and am a bit worried about masking with the delicate PE attached.

Thank you very much Mike. I did mask the funnel and bridge and use the airbrush. I did have to go back with the brush and tidy up after I added the detail. This one doesn’t have a lot of PE details in those areas and what there were got added later. Very basic compared to your Akitsushima. 
alan

[king derelict]

19 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

That is looking Superb Alan,  I know I keep saying it  - but its 700 scale  I can not over stress just how small that it.

 

OC.

Very kind OC. It’s definitely tiny world.

alan

[king derelict]

16 hours ago, AJohnson said:

Agreed, that is impressive at that scale. 

Thank you very much Andrew. I do have a couple of 1/350 Flower class corvettes for the big boy moment 

alan

[kgstakes]

For being a small scale ship I’m surprised at the detail it has.

 Great build and love the paint work you’ve done.

 

i haven’t built any war ships and i always admire the people that do and can do such an excellent job at painting them.

 

 Nicely done!!

[LED]

Splendid work, Alan...

I picked up a Flyhawk Deluxe HMS Ajax that the model shop could not sell because it wasn't shrink wrapped.  I got it for a song and a prayer - and, nobody appreciates my singing.  It has everything!!!  Including a bunch of PE 😐

Anyway, the instructions seem to be color coded - but, I cannot figure out what it is all about.  I see they did the same with your kit.  Some parts are in red, others green, and so forth.  What did all that turn out to be?

[king derelict]

Thank you. HMS Ajax should build into a beautiful ship. As a deluxe kit I assume it has metal barrels as well as plenty of PE. 
The Flyhawk instructions are definitely idiosyncratic. The long strip of several illustrations is a bit unwieldy and the small size is a challenge. As far as I can tell there is really no logic to the colour coding although on the bigger ships where there are a significant number of small details in a given area they show each part number in a series of boxed illustrations, ventilators, hoists, depth charges, lockers for example and then assign each a color. The main illustration then shows each part in the corresponding color. Otherwise they sometimes use a color just to make it easier to see the placement. 
One thing to watch out for with the deluxe kits is the separate instructions for the PE. The main instructions don’t reference any of the PE parts so it worth studying both sets of instructions and working out how the PE integrates into the build. If is complex I often mark up the main instructions with highlighter. 
I hope this helps a bit. Good luck 

alan

[LED]

Many thanks, Alan...

I couldn't figure out the rhyme or reason for the color coding - so, maybe it is what you say - "nothing".  Too funny.  Think long, think wrong 😄

 

[king derelict]

19 hours ago, LED said:

Many thanks, Alan...

I couldn't figure out the rhyme or reason for the color coding - so, maybe it is what you say - "nothing".  Too funny.  Think long, think wrong 😄

 

The Flyhawk instructions are a bit wired at times although I think they are trying to be helpful but it doesn’t seem to match the way my brain works.

As an example from HMS Kelly, the above inset shows certain parts to be added in color and again partly on a second inset. It took me quite a while to make sense of it.

Alan