he kit comes in a sturdy lidded box with a clear band holding the lid on. I estimate that there are well over 200 parts, the part trees are all bagged, there are thick card blocks to prevent the bits moving about in the box: the packaging is top-notch.
The hull is 38cm long, about right for 269m in 1:700 scale.
At first the hull looks as if it is compete and pre-painted, but, indicating good fit, it is actually clipped together and made of matt finished coloured plastic: a dull red lower hull, a black upper hull and a white central superstructure. There is a small sprue of shiny gold coloured propellers. Other sprues are in: black, white, tan, brown and a bright orange funnel sprue oops! that cant be right! (see the photo of the parts trees). While being critical the black ratlines are seriously heavy and overscale looking.
There is a bag with a card marked "LED Pack", this includes 8 LEDs, thin 1mm diameter wire, 7mm conductive tape and everything needed to make an illuminated model except the batteries. However I am very uneasy about fixing the battery box underneath the stand, which will require the whole model to be inverted to change batteries.
Instructions:
The instructions come in two big folded sheets, in four languages, although the 24 steps are shown diagramattically wth few words. The steps seem to follow a logical sequence except that the wiring of the concealed switch in the stand is left to near the end, after the fully wired hull has been attached to the stand.
The connecting of the LEDs with 7mm wide conductive tape stuck to a transparent film is shown clearly, but the instruction diagram implies that there is more room for the tape and electrical contacts than there actually is.
Eight detail colours for painting are identified by a code letter, which is listed with a descriptive name and a cross-reference to six manufacturers paint numbers, in acrylic and enamel.
Build Suggestions:
I would like to make a few comments based on some initial test work.
Painting
Substitute a buff colour like Vallejo 847 Dark Sand for the orange funnel colour 851 that Academy suggest.
Wiring
The supplied power leads are thin, 1mm outside diameter, and have the ends pre-trimmed so you can just pull off the insulation and easily connect them, BUT they are short, feeding the wires through the stand is a real test of dexterity, especially if you already have a ship and LEDs connected to one end of the wire! Modellers might want to substitute longer leads if they have suitable wire or consider feeding the provided wire through the stand and adding on an extra length at the ends to allow easier manipulation. The LEDs are daylight bright on 3 volts, so they should cope with a bit of extra resistance in the wiring. However fit of the parts is so good there is no need to glue the ship to the stand, so there is the possibility of trying different approaches.
Switch
As noted above there is not enough wire to allow easy manipulation to connect the ship to the switch through the stand. A possible solution would be to connect the battery box without fixing it to the stand and leave it loose for ease of battery changing. My own solution is to dispense with the battery box and switch and attach a 3 volt power supply (in other words an external battery box) via an in-line jack plug, which is easily (dis)- connected and easily concealed underneath the stand when not in use.
