AK Interactive - Modelling Full Ahead 1, Knox & Baleares Class Review

This is a new series by the folks from AK Interactive aimed at the wheelhouse of ship modelers. My modeling tastes have been described by my friends as somewhat psychotic, bouncing from tanks, to planes, to ships with the odd Zeppelin thrown in. Well, I went and got a new set of friends and they now call my tastes “eclectic”. I like this new set of friends much better.

So, yes, I do like to build ships and I’ve had a hankering to build more lately. I’m working on a Type VII U-boat in post war French service and I finished a Type XXI U-boat a while back. I took a first with it at a regional contest, but realized that subs are a lot simpler than surface vessels and I was looking for some references to help improve my technique. I saw an advert for this book and found a source on the Last Cavalry website; I dropped my order and had it a little less than a week. Sadly, I live in a large metropolitan area in which one would think that good bookstores would be fairly thick on the ground. Not so in my little patch of heaven, although we do have a great local hobby shop.

The subject of the book is the USS Knox class frigate and its service in the Spanish Navy as the Baleares class. As an interesting aside, the text refers to the Spanish service as both the Navy and the Armada. Personally, were I in command, I would have stuck strictly with calling it the Navy post 1588 with an aim to keeping up morale. I know of which I speak, as I served in the 7^th Cavalry during the first Gulf War. I told myself “it can’t possibly happen twice”, but why take the chance? That aside, this is a really good source of information, both on the class and building modern surface ships in general.

The book is well organized with chapters on the Knox Class Frigates and the Spanish Baleares class. The chapter on the Baleares class has two additional sections covering technical specifications and a photo gallery. The quality and quantity of the photographs is absolutely first class, not just in this section, but throughout the entire book. The next chapter covers a step by step build of the Orange Hobby 1/350 scale USS Robert E. Peary. As a departure from a lot of “house” projects, this one does not solely focus on the use of AK products, but features products like White Ensign and Uschi. Nice touch. The next build chapter features three builds of the AFV Club 1/700 kit in the Baleares class configuration, all in diorama settings. The chapter covers the modifications required and then shows all three ships painted with varying degrees of weathering. This chapter was the most value to me, as it focused on painting and finishing.

The final chapter is a review of all of the 1/700 kits and accessories used in the three builds. Quite frankly, the 1/700 PE dockside crane would leave most mortal modelers a quivering and weeping mass of humanity in some forgotten corner of their modeling room. You have been warned.

This book is a handy reference both for building and as a source for information, especially on the Spanish Baleares class. The one quibble I have is that the translation is a bit off in places. As I have mentioned in a few other reviews of translated works, there really is no reason that you can’t do a pre-production review by a native speaker of your intended audience. That said, the translation did not hinder my enjoyment or the usefulness of the book.

I purchased my copy from Last Cavalry at www.lastcavalry.com.

I’d like to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Bill Kalmer for his help with this review by introducing me to the concept of “paragraphs”. Who knew?