"Peter the Great"
by Peter Hall
1/350 Pyotr Veliky (Scratchbuilt)
In 1999, I started out building the Kirov in 1/350 scale with the intention of making a pattern that I could use to to produce a kit from. It was wholly inspired by the late Mike Dodgson and he provided me with the necessary drawings and diagrams, as well as moral support and regular "Have you done it yet".
Things progressed so that the hull was completed to the test shot stage, but problems were encountered with the heat generated by such a large mass of resin cooking off, so adjustments were made and two hulls were finally cast. The costs were worked out and it just wasn't going to be economical to produce this beast in 350th.
So I gave Mike one hull casting and kept the other myself. The hull casting that I kept I set about building up throught the levels of superstructure and decided at that stage that I would do it as Petr Velikyy, the last one of the class and to my mind the best equiped.
I scratchbuilt all of the upperworks and fitted them on to the hull and then set about building the smaller details from scratch too, such as the boats, cranes, sensors amd radomes and I even drew up a film for the radars to be photo etched as a one off job for myself. A useful exercise as it turned out. There were no Trumpeter kits back then to rob bits from, and no reason for me to produce PE sets for WEM for Russian ships at that stage. So using what I had I managed to finish the job in early 2002 just before the show season started.
Since then with the introduction of the Trumpeter kits of the Admiral Kuznetsov and Soveremennys I have been able to obtain some better examples of the Kashtan CIWS mountings and one or two of the small sensor units. Also a nice Ka-27 helicopter too, as the one I had made originally was a bit over scale.
Anyway, Pyotr Veliky is now in a growing collection that includes the Admiral Kuznetsov and the 965 Bezuprechneyy. Soon the Marshall Ustinov will join the fleet and even more shelf space will disappear.
