by Juan Carlos Lago
1/70 ARA Almirante Guillermo Brown D10 (Scratchbuilt)
Argentina’s four Meko 360 H2 destroyers were ordered from Blohm and Voss in 1978, with the first unit of the class, the Almirante Guillermo Brown entering service in 1983, with the last two of the class being cancelled, their place being taken by the smaller Meko 140 ships.
The model is built to a scale of 1/70, giving an overall hull length of 1metre 79 cm (5ft 10in). It was scratchbuilt over a period of five years and took approx 200 hours.
Construction is mainly plastic, using brass and Aluminium where appropriate.
The hull frames were 4mm plastic sheet, with the plating and the superstucture being built of 2.5 mm sheet. This presented quite a few challenges-surmounted by having closer spaced frames.
She is powered by 2 Robbe 600 motors with a home-made stainless steel reduction gearing driving 2 five-bladed propellers of 60mm diameter. These were made by soldering the blades I had cut from 1mm brass to a shaped bronze boss.
The model has a number of working features, such as revolving radar, AA guns fwd and aft can rotate and elevate independently.
The model 127mm gun can be trained, elevated and there-after fired, using a .22 calibre shell system.
This along with the Aspide Missiles which can be rotated, elevated as well a fired….usually attract a crowd at the lake.!
The ships boat can be launched and retrieved and the anchor can be dropped and weighed. Finally there is a dynamic stabiliser system with an integral Gyroscope.
There is audio combat readiness sound effect also.
The functions are controlled via an expanded Robbe 8 channel transmitter-now operating 15 channels, the signals being received on board the model by 8 microcomputer PIC’s which then enable the 15 micro-motors to activate all movements.
I had the privilege of being allowed to sail on the real ship also, during which they actually fired the fwd 127mm gun…!—of which I enclose a few photos.
I hope you enjoy the model as much as I have
Juan Carlos Lago
Buenos Aires, Argentina
