by Kieran Griffith
1/400 Yamal Icebreaker (Zvezda)
The Yamal Icebreaker kit is a slight modification of the Arctika Icebreaker kit from Zvezda and the kit is a piece of history in and of itself. The Zvezda kit dates back to the 1990s a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the mold might be a Soviet kit itself since the Zvezda logo is not on the sprue, smaller details are very inaccurate, however the overall layout is very good. I decided not to make this a masterpiece but made the cranes more realistic and after that only the masts needed to be converted much to change it from the configuration of the 1980s Arctika to the 21st Century Yamal. The actual Yamal Icebreaker does not have any visible railings so no need to use any photo etch which would have put the rest of the kit to shame anyway. After that it looks absolutely magnificent from a distance of about one meter. I chose to convert it from the Arctika to the Yamal just because the Yamal looks a lot better painted burgundy red and looking like it could give anyone or anything in front of it a very nasty bite. After doing this kit the Heller 1/400 Lenin Nuclear Icebreaker kit which I already own is very high on my to-do list as soon as I can get some 1/400 P.E. railings since it is far more detailed. The NS Yamal is operated by the Murmansk Shipping Company. Laid down in Leningrad in 1986, and launched in October 1992, after the end of Communism in Russia. She has always carried passengers on arctic excursions which might make her the most powerful cruise ship in history, Tickets to the Pole can cost about $20,000. Yamal took an excursion to the North Pole to celebrate the Millennium. Yamal is the 12th surface ship ever to reach the North Pole. The Yamal is equipped with a double hull. The outer hull is 48 mm thick where ice is met and 25 mm elsewhere and has a polymer coating to reduce friction. There is water ballast between the inner and outer hulls which can be shifted in order to aid icebreaking. Icebreaking is also assisted by an air bubbling system which can deliver 24 m³/s of air from jets 9 m below the surface. The Yamal can break ice while making way either forwards or backwards. The Russian "Arctic" family of icebreakers are the most powerful icebreakers in the world. These ships must cruise in cold water to cool their reactors, so they cannot pass through the tropics to undertake voyages in the Southern hemisphere.
