by Guido Hopp
1/350 Persée Tripartite Class Mine Sweeper (L’Arsenal)
In the last 10 years ever since I restarted my hobby, I have been asked many times to recommend kits for beginners. While it isn’t that hard to do for plastic kits, I have always found it difficult to whole-heartedly recommend any resin offering for most diverse reasons. This has recently changed.
At about the same time I restarted the hobby Jacques Druel from L’Arsenal, France had issued his Tripartite Class Mine Sweeper in 1/400 and 1/350. It was one of the first resin kits that caught my eye, but it was not until this year’s spring I got myself the 350th scale issue. Not even a month after the start, I was able to finish the build - complete with water display and all. While for some this may seem long, for me it is incredibly fast. The kit impressed me both by in-box detail, layout and ease of construction. The instruction sheet is in French, which I neither can read nor speak. Still, there was hardly anything I didn’t understand from the drawings and close observation of the kit’s parts. An added plus is hat you can find tons of great pictures of this class of ship on the internet. These will enable you to easily go beyond the kit’s parts and add more detail, if you are inclined to do so.
So here it is: My definite recommendation of a 1/350th scale kit for both beginners and advanced modellers. Even AMS victims will be able to get a good stretch of their wings for a most reasonable price.
