by Roel Van de Velde
1/700 LNGC Excel (Scratchbuilt)
This is the LNG tanker/carrier Excel from the company Exmar. This design was basically built by Daewoo and was sold to several companies. Some of her main characteristics:
Practically this model was built from scratch, with some pictures of the plans and pictures I took onboard. The only materials I used were plasticard, milliput and plenty of sprue of various diameter. The hull is not entirely smooth, but it is my first full scratch built model and I'm happy with the result. I paid special attention to the pipelines on deck and took a lot of effort to put as much detail as possible, including the dry powder boxes on deck, the walkways on top of the pipelines, bollards and winches etc. I also wanted this ship to be able to operate as an LNG carrier, so I was determined to put all the pipes in the correct possition and connected to the correct entrances and exits. I think I actually succeeded in that.
The colours are typical Exmar colours with red hull and white superstructure. The deck colour varies among the different ships of this class as they are still testing which colour is best to avoid evaporation, yet still survivable for the crew (white is in this case not an option, it's too blinding).
The picture of the stern shows her bulky aft side. This is caused by the steam turbine propulsion and the huge boilers that are necessary to propel these ships. On starboard side of this funnel casing, where you can see the large window, there is a swimming pool for the crew.
In some of the pictures you can see Trumpeter's Pyotr Velikiy also in 1/700, for size comparison.
I didn't yet find a way to build the small rescue boat which is normally mounted on the platform on port side, nor did I find decals that are small enough and that contain the letters to put her name on the bow and stern. She is however recognisable by some very specific features like the platform in front of the rescue boat platform. This is not present on her sister ship Excalibur.
As always with a first scratch built ship, it took me a long time to construct this ship, with some breaks and time to reconsider if I would continue or not. After all as you see, the one who has the courage to continue will always get a nice result in the end! (If not, then at least you have learned a lot of things!)
