by Paul Neuhaus
1/400 DKM U-23 Type II/B (Mirage)
One cold, wet and nasty day I thought it would be a nice opportunity to reduce the heap of model kits I have stacked on the top of my cupboard. A Mirage-box containing a tiny submarine in a 1/400 scale fell into my hand and I thought that would bejust the right thing for a dull day.
The hull and tower were quickly assembled, smoothed over and filled in a few small places. The quality of the kit is excellent (this is my second one from Mirage).The parts fit together very well and not many corrections have to be done to any of the parts.
The railings on the hull and the tower are 1/350 PE out of the odd box (made by ABER, I bought them sometime ago as a bargain) which were made to fit and glued into place with a small amount of super glue. The ABER PE is very soft and very hard to handle without damage.
I painted the complete Model with Gunze-Sanyo acrylic paint and with an airbrush. The masking and cleaning of the airbrush tool took much more time that a normal brush painting would have taken, but the result is very good, so the it iss worth the extra effort in any case.
The weathering was done with power pigment colours which I strongly thinned down and then only applied to the model very sparingly. The rigging was made of stretched sprue.
I did not create a waterline model this time, but used the stand, which was also included in the kit box. A place for it in the display cabinet was quickly found...!
