by Edward Pinniger
1/150 DKM U-82 Type VIIC (Doyusha)
Anyone who has bought the Doyusha 1/150 U-boat kit, or its more recent Academy reissue, will know that, despite being sold as a scale model of a U-boat, it is basically a motorised toy, and appears to have been designed as such without much regard for scale detail or accuracy. The stern prop/rudder area is designed for a single motorised prop and doesn't even vaguely resemble the real one, whilst the hull is assembled from several sections joined together with rubber seals (it's intended to dive and surface automatically, though I've no idea whether this mechanism actually works as designed), there is a large on/off lever in the conning tower, and detail on the hull, tower and fittings is minimal to say the least.
I bought this kit for a few pounds at a second-hand sale, if I had any sense I would have re-sold it on eBay immediately - but I started building it and was halfway through assembling the hull before I realised quite how bad it was! As I had thrown out most of the motorisation gear, there was no point attempting to sell the part-built kit, and I didn't really want to throw it away, so I persevered with building it. If nothing else, I thought it would provide useful scratchbuilding + detailing practice. Fixing all of the kit's problems would be so much work that you might as well start from scratch, so I just attempted to make the hull look like a passably accurate representation of a Type VII. Much filler + styrene sheet was used in assembling the hull, and the stern area was reshaped as best I could, with twin scratchbuilt prop shafts + spares-box props added. Whilst it's still completely wrong in shape, it looks OK providing you don't look too close! Meanwhile, I detailed the conning tower inside and out using styrene stock + metal wire, plus a few spares-box oddments. The railing around the 20mm AA gun was also scratchbuilt using Evergreen rod and copper wire. The 88mm deck gun also received plenty of detailing including sights, breech and shoulder rest. Aerials are made from fine tinned copper electrical wire.
I painted the model as U-82 in two-tone camouflage, which I hoped would conceal the hull's inaccurate lines (as well as looking rather neat). It is heavily weathered, using craft acrylic paints and oil washes, but not as heavily as some U-boat models I've seen, as it's meant to represent a fairly early-war boat.
Anyway, with Revell's new 1/144 Type VIIc now out, I would recommend you AVOID the Doyusha/Academy kit like the plague - however cheap it is!
