by Kieran Griffith
1/350 INS Chakra Akula-II Class SSN (Yankee Modelworks)
India is reportedly paying €1.35 billion for the completion of three Akula-II class submarines which were 40-60% completed. Three hundred Indian Navy personnel are being trained in Russia for the operation of these submarines. India has finalized a deal with Russia, in which at the end of the lease of these submarines, it has an option to buy them. According to media reports, the first submarine will be handed over to the Indian Navy on the 15th of June 2008 and be launched as INS Chakra.
I got this wicked resin kit a while ago but it sat on the shelf for a long time until I was talking to my friend Fiona online and she was telling me how she might be doing her internship with an Indian company called Mazagon Dock Ltd. India’s main shipyard which builds warships for the Indian Navy and she was excited she might be working on the Advanced Technology Vessel, the name for India’s pioneer nuclear submarine program. We got talking and she told me about the SSN rentals from Russia, Well I had to build the kit now and the Akula came off the shelf and I had it put together in a couple of days. Russian submarines now look like their anechoic tiles are perishing and look slightly brown, I got this shade by mixing gold with flat black, The base is made out of a wall candle holder. Fair play to Fiona if she gets to work with a 1/1 scale model of an Akula with detailed interior. She is already helping some Chinese Brainiac Students to design what she calls the Type-093E High Performance Patrol Submarine and it is not a university science project. I built the model of her submarine concept as the 1/330 HMCS Scarborough.
Chakra is a Sanskrit term meaning circle or wheel. There is a wide literature on chakra models, philosophy and lore that underpin many philosophical systems and spiritual energy practices, religious observance and personal discipline. Theories on chakras fit within systems that link the human body and mind into a single unit, sometimes called the bodymind. The philosophical theories and models of chakras as centers of energy were identified through the mystical practice of yoga in Ancient India where they were first codified.
