by Kieran Griffith
1/350 K-329 Belgorod (Zvezda)
The K-329 Belgorod is an Oscar II class guided missile submarine that was laid down during the cold war and since then has been built on occasion but is still only 75% complete. It has, however, not been scrapped. My friend is examining this submarine with a team of Indian engineers doing a survey for the Indian Navy to see if it is worth funding. While what she says about the ship engineering itself is not public domain she does say that doing a survey of the ship is very difficult because the team does not have any clear goals, they get told to do one kind of survey from thier bosses at Mazagon Docks, then another kind of survey from the Indian Navy, then another kind of survey from the Indian Foreign Ministry and although they can carry out their requests they do warn that thier final reports will be meaningless. They also try to contact senior politicians involved in this survey to give constructive feedback day after day with no success.
The Zvezda kit is really really great, simple but very detailed. I had the kit in my list of unbilt ones and pulled it out the moment I heard what kind of submarine she would be working on. I was only able to find two photos of it online but she did give me some general ideas of how the submarine looks. She says the days are long the sun would set for only 20 minutes this Summer in Severodvinsk and the city, while a bit of a ghost town, is clean and quiet and nice to visit. At the factory she likes to come in early to use the wireless internet in the Workers Lounge. Work hours for the survey engineers team was normally from after lunch to from 22:00 to 03:00, with a break for dinner.
