Oliver Hazard Perry Class Frigate

Published on
Review Author(s)
Scale
1/700
MSRP
$39.99
Product / Stock #
SE70006
Company: AFV Club - Website: Visit Site
Provided by: AFV Club - Website: Visit Site

Overview

This is a new tool kit that they did it right. 6 options for anti-submarine and anti-aircraft fits. Accessories include a small photoetch fret that adds to the model, harpoon missiles, and three different SH-60B Seahawk models as well. I think AFV Club has put together a nicely detailed ship. Plenty of options, plus the instructions have good call-outs for those options that are well organized. I had a few quandaries as I went but nothing that I couldn’t resolve between multiple photos from the instructions and art. The fact that the microscopic pin and hole alignment for the masts actually functioned said a lot for the way they molded this kit. I found the hangar bay doors and the hangar bay itself didn’t fit without trimming and my original boxing had 2 B sprues which kept me from finishing this kit for months. IPMS was able to contact the manufacturer and get a new sprue C sent my way. I’ll be placing this kit in a small sea vignette that I think will set it off.

Assembly – FFG 48, USS Vandegrift

Yes, I know, but hey I absolutely had to do my namesake given it was in the boxing! I opted to do the waterline version of the kit. The first 8 pages cover the different fits you can choose from. I did go through ahead of time and highlight all the options throughout the instructions for the ship I was doing. Each of the subassemblies went together well and the fit was fine for a 1/700 kit. No major issues. One thing I really liked – AFV Club gives the call-out for what you are building. Is it the AN/SPS-55 radar, well you know it. Is it the Nulka decoys, well you know it. They are not just parts or subassemblies and this gets us back to the great days of kits where you learned something while you were building.

I experienced just 2 complications with the assembly. The hangar bay doors were too wide for the opening. I also had to cut off a tab along the side to get the hangar bays themselves to sit correctly. If I shifted the hangar bay away from the door opening so the door would fit then the bay didn’t line up with the axial tab for placement inside the superstructure. It was an easy fix and I think it was just part design that did it.

I clamped the superstructure to the deck while the cement dried. Fit was really good to the deck. There was some overhang along the turbine and hangar bay walls on just 1 side. Not bad at all in this scale. The PE details on the main mast add to the look of the ship. The support struts and flag arm would have been too far out of scale if they had tried to do these in plastic. The PE cut and formed fine. No issues with it being brittle and breaking if I had to fold it twice.

I think the helicopters in this kit are some of the best in 1/700. Tons of options and fine detail on each of them. All with extended or folded rotor options.

All the decals settled down cleanly without tearing. I will say the helo deck line decal surprised me – no silvering. I purposely didn’t cut out any of the clear film so that I could see how it applied straight from the kit.

I painted the kit based on the call-outs in the instructions. It’s going to look great with quite a few details for observers to check out in the vignette. A huge shout-out to AFV Club for providing the kit to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for the kit AND support when I needed to get that missing sprue! Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Oliver Hazard Perry Class Frigate

Reviewer Bio

Chris Vandegrift

When Chris isn't modeling he's restoring old cars or doing home remodeling in his spare time. Both have helped improve his modeling. "Having learned to paint cars, quite a few of those techniques apply to priming and painting my models," he says. Chris used to build aircraft exclusively, but has expanded into ships, science fiction, armor and cars. A member of multiple IPMS clubs in Ohio including Akron's Ed Kinney Chapter, Wright Field and Cincinnati Scale Modelers, Chris started building models when he was about 7. Chris lives in Cincinnati Ohio; a Mechanical Engineer by trade, he's the head of Operations and Engineering for a company that makes pumps. He's been married to his wife Jane for 30 years; they have four kids ranging from 20 to 34.