Well I had to make it insanely complicated...


One day, I will just make the kit.  Not turn it into some brain stretching, resource sapping slog that never quite gets finished.

Basically, this is a plastic model kit of a Dutch 51M salvage tug built back in the 80s.
The kit itself was quite expensive.  With the extra fittings kit, you could be heading for £1000 pretty quick.   Then you have to add the RC equipment.

I managed to grab it off Ebay as an unbuilt kit, but a bit worse for wear.  I think it had spent some time somewhere hot, and most of the larger pieces of plastic had warped considerably.
But it came with the extra fittings kit and cost me £200.  No motors or RC parts.

The first job was to assess the state of the kit.  It's a pretty terrible kit to be honest, and by that I mean the actual original kit.

Most of the part are barely scored onto the plastic sheeting, so it's not just a case of scoring lightly and snapping them off.  The scored marked are literally 2% the way through the plastic. 
So, you end up cutting out all these pieces manually by hand and it is INSANELY boring.

Most of the smaller parts I gave up on and simply 3d printed new ones.
In fact, 3d printing was the saviour of this entire build.  I would think 30% of the parts ended up getting redesigned and 3d printed in white PETG.

The larger deck pieces I managed to flatten in a home made oven, using some timber and a heat gun.

The smaller parts all got laid out and then the terrible task of trying to convert German into English in the instructions.
It came with an English assembly manual, but it was useless
It only contained a quarter of the text that the German manual had, and no images or diagrams. 
So you ended up having to jump backwards and forwards between manuals with Google translate constantly on the go.

There were two large drawings. Nice, but very hard to work out, especially as there is no map of what the parts are or their numbers.

I have to say, if I had paid full price for this kit, I would have been a bit miffed.

I soon found that lots of parts just did not fit.  I looked at other peoples builds and soon worked out they had just basically done their own thing.
So it's plodding along.   Heading towards painting at this moment.  Just starting the filling process and sorting out all the bad joints etc.

I 3d printed lots of extra details, like window surrounds, new mast parts, ladders etc.  The kit ones were just rubbish.

There were also a lot of parts missing. Again, Mr Prusa saved the day.

Masts.

The masts are made with brass tubing.  I binned the kit ones.  This allowed me to add the navigation lights to the masts. 
The kit comes with bulbs for these lights, but no idea how they expect you to wire them up a solid (bent) plastic mast.

I purchased some cheap RC car floodlights off AliExpress and these are perfect for the ships deck lighting.

The front mast has 4x white bulbs and a floodlight.  All individually switched (see the electronics page).

The main mast has a bit more going on.  It has a total of 7 lights. 3x Red and 4x White.
But there are also 2x working radars.  The kit instructions suggest mounting the motors under the deck and running a pair of driveshafts up through the superstructure room to drive them.   That seemed a bit pants.

So, good old AliExpress again to the rescue. I found some tiny geared motors that worked a treat.  3d printed some housings and they can drive the radars directly.

There are other parts to fit to the masts, some ropes and also covers for the bulbs.  They go on after painting.

So...  a way to go yet!