Revell Gato 1/72nd

[Guest]

Hi

The gato turned up this morning, looks to be a very well made model.

The plate lines are huge and the decals are a bit silly unless you plan to re deck and change the flood holes. But as the named boat it looks fine.

Packing is superb and well thought out. No broken parts or flash on any of the bits. May think about brass barels for the guns and steel periscopes as the ones in the kit are not all that round.

Could be an interesting second platic kit to build. I already have the Uboat so the gato should be a nice addition.

kevin

[Guest]

I am looking forward to someone making a Gato at our club. As you say the Gato and the U-boat together should make an interesting pair.

[Guest]

had a good look at the hull on the gato, no man holes no kingston's not much of anything to be honest past a bare hull with some out of scale plate lines. Think some work on the pantograph is in order.

Oh well it should kep me ocupied!!!

kevin

[Guest]

Kevin just so you know some of the guys that are making this kit R/C have found that the main hull halves are bowed. Put them together and sometimes there's as much as 1/4" or more of a gap in the middle see HERE for an example which also shows how to sort it.

The guru of modern R/C Submarine's Dave Merriman has been putting up a very thorough series of posts about how to built and convert this kit to R/C over on the Subpirates website : http://www.subpirates.com/viewforum.php?f=30

Davie

[Guest]

Hi I must admit couldnt resist joining the hull today. it was as true as any I have seen. Put the pins in and ran plati weld round it and job done.

The decks fit like a glove as does the bow and stern sections. Not fitted them just a dry run.

My main gripe is the lack of detail. Its a huge model that has nothing on it bellow the deck line. The exhaust ports are missing as are all the vents and the bolted man hole covers. these I think should be there on a model of this size and price.

The tower is lookig good, took some measurments and its not far out.

kevin

[Guest]

Kevin head over to the Subpirates site and search for a thread called "Rays Gato" it shows one of the members building this model to museum standard and adding in detail that is missing , etc. subcommittee site has details in the fleetdock forum about the bottom hull details with the flood ports , etc.

Davie

[Guest]

It can't be long before White Ensign do a PE set for it. Give them a ring and see if they have one in the pipeline. If they have it may be worth waiting a bit.

In fact I've just checked, they already do one:

http://www.whiteensignmodels.com/acatalog/index.html?http%3A//www.whiteensignmodels.com/acatalog/catalogbody.html&CatalogBody

Put Gato in the search box

[Guest]

Hi

I do have a set of hull drawings for a late war gato, I think time allowing I will make up a set of brass scribe guides for the holes in the hull. I cant say that im in any rush to build this one. I put the hull and deck together so i would have somthing to fiddle with in the evenings.

The temptation is there to cut away the wooden deck section and plank it but it would call for a lot of frames to be put in bellow the deck and on the pressure hull. from memory at 1/72 the frames would be about .300 apart

I did take the time to photograph the Lionfish at Battleship cove in Fall River over a period of a few years.

I must say this site is turning out to be very interesting,

kevin

[Guest]

Very kind of you to say so Kevin, thank you.

Without looking I also used a wooden deck set on my u-boat which I got from White Ensign. I would have a check into that as well and see if there is one available for the Gato.

You can see how mine went on the U-boat build thread. It is a vast improvement on the original and looks very impressive.

[Guest]

Hi

I had a quick look at the drawings, the deck frames look like about .330 seperation at 1/72. Not to bad to do I suppose just a large pile of brass angle to cut n solder.

The deck on your Uboat is a vast improvment on the plastic deck. I was very impressed by the way you put that one together.

My temptation is to also drill out the limber holes in the side casing to make a different hull number.

One thing i will pass on about the fleet boats is the hul numbers. These were not worn in wartime, niether were the draft marks. the location of the numbers was either shown by a raised weld line or a outline of rivets. Thats one thing I do remember from the lionfish.

kevin

[Guest]

had a chance to look at the Gato today found the following.

The bow and stern planes are the wrong profile, both are teardrop and should be basicaly flat.

Bow tube door are wrong according to the drawings (not looked at the stern tubes yet)

Marker bouys are oval should be round (not certain as these changed in the war years)

Bow bull ring is too small.

Anchor is in the wrong place and at the wrong angle. (could be OK for certain boats)

this all said there were so many incarnations of the gato some of these points could be mute.

Kevin

[Guest]

Kevin the Fleetboat forum on the subcommittee website has loads of reference material for this class along with what needs to be done to the kit to correct some of the obvious problems.

Davie

[Guest]

Thanks Davie,

I do have a full set of hull drawings for the Gato I bought a few years ago.

Most of the bits on the Revell I think were missed out or left off to speed the model to the store shelf. The Revell Uboat althouh not perfect has a lot more detail and if memory serves took more time to go through prototype before release to us.

Over the next few weeks il transfer the ports and vents to sheets of brass shim so i can cut out or engrave the ones I think are most visible.

I think its a shame Revell lost the chance to turn this from a big hull into a big very impresive hull. But with the cost of toolmakers time even in China I can see why the detal was left off.

Kevin