Trashy Fleets - When Life Gives You Lemnos...

I started working on the USS Mississippi-class pre-dreadnought battleship that later became the RHN Lemnos a while before the Hood and I managed to complete both at about the same time.

My main concern with US-made warships was, of course, modelling the lattice masts. This is not a problem at smaller scales as I just make a tapered conical rod and paint on the detail. However, in 1/1000 scale this was not feasible.

Delving into the internet somebody on some forum mentioned plastic nets in which they stored fruit in supermarkets as lattice mast material, so I first got some oranges and tried to use the net they were stored in, but it proved too big. Next I bought some garlic in a similar package albeit with smaller gaps in the netting, and it worked just fine!

So I know technically the Lemnos had her main mast switched to a traditional battle mast later, but for experimental purposes (and to make the pun in the title) I had mine retain both.

Photo report of the Greek warship Averof

My wife and I took a four day trip to Athens, which we mostly spent in the southern districts near the sea (besides a mandatory trip downtown). The highlight of the journey, of course, was visiting the armored cruiser / battleship Georgios Averof.

The ship is moored in Faliro harbor, is maintained by the Hellenic Navy, entrance is 5EUR per adult. We arrived early Tuesday morning and were the only visitors at that time besides a guided school tour. 

Entrance is from the stern via a staircase - as we went up and down the length of the ship I organised the pictures from aft to fore instead of chronological order.

Most of the spar deck and upper deck are free to move around, and so are some of the internal areas. The bow is accessible via the enclosed superstructure above the spar deck.