Honduras Navy patrol boat.

[chrisonord]

The boat was originally a Revell Arkona life boat in 1/72nd scale, now it is being suitably modified into a patrol gun boat. The boat will be armed with a 25 mm Bushmaster on the fore deck, and have 5/6 pintle mounted heavy machine guns, positioned around the boat. The smaller life boat will become a ridged raider for boarding other craft. A team of Marine commando's are permanently stationed aboard the boat, and carry out the boarding missions. The kit does not have any internal detail and is quite visible through the windows, so I have decided to make some bits and pieces for it. Here are some progress pics.



Cheers,
Chris.

[philp]

Ok, had to go look this one up.  Revell has a couple nice boat kits in 72nd that I may have to acquire sometime.

Interior is very sharp.  Where are you getting the Bushmaster from?

[chrisonord]

Cheers Philip,
The Bushmaster barrel is a spare one that comes with the Dragon Bradley IFV kit, I have made a turret for it also.
Chris.

[Captain Canada]

Looking good so far. I love Riverine type boats. Did you ever get a chance to download that book that Jeffry put up ( somewhere....) on the site ? Loads of great pics and stories in that one.

Looking forward to seeing some more pics as you go, especially your new turret and cannon.

[Joe C-P]

Excellent details. 

[chrisonord]

These pics are for you CC  
The scratch built 25 mm deck gun, completely enclosed unit, only the ammo is loaded from below deck into the underside of the weapon system. This was part of what the Honduras navy wanted so the manufacturer sealed the loading door, and put a new one into the base of the mount.
The gun is targeted by a sight on the superstructure, and can also be fitted with an all weather camera and sighting system that fits on top of the gun housing. This can be either controlled by the gunnery officer inside the wheel house with the dedicated targeting computer, or from the open deck by a weapons officer wearing a helmet mounted sight, similar to that used in the AH-64. The gun has a rapid rate of fire and can engage sea, land and slower moving airborne targets like helicopters and slow moving fixed wing aircraft.
Cheers,
Chris.




 

[Army of One]

Chris......liked how this was going.....any more progress.....wanna see the weapon load....

[chrisonord]

I have not done too much more to this to be honest H, I need a clear bench to work on it, and at the moment it has a T-50 a mig-21 um, an su-25 um and  saab 105. Plus loads of paints and stuff I don't have room to put anywhere. I will see about doing some more to it when I get these aircraft out of the way, as none of them were/are an easy build by any stretch of the imagination
Chris.

[Captain Canada]

The turret looks awesome !

And I see what you mean by the interior....yours loks awesome !

Still no idea what to do with mine, so I might just borrow yours......

[chrisonord]

Cheers, CC,
I think I will get on with this when I have a cleared bench, so hopefully pretty soon. I want to look into installing some sort of small/short range missile system, it would have to be pretty compact as there is not a lot of room to spare on deck.
Chris.

[rickshaw]

Cheers, CC,
I think I will get on with this when I have a cleared bench, so hopefully pretty soon. I want to look into installing some sort of small/short range missile system, it would have to be pretty compact as there is not a lot of room to spare on deck.
Chris.

Mistral:



Its naval derivatives, Sinbad:



And Sadral:



All are short-range MANPADS systems.

Alternatively, you could use a handheld system like one of the Russian shoulder-fired MANPADS like the SA-7, etc. or the British Blowpipe or the American Stinger.

Another alternative which has a potential surface-to-surface secondary use is the RBS-70:



unlike most MANPADS, RBS-70 is a laser beam rider, so it goes where you tell it to go.  The RAA (Royal Australian Artillery) 16 AD Regt. has successfully operated RBS-70 from ships, as have the swedes.

All the MANPADS are though, quite short range, usually less than 5,000m.  So, what might be even more important is either a good air search radar or an IR cueing system, to alert the ship and its crew of approaching aircraft.   As long as the enemy doesn't have standoff weapons, MANPADS are a good weapon to have.

[chrisonord]

Thanks for those Rickshaw,
They have certainly opened up plenty of ideas as to what I can use. Some of those look easy enough to scratch build also.
Cheers
Chris.

[ysi_maniac]

Interior details are superb!!

[chrisonord]

I have done a bit more work to this, and for anyone else wanting to build one, I suggest you stick all the windows in before you build the cabin up. The windows are rubbish and they just stick on the inside walls, very unrealistic. The upper deck doesn't fit too well either so plenty of putty was needed. On the upper deck there is a space infront of the where the external controls are, so I might put a small S.A.M. system or a .50 cal could go.
I have also put the gun on a lower base as it was in the way of the front windows just a bit too much. The build quality of the kit is pretty bad for Revell as there are loads of pin marks in the plastic.
Cheers,
Chris.

[Weaver]

Hadn't seen this one before - love the interior detail! 

MANPADS-wise, there's also the Shorts Starstreak lighweight Multiple Launcher (LML):



Starstreak has the same advantage as RBS-70, i.e. that it's command-guided and so can attack an on-coming target.