Member's models - Flower class corvettes by Paul and Dean.

          Dean found his model kit while browsing in a model store and was immediately attracted to it, especially since he had a couple of friends who had served in them.
          He started building it and planned to have it as a static model, for which the kit was intended. Before he'd gone very far he joined the club and was influenced to turn it into a radio-controlled sailing model. Dean says he found the kit to be an easy build although some of the parts were not a good fit and needed some rework. Help was always available in the club when he had a question. The only things he added were metal stanchions to replace the plastic ones that were supplied with the kit.
          Painting of the big parts, including the hull, was done with an airbrush, and the small parts by hand. He went on line to get the paint scheme for the vessel that the model finally represented, HMCS Brantford.
          The 7.2V NiMH battery, motor and ESC were all purchased from Skycraft. Before the superstructure was fitted Dean made up a battery compartment to ensure the battery could not move. Lead shot was used for ballast. The radio is a pistol-grip Spektrum DX3 but Dean plans to change to a stick-type Spektrum DX6.
           The model sails well and looks good on the water.

Member's models - Flower class corvettes by Paul and Dean.

Footnote:

HMCS La Malbaie was built by Midland Industries in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, commissioned on 28 April 1942, and paid off on 28 June 1945.

HMCS Brantford was built by Midland Shipyards in Midland, Ontario, commissioned on 15th May 1942 and paid off on 17th August 1945. She was converted in 1950 into the whale catcher, Olympic Arrow.

         To have two club members find out by chance that they are building the same model kit and then work to complete them at the same time, must be unusual. That was the case for Paul and Dean building their models of a Flower-class corvette. The ships were known as such because those built for the Royal Navy were named after flowers. The Royal Canadian Navy chose to name them after Canadian towns.

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         Paul built his model of the HMCS La Malbaie as a tribute to his father-in-law, Lieutenant-Commander Charles Edmonds (Chuck), who served on her from 1941 until 1944 out of Halifax and St. John’s.
          The La Malbaie measured 205 ft in length and 33 ft in beam. She was crewed initially by 45 seamen but this rose to 90 as more equipment and jobs were added during the war. She was successful in protecting many merchant marine vessels as they delivered goods and supplies to Great Britain from North America.
          In 2005 Chuck passed away and his sons and daughters, as a thank you to Paul for his participation in his care, provided him the funds to purchase the kit. The original kit was made by Matchbox in 1979 and included over 1200 parts. Paul bought one, previously owned but not opened, from a gentleman in Halifax. He started in on the build putting the hull together and adding a radio-controlled motor along with electronic speed controller, rudder, servo and receiver.
          Paul then ran into big issues with painting the model. At 1/72 scale things are really small and paint applied with a brush can only be described as globs. He didn’t like it at all so put the kit aside for three or four years while he studied painting. He looked into airbrushing and asked all and sundry about how it all works. He bought an airbrush and taught himself to use it (eventually) and got the kit off the shelf once again. In the meantime, Matchbox sold their plastic kit division to Revell and Revell reissued the kit in a Platinum version that came with photo-etched parts, wooden parts and brass pieces too. He managed to get this kit from one of the members of a neighbouring model boat club when he found the thought of building it daunting. That gave Paul spare parts for the ones he messed up, extra figures to staff the deck and then all that beautiful wood, and the finely crafted photo-etched parts.
          Another two winters and the model was complete. Then he realized that most damage to model boats is caused by moving the boat from one place to another so he built a storage box complete with the camouflage paint.