Just for a bit of fun:
Dear Mr. Trumpeter.
I am currently building your rather large model of HMS Hood. I will leave the reasons why you chose to ignore offers of help from the Hood Association, the same advice that you took most willingly for your renditions of the Hood in other scales. It would save people like me a whole heap of time, scalpel blades and stick plasters.
An other thing that I am having serious trouble considering is why you in your wisdom chose to have half of the fittings on the deck moulded onto the deck and the other half as loose parts that are to be placed on the deck afterwards. I am well aware that the parts that need to be added have much more detail and many are made of several parts. However. If we take a look at the boat deck. or as you call it up deck, there are wooden planked sections and steel plate sections. Both of which are peppered with hatches, stair way openings and the like. So. We paint the planks, paint the steel decking and then have to use two (so far) rolls of masking tape to mask said decks off so as to be able to paint the aforementioned sticky up bits.
Why could you not have just given us a nice flat deck which we could then paint with ease and there after add all the sticky up bits as and when we get to that bit.
Not only would this have made the parts count impressively high, which most modellers love as much as you manufacturers do. (thus not needing to over engineer things just to bump the parts count up). It would have given the builder, and indeed yourselves ample chances to correct all the incorrect shields and the like and made the after market guys really glad as people would not need to butcher the kit to add the PE replacements. Or as I did make the parts from plastic sheet.
The agony of all this is two days to mask off the deck detail so we can paint the darn thing, then maximum halv an hour to paint then an hour or two to peel it all off again. Then IF we are lucky, the masking does not pull the paint up. (That is always an exciting part. Its like Christmas every time. Did you get the kit you wanted or more bloody socks).
Still I am enjoying the challenge and as I have to wait for paint to be sent over, I have a bit of time on my hands.
While I have you. What do you say to doing the Ark Royal in the same scale? You know you want to.
An alternative could be Do the next big ship in a scale that every one can understand. I challenge you to be the first to do a WWII battleship in 1/72 scale. I was going to write 1/35, but then that would be just daft. However 1/48 id becoming a very popular scale these days as it covers both aircraft and Military. So Mr. T what about that. A 1/48 Ark Royal. You could even do it as a part work selling the parts in sections.
This would also mean that you will have to do models of all the aircraft and service vehicles as well..... Better scratch that idea. My bad.
Yours cordially.
As you might have guessed the two days of masking have driven me totally round the bend.
I almost considered saying bugger it and buying a couple of paint brushes and hand painting the darn thing.......LOL