End of Summer Wrap-Up

With summer coming to an end, it seemed like a good time to catch up on my blogging. It has been a couple months since my last post, mainly because I didn't have a lot of free time during this past summer. My wife usually keeps me busy outside with yardwork during the summer and this year was no exception, but I was also kept really busy at work. So, my hobby time was really limited this summer.

That said, I did do a few hobby related things this summer and I'll be adding posts about them over the next week. Here is a quick rundown of what to expect; I obtained three 1/700 scale Chinese Navy Type 022 missile boats, I went through the Sailpower rules, I picked up some troops for the Bolt Action rules, and read through a couple hobby-related books.

I thought I start out by posting some photos and information about the Chinese missile boats.

The Type 022 missile boat (NATO designation Houbei class) is a small (around 140 ft) catamaran armed with 8 surface-to-surface missile and a 6-barrel 30mm gun. The boats first appeared in 2004, designed as replacements for the Chinese Osa class missile boats. Original estimates were that the Chinese would build around 100 of these ships, but only 60 have been completed. This is probably due to a change in focus for the Chinese Navy to multi-role ships.

The models I've got are the 1/700 scale versions created as part of the Takara Ships of the World, series 5. There were two versions of the missile boat in the series; a standard navy grey version and a camouflaged version. When the series first came out in 2006 I wanted to get several of the boats, but I procrastinated on purchasing them. I just figured they would always be easily available. That was a mistake on my part and as time went on, the boats became more scarce on eBay and the price increased. Luckily I was able to find (and win) three boats and get them for a reasonable price (although not all at one time).

My Takara 1/700 scale Type 022 Chinese missile boats

As you can see from the photo, the ship models are pretty nice and the paint job isn't too bad. I need to mount the ships and weather them a bit, but otherwise they should work pretty well. I do need to see about changing the number on one of the camouflaged boats, just in case anyone looks real close.

A low-angle view, where you can see the numbers for the camo boats are the same

The scale seems to be pretty good and the models should fit in pretty nicely with my other ships. You can see how they look next to a Skytrex Osa missile boat.

A Skytrex Osa with the Type 022 boats

An Osa (left) and Type 022 (right) in profile