The introduction of Trumpeter's Sovremenny class destroyer and WEM´s etch parts for it made that itch even worse, and I decided to do something, in spite of the backlog of kits in the cellar. So one day I happened upon the older Trumpeter 1/200th scale kit of a Chinese destroyer, offered for little more than a song on E-bay. I got it and decided to use it as a test bed for techniques of improving a kit before progressing to the Sovremenny (which I still intend to do). I got the kit in August of 2003, wrote a preview and got started a little later. Being rather lazy in these matters I didn't write a building log, which I now regret, as I can only go by my photos taken during the build to retrace what I did. 

Now modern warship modelers include some of the most gifted guys I can imagine. Seeing the work displayed on this site just took my breath away. Especially those guys that rig tiny ships in 1/700th scale with dozens of gossamer-like thread and even man them with figures, which must be about a millimeter tall make me feel very small. Now that is far beyond my abilities, so I felt happy with the larger scale. I did some googling on the Harbin and found a set of pictures, mostly taken during a fleet visit to U.S. Waters. But there wasn´t really a lot of references readily available. But you could see some details, and man what a lot of detail a modern ship has! I quickly realized how simplified this kit was and easily envisioned the Chinese dad with his son sailing this model with a simple remote control on a pond (the pond probably populated by ducks destined to become crispy #54 one day). The instructions showed how to install a simple R/C. Much was simplified in order to get the thing to float and make it more sturdy in handling. So the stern bay was only hinted at and sealed with transparent styrene, and the railings were way oversized. I decided to improve whatever came into my mind and see where it took me.
 

Next came the stern bay. In the original ship it houses a towed sonar device called a VDS (Variable Depth Sonar), a thing looking like a blimp airship or a barrage balloon. That was present, but not the deck and surroundings. So I made those from evergreen styrene and mounted it into the ship´s stern. That done, I mounted the deck pieces which I had painted beforehand.

And yet in buying them I easily spent twice what I paid for the kit originally (it´s even worse with the Revell S-100 Schnellboot, as I've bought WEM stuff there ...) I used the PE here and there in detailing, where I found it handy, but most work was done with hobby knife, drill bit, dremel, stretched sprue and Evergreen. At times I had several dozens of subassemblies lying in a box in various stages of progress. I replaced the barrels of the main guns (130 mm) by aluminum tubing and opened the other barrels with a hot needle. Quite a lot of work went into the radar's, first by cleaning them up and trying to make them more realistic. I added some stretched sprue framework at the main radar and tried to duplicate the radar dish with wire mesh. Another challenge was the funnel:  I improved the exhausts and replaced them with metal tubing; the very prominent cooling grills were sawed out and replicated with wire mesh. I also added some wire antennas – in the end the funnel took some hours of work.

The various bulleyes and windows are only hinted at in the kit, so I drilled out the first and sawed out the latter, adding new frames from brass or styrene where possible. To me the bridge windows of a ship are its  face“, and when I opened them up the ship started coming to life. There´s also a row of windows at the bow side of the hangar which I tackled at that point. 

All this took place over the entire year 2004 with many interruptions. My modeling room was cleaned out when a new heating was installed, that alone took some six weeks in all – but now I've got much more space to clutter! I also built some other smaller projects in between. And I had to obtain brass anchor chain. The PE chain in my generic PE set wasn´t the real deal. So it took several months and some trips to the only shop in Kassel that could provide the stuff until I had it. Meanwhile I know another shop, thankfully. But the lack of the chain was of course a great (and lame) excuse not to continue on the project – ever played those little cowardly games yourself, anyone? 

In the end (in December)  I actually got started and the whole process went nearly like a breeze. I had bought a big magnifying light in spring. Without that, I just can´t model any more, and surely it wouldn´t have been possible for me to work with the PE without it. I could actually see what I was doing at any given moment and felt I had some control on the process.

The HMV PE is very fine and easy to work with. I used both more and less viscous CA glue, but in the end, the less viscous sufficed. I had found some CA applicators in my practice from the time I used a CA-based dental material, and they were just great for applying the CA. 

I attached the piece of railing at a point and worked from that on, applying droplets of the stuff until everything was firm. Clipping was done with a 9X X-ACTO on a glass plate and with small bent and straight scissors. The whole affair had been sprayed grey prior to working with it, and I used tweezers and appropriately rounded pencils or knives as templates for curving and bending it. There are some curves and bends in the railing, and although not perfect, I was rather happy with the results in the end. I also rigged the ship at that stage. I just felt overwhelmed by the pics with those myriads of lines runing hither and thither. In the end, I looked at several pics of other models and rigged what I thought looked nice and might even make some sense. For rigging, I used ultra-fine copper wire from model railroad wires. The single copper strands are very thin - yet much tougher than sprue. I could even make knots and otherwise secured them with CA. Later on they were painted.

Murphy´s law struck when I was nearly through: I had started with the 2-bar railing on the superstructures and intended to use the 3-bar only on the main deck level (it might just as well be correct the other way round ...). So far so stupid. In the end, I lacked about two pieces of 2-bar railing to complete the tour around the ship on the first floor, so to speak. So I had to order another PE fret at another 23 EURO. I should have measured better in the first place, and now I might build yet another destroyer, railingwise. 

When the additional fret had arrived, I completed work on the upper levels. On the main deck, I used the 3-bar railing. To simulate the netting or canvas or whatever is sewed to the railing around the helipad, I used Kristal Kleer. It might just as well look completely different in reality, but I fashioned it somehow the way the kit parts were, just finer. 

After drying I sprayed it lightly with Humbrol radome tan from the inboard side, so that the color shone through and you could still see the grey railing frames from the outside. Installing the remaining railing (once around the ship) took about an hour.

Then it was time to do a tour around the ship for paint touchups this way and that. After that I used Flat Future (Future and Tamiya Acrylic Clear Flat Base) to give the ship a flat coat and hide the gloss areas from the CA glue. Now this works really very fine for me and it´s my favorite final coat currently. And really, really finally I filled the windows and bulleyes with Kristal Kleer and let that dry to give the impression of glass windows.
 

I only found one webpage of a built-up model of this kit, by a German R/C modeler who did a great job: 

And here´s a very nice model of the Harbin´s successor, the Zhenzhen, built for nearly the same reason as I built mine.