Another new project

Since the airbrushing isn't going as well as I'd want, I started a new project (Yes, ANOTHER one) : HobbyBoss' "Russian Navy Project 955 Borei-Yuri Dolgoruky SSBN".
The main reason is that the black primer seems easiest to paint, unlike the lightgrey and white. Forums confirm that darker paint is usually easier to airbrush than lighter colours.

Since the only black model I have is the Russian submarine, I decided to start that one. After a coat of black primer, it won't be needing much more than a gloss layer and a little red on the nose.

The kit consists of 1 sprue with 24 parts, 2 hull halves and a display stand. There aren't many parts, probably because it would be a bad idea to have much detail on the outside of a submarine. They're meant to be smooth, make little noise and reflect as little sonar-waves as possible.

There is 1 photo-etch frame with some antenna-blades, a propeller and the nameplate.

The 3-step instructions are very clear. There's a coloured paintmap, even though the bulk of the thing is just plain black. The decal-sheet contains mostly the white stripes, broken up in short runs to make placement easier.

I started by giving the entire thing a thorough wash in the sink (it IS a submersible, after all) with some detergent and assembled the hull a couple of hours later.

The seem along the entire hull is noticeable, but I probably won't bother trying to completely remove it, since filling and sanding would probably remove a lot of the detail-lines. The nose wouldn't really stay together, but some creative rubber band placement persuaded it.