Any reviews for (Trumpeter) 1/350 U.S.S. Indianapolis Heavy Cruiser (1944) New Variant?

Captain,

I purchased the Academy kit in Dec and haven't started it yet. I am going to build it for the 45 GB and will start it soon. I don't know anything about the Trumpeter kit but reading online reviews it seems to compare. The only complaint I can find is the flag has 50 stars instead of 48. The molds look very nice and things like the guns are molded in black. There are no deck seams, which is a nice change. The length of the kit is exactly the same length as my 1/350 Arizona, which was surprising to me. I had no idea the Indy was as long as the Arizona.

I looked for a PE kit for it, but decided against it. I can't justify paying more for PE than I did for the kit itself.

I'm excited to start on it and will likely display it in heavy seas.

Steve

Thanks for the response.  Was just looking to see if there were any major differences between the Trumpeter 1944 and 1945 versions of the Indy. Was thinking about picking up the Trumpeter (1945) version on Amazon (currently selling for $39.12 w/ free Prime 2-day shipping) but wanted to be sure that the upgrade wasn't a major enhancement to the model. I didn't want to drop the dough and then later regret not buying the upgraded version (which happens to be about $30 more).

Here's a review of the Trumpeter kit: www.modelwarships.com/.../tsm-review.html .

The reviewer was pretty complimentary - but the kit does seem to suffer from a pretty big error in the shape of its stern. Whether that's an important consideration is, of course, up to the individual modeler.

Here's the same reviewer's evaluation of the Academy kit: http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/ships/ca/ca-35/350-acy/acy-review.html .

Looks like Academy did a better job with the stern. But both of them look like well-detailed kits.

Good luck.