I picked up a Modelcraft 1/350 Wisconsin thinking it was a Trumpeter offering. I'm told by some that it is a rebox. Regardless, I thought I'd share with you folks what I found in the box. Please keep in mind I work mostly in 1/35 armor, so my impressions may not be accurate.
The box art depicts Wisconsin in WWII fit, but the box contains parts for the modern fit only. A quick look see seems to indicate a pretty tall order of work and scratch building to convert this kit to an earlier fit.
The instructions are bilingual, line drawings in black and white, 12 pages comprising 14 steps. They follow what appears to be a logical assembly sequence. There are color call outs throughout, but the colors given are basic (ie. black, red etc.) with no color chart or FS numbers provided.
Two decal sheets are provided, one is specific to the New Jersey and the other having numbers and names for all the Iowa class ships including the two incompleted. This leads me to believe that if you've seen their New Jersey, you've seen this kit.
The kit itself, let's start off with it's big. I measure the hull at 30 and 3/16 inches in length. That's a little short by my refs and math, but it's close. The kit is molded in three colors, red, dark gray and black. It has full or water line hull optional parts. There are nine sprues of parts as well as three deck sections,three hull parts and two metal rods. Parts are cleanly molded with no flash. Being as I don't work in this scale much I'll say the details seem a bit soft, but may be okay for the scale. I assumed the metal rods were drive shafts for the outboard screws, but plastic parts are shown in the instructions and the metal rods aren't mentioned at all. The kit comes with two helicopters, (in the army they'd be Blackhawks) made from six parts with the option of deployed or stowed main rotors.
My impression is that the masts and radars are heavy for the scale and would probably look better with photoetch replacements. There are no railings and ladders are simple at best, once again photoetch parts will certainly improve the kit.
There you go, a tanker's first look at a big ship kit. I'm kinda excited about it.