I-58. The tale of the persistent rigger.
Once upon a time, at the Imperial Japanese Shipyard in Kure, there was a young ambitious and promising rigger. One day the Port Admiral approached him, and asked, if he was willing tog try the challenging task of building the cage antenna for the navy's new submarine.
The ambitious young rigger didn't hesitate for a moment, accepted the challenge and immediately set about making copper rings for the antenna.
He then stretched an antenna wire between two large blocks of wood and began fastening the rings to it.
Once all the rings were in place, he added further antenna wires parallel to the first one. To form the ends of the cage, he crossed the antenna wires, glued them together at their meeting point and then cut away the excess.
The proud rigger now hung his antenna up between the mast and the bridge of the submarine.
-Woe and betide! Not only had he failed to stretch the wires equally, so that some of them were slack, while others were tight like fiddlestrings. In trying to stretch the antenna to make it look better, he had also bent the mainmast!
At this moment the port admiral happened to be passing by. Upon seeing the antenna his brow furrowed and he started breathing quickly and heavily, while his face assumed the colour of anti fouling paint.
He opened his mouth and uttered a number of those words that are not suited for the tender ears of children, whereupon he explained to the rigger that such an antenna was unworthy of the Imperial Japanese Navy in general and of the Naval Shipyard in Kure in particular.
He then went on to say that if a better looking antenna was not set up tomorrow he would contact the Naval staff and then muttered something about the salt mines in Manchuria.
No ambitious young rigger lets himself be put back by a minor admonition like that.
He drilled holes in two large pieces of plastic, that he clamped to two pieces of wood, set up at a suitable distance from one another.
He then threaded four antenna wires through the holes and tried to stretch them equally. New rings were then fitted between the wires.
When he loosened the new cage antenna he saw that it was only slightly less uneven than the first one.
"Brute force and violence will solve most problems", he said to himself and proceeded to make a new mainmast from steel.
The new antenna was then stretched between the bridge and the new mainmast, using the biggest crane of the shipyard. (The crane looks a bit like the table lamps some modellers use, but this is of course a mere coincidence.)
When the Port Admiral saw the new antenna, he said that it looked alright at a distance on a foggy day, and then went on to talk about his gout.
Nobody had received such high praise from the Port Admiral, since he remarried twelve years ago.
The young rigger became the local hero, married the prettiest girl in town and lived happily ever after.
Edit: This is Afv Club's kit in 1:350. A very nice kit. Apart from the rigging the kit is built straight from the box.
