NCC-1701D Enterprise, Formerly Christmas tree edition
project start: early 2002
Years ago, a friend gave me this kit as a birthday present. It is also a very
large, and when completed undoubtedly impressive kit. Thus, whatever I decide
to do with it, I feel I should make sure I do it well. For years though, the
real problem was what to do with it in the first place. I knew that once
completed, I would have nowhere to display it. Building it, then throwing it
out was obviously not an option, but I saw no real alternative, and so the kit
sat unused in some dusty corner.
Then, the friend in question went and had her first child, and I had a sudden
case of inspiration. Children usually don't sleep in completely darkened rooms,
so I figured I would turn this kit into the most impressive nightlight ever
seen. There's plenty of room in the engine nacelles to house a pair of miniature
TLs, and I should be able to wire up the required electronics to make it work,
and hide them somewhere in the kit or display stand.
So far, so good. However (watch it, this is where trouble starts), I realised
the engines aren't the only thing that lights up on the "real" thing. There's
also the windows on the hull and soucer, which have bright lights behind them.
In my folly, I decided to light up the whole ship.
Lighting up the whole ship is not fundamentally difficult. All that is required
is to stuff the whole shebang with LEDs, and open the windows. That is, open
all 2500 windows. There's some strength in numbers, and I'm beginning to feel
outnumbered by about 2500 to 1, which is, erm..erm , not good. Add to that, that
the plastic this bird is made of is very thick, very soft, and very easy to melt,
in other words, will turn a 0.3mm drill into a 1mm blob-of-blubbery-plastic
coated piece of metal, which is really unsuited to making small holes. As a
bonus, when the drill isn't melting its way through the plastic, it throws up
buckets full of staticaly charged plastic curls, which stick to everything.
As can be seem from the picture to the right, I got about halfway through the
bottom half of the soucer section before despair set in.
I decided I needed a better trick to make this work.
First thing I tried was to arrange for water cooling. I bought me a flexible
drill shaft in order to keep the electrical bits away from the water, shoved
the plastic under water in a shallow basin, and went to work, and learned a
new definition of the phrase splatter movie. The drill head moved, and every
inch of me got splattered with water. Aside from being wet, all this water
flying around made sure I couldn't see what I was doing any more. I then
tried a deeper basin, making sure all rotating parts were completely
submerged. This worked better (for one thing, I didn't get wet anymore), but
the water in the immediate vicinity of the drill head started to whirl, which
once again ruined visibility. I think I'm close to a working solution here,
but it needs further refinements I can't figure out (yet).
With water cooling abandoned until the next flash of inspiration, I tried
using a wash. After all, most of the windows will not be lit, but very dark.
Problem is, there an enormous amount of contrast between the almost white
hull of the ship, and the almost black of the darkened windows. As a result,
the wash turned most of the surrounding area sort of dirty grey, which is
entirely against Starfleet regulations. I've never been good at washes, but
I can see them working with a darker tone over a similar base colour. In
this situation though, I fear its hopeless.
If anyone reads this, and has some idea of how make these windows work without
sacrificing what remains of my sanity, please help.
2011-06-01
Yes, it's been that long. And no, nobody came to my rescue about the windows. I've
had it, this thing has been taking up space waiting for inspiration that just isn't
going to arrive long enough. It has also become obvious that cutting channels for the
wiring is going to cause irreparable damage to the engine pylons. I went in over my
depth, and it's time to admit defeat. Also, the child mentioned earlier by now stands
about as tall as my shoulder, and is far more interested in horses than starships.
Plan B was obviously called for. Despite it's technical flaws, I think this kit can be
built up into a fair representation of NCC-1701-D, if not for point blank scrutiny, then
at least as decoration on a wall somewhere. Recent experience with
Viper 1 has also shown me a good way of
mounting ships like this on walls. Plan B thus became sealing up all the holes I'd drilled
so far, and building the ship as a wallhanger.
I've glued up the saucer sections, and filled in the open windows. The latter will take
some more work, but the fit of the parts looks set to provide sufficient entertainment
that the anount of work added by window filling will not be disproportionate. The secondary
hull sections have also been joined, and fitted with a threaded rod for mounting on the wall.
The large deflector dish will remain at least semi-transparent, so I've sprayed the inside
of the secondary hull silver, as well as the insides of the engine nacelles. Remarkable
how fast this kit takes on the rough shape of a starship when you're not trying any
silly tricks with it..
2011-06-13
Turns out this kit can be built really fast. Granted, I've had to tweak, fiddle and fudge
just about every join so far, but properly coerced, they'll mostly line up. All the saucer
bits are now stuck together, and whatever the parts between the engineering hull and the
saucer are called are also fixed to the saucer. I don't expect much building effort there
anymore. I've mounted the lower halves of the engine nacelles on the pylons, mostly to
have some way of grabbing hold of them once I get down to the fidgity bits with the transparent
sides and domes. The sides of the engines have been sprayed with clear blue, while the domes
underwent some surgery. Some brilliant engineer at AMT figured smack center on the front of
the domes was a great place to put big, deep ejector markings. Various grades of sandpaper
and Future were required before these were again workable. Once the Future has cured, I'll get
down to spraying the transparent red parts, and finish assembly. I've slightly redesigned the
wall mount I used on the Viper to account for the rather different geometry of this ship, and
work on the mount should also start soon.
2011-10-30
Assembly is all but complete, as can be seen from the picture on the right. The rod for wall
mounting is in the very same location as the intended spot for the display base that came with
the kit. I have no idea how that was ever supposed to work out. The centre of gravity of the
kit far to the front of that position. In fact, the ship is so badly out of balance that I'm
convinced that without countermeasures, it will either tear the mounting rod out of the hull, or
out of the mount, with destructive results. After some head scratching, I found a solution: well
over a pound (7980 grains, to be exact) of lead hidden in the engine nacelles puts the center of
gravity almost on top of the rod, although still slightly to the front. It also means the ship
now feels like it weighs a ton. Save for some very minor finishing, it's now ready for cleaning
and painting.
2011-12-31
It seems this kit is determined to fight me all the way. I had the ship finished and cleaned rather
quickly, but masking the transparencies proved a nuisance. The kit is very unwieldy due to the
weight, and the fact that not all parts take kindly to having to support that weight, and complex
curves that seem to be mandatory in Federation design. Primer went on without further issues, as did
the blue for the sensor rings. Unfortunately, said blue also came off again at the slightest
provocation. As a result, Tamiya paints are now banished from my home. I cleaned off the faulty
blue, and re-shot with an old rattlecan from the local DIY (I could have used any number of blue
paints of course, but at this point I was feeling a bit unsubtle). Once dry, this blue coat had
to be masked off. To my good fortune, the width of the rings happens to match the width of two
types of masking tape, so this should have been a breeze. It would have been too, if not for the fact
that the recessed sensor rings are not quite constant in width, which gave the tape plenty of opportunity
for clinging where it shouldn't and not clinging where it should. Still, I got it taped, and am now
in the process of painting it very pale grey. The first coat alone took up the better part of a jar
of paint, and I'm guessing at least three coats will be needed. That would mean the three jars I
bought should be sufficient, unless something nasty comes up. With this kit, that's a big 'unless'..
Work on the wall mount is also proceeding. The various bits of wood have been joined, and I'm almost
done with the basic shape. At that point my only remaining bandsaw blade broke, so I'll have to find a
replacement before I can continue.
2012-10-07
Light grey, as it turns out, didn't give the right effect on a model this big, so I switched to white.
This would have been a lot better, had I managed to finish it, but after the first jar of paint had
gone on the kit, the masking tape started to peel away from the transparancies. Probably has something
to do with the ribbing on those transparencies preventing the tape from gettin a good grip. OK, fine,
I stripped the tape, and then parked the kit for a bit. Available time had run out again, and taping
this ship is a bitch. Some time later (OK half a year, I'd been busy with other stuff) I wanted
to resume work, only to find that the kit had collapsed under it's own weight. The soucer section
had separated from the secondary hull, and given the degree to which those parts do not fit together,
I didn't really see how I was going to get those two to stay together. That did it. This kit had been
little more than a constant source of frustration, and I don't even like the TNG Enterprise.
Trashcan time...
