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Some pictures of the completed model. This is my third and probably final attempt
at building one of these kits, the second one I built a few years ago was very
good, and I learned from building it, but this one is awesome! and is my pride
and joy with more parts made accurate than the previous two as these kits are
well known to have lots of inaccuracies, I wanted to take it to the next level
and I set out to make every detail accurate to the filming model and fully
light it up (this did not happen) as
the amount of time and setbacks like having to re-glue the warp engines to the
secondary hull three times because they kept sagging with gravity and almost
made me give up on it, and then I lost interest in it for months as sometimes
it was like taking 1 step forward then take 2-3 steps backL, from start to finish this build has taken me
about 10 months with lots of gaps in between sometimes months in a row so
overall about 18 months, Now back to the build the horrible panels all over it
have now gone! This task took a lot of time to complete!, the (smoothy) kit would
have saved a hell of a lot of time, In the build I have used some DLM parts
which are: main deflector dish blue /clear
impulse engine + Chrystal / lower sensor
unit / warp engine buzzards / B&C decks with bridge / photon torpedoes /
VIP lounge / and the 2 detail parts each side of the cargo bay door, otherwise
all the other changes are my own which include adding the officers mess then drilling
out all of the windows and the arboretum which has miniature trees & rocks
with scale figures to, other parts made accurate are the round docking ports
which are now the correct size and the rectangle docking port on the side of
the saucer section, I drilled out the tiny red widows above the hanger bay door
and lit them, the warp engines now have spot lights on the front of them, I
removed all the phaser blobs and made new ones as the old ones were a little
too big then added some to the underside of the secondary hull and the area
above the cargo bay door and now it has the full set as in the movies, I painted
the 1st coat onto the model using enamel matt white as the base
colour then I applied the second coat using Tamiya pearl white, then I tried to
save time and use Aztec decals instead of masking templates which looked ok but
started to peel at the edges and corners so I had to take it all off again,
finally I used the Aztec dummy masking templates and applied the top/last coat
using enamel flat white put on very lightly with my airbrush and it looks
impressive, this is my second attempt at painting the Aztec as my first attempt
was on my playmates JJ Abram’s Enterprise model and I was impressed with it, I
have installed a circuit board in the base to make the navigation and strobe lights
to flash correctly, a 6 pin surface mount screw type connector was used mounted
onto 6” metal pole/tube so the model is detachable from the base which also houses
the 9v battery & two round on/off rocker switches, the base is custom made from
a solid hard wood then I had the brass plaque engraved especially for it, during
the build I have changed my mind a few times like after priming it I painted
parts in shiny gloss white enamel which looked good but then I went and cut out
the kits B/C deck after reshaping the VIP windows then the impulse engines
followed by the arboretum windows, the wiring was a pain as I found the
flexibleness of the wire to stiff and a little too thick for some areas of the
model, the wire was from an electronics store and the thinnest there was (hook
up) wire I think, The red-green-yellow navigation lights are 1mm fibre optic
cable glued to LED’s from inside which allow the fibre optic cable to protrude
from the model to give them a much better scale, the white strobe lights are
1.8mm LED’s with just the tips protruding from the surface of the model.
Decals used are PNT & JT graphics.
The model now proudly sits in my glass
display cabinet away from dust and direct sunlightJJJJJ.
looking back now I should of made the hatches
on the underside of the saucer the correct shape and size along with other
minor inaccuracies but I now have the much larger 1/350 polar lights kit by (round2)
to build one day, and I have the Aztec dummy templates & the clear DLM impulse
engine part to go with itJ.
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| VIP lounge with figures |
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