Archive: 1:350 Scale Enterprise NCC-1701 Refit (Paul)
This version of the famous starship is the one seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The model was lighted with a lighting kit built by Trekmodeler.
I also used photo etch details made by Paragrafix.
Finally starting the process of installing lights... Here's the "guts" of the secondary hull. It's composed of the bottom of the secondary hull , the assembled shuttle bay, assembled arboretum, and the port and starboard sides of the hull. I have only taped the sides in place at this point, as positioning may need to be adjusted when the top of the hull and the "stern" (shuttle bay doors, etc) is put in place. By the way - in the shuttle bay, there are three tiny crew members - see if you can spot them. There's also one crew member peeking out the arboretum windows.
Assembly of the secondary hull... Lots of tape to hold this together while it dries! There are seams that will need to be filled with putty and sanded. Also, you can see one design flaw that exists in the Polar Lights kit... The base of the pylons do not fit perfectly together. The only way to get them to fit together without a gap would be to sand down the lower pylon pieces underneath until they were quite thin, but that would very likely weaken those pieces and thus the pylons themselves. So, the best route is just to close the gap as much as possible and fill with putty. The neck is also assembled, but I'm not attaching it to the hull until I've also done some detail work on it... The halves have a pretty visible seam (not visible in the photo) and I will putty and sand that as well. The secondary hull is very much the most difficult part of this model to assemble.
These photos are of this build plus two others that are part of the wave. Here I am applying aztec decals to the secondary hulls. In the background you can see the warp engines waiting patiently to be attached. It is much easier to decal the subsections prior to assembly. The application of the aztec decals is one of the longest, most laborious parts of the whole build.
Aztec decals applied to the top of the saucer. Aztecs and marking decals applied to the secondary hull.
Completed.
