Crazy big model time (the styrene type). (WARNING: lots of big pics)

mrschultz

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Got the bug in me to build the Polar Lights 1/350 original series Enterprise with the lighting kit. Spent way too much money and too many hours building it, but it's done now.

Since I was a little kid in the early 70s building all the Star Trek models that came out back then I've wanted a really nice looking model of the big E, now I've got one. But it's huge, and I don't really have a place for it, oh well, it will just be in the way....

So, on with the pictures, lots of them, first one for scale, before the decals were all on:

almostdone.jpg


bridge2.jpg


moreshuttleonawire.jpg








done0.jpg

done1.jpg

done2.jpg

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done3.jpg

done4.jpg
 
And a video.

Here's some grainy video, I don't have any cameras that do well in low light.
At least it shows the blinking lights and the bussard collectors in action.
And the little switch I put in to turn off the motors and leave the lights on, the motors are kind of loud.


http://youtu.be/cGMxG5GrLJo
 
Man, that reminds me. I used my paper route money once to buy the Revel model kit of The Enterprise. It came with a genuine working grain-of-wheat bulb for the dome light which was a green lens.

I never was crazy about Star Trek. I did appreciate it's messages of humanity. I went to school with kids whose parents worked on the series, and I even encountered Leonard Nimoy at a bus stop a couple of years ago(!), but in '67 I was intrigued by the ship.

Now that sort of thing might best be strung from the ceiling, to make room for it. I might even mount posters of the galaxy above it.

I remember in '67 stringing a full kite to my bedroom ceiling, as if it were in flight, and several mobiles, and a giant promotional "beach ball" in the shape of a tube of "Vote Toothpaste". That brand didn't last very long on the market.
 
Say, I wonder. Have they ever offered an "Enterprise" kite?
 
Now that sort of thing might best be strung from the ceiling, to make room for it. I might even mount posters of the galaxy above it.

That was my thought when I started thinking about this project (before I decided to get the lighting kit), but to hang it would require some serious modification of the model, there's just no good place to attach wires. And getting power into it for the lighting would be harder.

The other issue with hanging it is you never see the top, and certainly wouldn't be able to remove the top dome and see the little bridge in there. And the shuttle bay, I didn't glue the shuttle down inside the bay like most people just so I could do stuff like put it on a wire as in the pictures.

Having it on a lamp stand does make it easy to move around, easier than the little stand that came in the kit.
 
Say, I wonder. Have they ever offered an "Enterprise" kite?

The shape would probably be good for a kite, my guess would be someone has build one....

Google keeps autocorrecting to "kit", so it's hard to search for "kite", I do see some next generation enterprise kites, but no original series ones.
 
When Google does that, I try using quotes. Then I get the "Do you mean "..." result, else no results, or the results without Quotes result.

Hey mrschultz, you remind me of Jeff Pyle. Do you know who he is?
 
When Google does that, I try using quotes. Then I get the "Do you mean "..." result, else no results, or the results without Quotes result.

Hey mrschultz, you remind me of Jeff Pyle. Do you know who he is?

Quotes used to work so well in Google, last few years less and less, seems like the search engine just ignores half of what you put in these days. They are all getting like that.

Really annoys me when it happens on Amazon, they include the text of the reviews when you are searching for something, so many times you get tons of items that have nothing to do with what you were searching for.

No idea who Jeff Pyle is.
 
Oh well mrschultz. Mr. Pyle is a Penn State representative.

And Google has gotten very seedy lately. They used to be spot on.
It's a shame.
 
oh and I love that lit up shuttle bay it looks more realistic with it in place
especially with the captains private shuttle leaving it
 
i'll raise a glass of tranya to that! and the tiny balok on the viewscreen is hilariously awesome.

hey, how about some shots in the dark?

and do the nacelle lights swirl or something...? (EDIT: nvm, i’d missed the video 1st time around)
 
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Those nacelle "Bussard Collectors" do look motorized but the blinking lights make it hard to pick up on the rotating action in the video. Ditto on the shuttle bay F, it looks great. The HD versions of the show are on MeTv every Saturday night. The shots of the "Beauty Model" original Enterprise have been replaced by cartoony looking CGI. So have 90% of the special effects. Even the theme song has been replaced by a rather forced and shrill HD audio version. All of these blasphemous changes to the original Star Trek were supposed to make the show look and sound better for the Blue Ray release. Thanks "mrschultz"... your shots look better...C_S
 
I have all the Blu-Rays, and the original effects shots are nearly unwatchable on a big screen. So they had to do something with them. Unfortunately the original film from the effects shots was thrown away, so they couldn't go back and scan each element in HD, the only surviving film is the composite print made with a printing technique that resulted in very grainy images.

On the Blu-Ray you have the option of watching the new effects or the original ones, I've done both and it's really hard to watch the old effects on anything larger than a 24 inch screen. But the rest of the show, shot on 35mm film, looks really fantastic, so many faint colors that only show up on the Blu-Ray.

For the next generation they saved all the film, so they have been able to scan all the model and other effects shots in HD and remake those shots with only minor use of CGI.

I have an idea to dampen the sound of the bussard collector motors, build a sleeve that goes where the motor is now and attach the motor to the sleeve with soft rubber tube, the motors are fairly silent when out of the model but the model acts like a sounding board when they are in.
 
Whisper Jets........

So quiet you can hear Shatner's hair falling out. Hey, Is that rubber tubing? What are the dimensions of that motor/tubing?
 
So quiet you can hear Shatner's hair falling out. Hey, Is that rubber tubing? What are the dimensions of that motor/tubing?

The motor and gearbox are 12mm diameter, I'm guessing the tubing is 1/2 inch, maybe slightly smaller. I just clipped off some random sizes from my random tubing drawer in one of the chem labs at work and that one worked the best.
 
Just looked up MrSchultz' recent projects, and I'm loving this one in particular: (anyone remember what this is?)

test1.jpg
test4.jpg
test5.jpg


Although MrSchultz (and many others) have built all kinds of even more-detailed, elaborate models, somehow this relatively-simpler one is super-evocative for me.

Not just instantly taking me all the way back to the 60's so to speak, but also the mechanism itself still holds a kind of commanding presence for me... a lurking menace one might say.
 
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