Yeah, you're making great progress there Mach71!

Very good looking, mach!

Thanks. That was my 1st model I built when I started building again. I think it was 

2004? 

I sanded everything and got a coat of white primer. 

Here it is at the energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy.

The instructions call for the main body to be silver. It always looked 

grey/white to me.

Hey wow, thanks guys!!! 

I was thinking of going with USN ghost grey but trust me I got plenty of IJN around! I'll check those colour chips since actually Mitsubishi IJN grey was slightly different than Nakajima IJN grey.  Guess that's one of the perils of reading too much about Japanese aircraft...

Mach71- beautiful job on the old gal there. If mine comes out half as well I'll be delighted. 

Kearsarge: Lol, I used to watch the show on a old Philco that's smaller than my monitor growing up. And even if I watch the remastered HD episodes the old fuzzy grainy look is how I remember it in my mind..... 

Everyone's TV has a slightly different shade of grey for the E. You can make your self neurotic fretting about getting the precise shade.

Gamera, Mach71 nice work.

Just saw the remastered TOS episode where the Romulan BOP made it's debut ("Balance of Terror"). The remastering really did the design justice. 

Over at hobbytalk Gary Kerr has posted the actual color chips that the restoration

team used for the Enterprise. They discovered these through some acheology and finding 

the original colors as overspray in hidden areas.

The consensus is.......

Grey!

Ok, anticlamatic. The exact grey is a medium grey with a VERY slight green tint.

This is my PL Enterprise I built over 10 years ago.

It's ghost grey and a shade too light and a bit too tanish.

Here is a a side shot from the NASM taken last month.

The lighting is bad, and it's shot through glass but you can get the idea.

The top of the saucer is the same color tinted with a light green varnish.

I'm painting my big enterprise Tamiya INJ grey. It's very close. It just needs a 

slight tint of green.

I hope this helps.

Hey thanks guys! 

Mach 71: Looks like a nice kit. Gotta buy one for myself. I did think about lighting my Big-E but thought in the end first just get the thing together and maybe think about lighting another one later on. 

As to wiring the nacelle lights on your BoP if you keep the wires apart you don't really need the insulation. You might consider just striping it off making the wire much, much thinner and then running one wire up the front of the wing and the other in the back. 

And thanks for the offer of help, in fact I was about to go looking around for the right colour to paint her. I'd like to get some confirmation on the colours Polar Lights listed. 

Nice progress, mach.  Looks very Romulan and threatening.  Good to see how well it's going together.

Good work, Gamera.  Enjoying seeing your progress.

Rocky:  that's something I hadn't thought about:  mounting tabs inside clear parts.  I'll have to watch for that.

Ken:  I've never used Solvaset; Micro-sol has usually worked well enough.  I've read that Solvaset is pretty strong stuff.  If the decals are that unresponsive, I suppose I'll have to get some.

Thanks for the information!

Gamera, 

Your Enterprise is looking real nice! If you need any reference photo's let me know. I've been to see the refurbished filming model at NASM in DC a few times. I'm happy to share them.

Sitrep on my BOP.

I was planing on lighting the nacelles and ordered some LED's last night from China.

Today I started trying to figure out the details. The reality is that the wings have

no room for wires, both halfs fit flush.

This is a small kit as you can see. 

The feed stubs are huge in relation to the kit.

The engineering on the kit is outstanding! all the flash/sprue attatchments are well

placed and clean up nice.

Fit is outstanding. This is the wings snapped in without any glue.

The last photo is the wings/body glued together and the nacelles are just dry fit.

I'm going to let things dry overnight and then start cleaning up the seams. given 

how tight things are fitting I don't expect it to take too long.

Gamera

I am moving ahead a little here. The kit came with transparent nacelle caps and inner parts for the Bussard collectors (or at least I think that's what they're called- the little spinning thingees on the nose of the warp nacelles). I painted the collectors with gold streaks on the outside and with metallic red auto paint inside. The insides of the nacelle caps I painted with translucent red. I hope it will look decent when finished. 

 

Hey now, that's coming along nicely there Gamera.

I am moving ahead a little here. The kit came with transparent nacelle caps and inner parts for the Bussard collectors (or at least I think that's what they're called- the little spinning thingees on the nose of the warp nacelles). I painted the collectors with gold streaks on the outside and with metallic red auto paint inside. The insides of the nacelle caps I painted with translucent red. I hope it will look decent when finished. 

That kit works remarkably well, especially compared to some of the earlier kits. As I recall the fit is quite good and the decals went on well. Solvaset may become your new best friend!

Ken

glad I could help, the kit actually goes together pretty good, except for the clear parts they are a bit wonkey and if you paint them clear (as the instructions state) you can see the mounting tabs, which looks awful.

I ended up painting the clear parts from the outside with non clear paint to hide those obnoxious mounting pins and had a decent final result

Good to know, Rocky.  That's the one--the refit--I've got for the GB.  Thanks for the information.

I built the PL 1/1000 refit a while back (well its not totally done yet ) and my decals went down surprisingly good, the whole model is basicly covered in decals.

Thanks for all the information about the decals.

Has anyone built the movie Enterprise in 1/1000? Are the decals also a problem? I haven't opened the box yet to see what's inside.

You'd think after so many issues, they'd have fixed them before this.

Kearsarge: Thanks! Great clip there. I do wonder why they didn't use them more often as the main ships in DS9 episodes instead of Excelsier and Miranda class vessels. 

Steve: Ouch! I picked up a bunch of JT Graphics decals from Federation to replace some of my kit decals but haven't used them yet! Thanks for the warning, hopefully if I spray them with some decal fixer maybe they won't come apart too badly....  

Gamera

I know it's more money but you might check Federation models Mach 71 for replacement ones

I remember now, thanks for the flashback.
I lost the original box decals.
The crappy decals you saw for the Bird of Prey WERE from Federation Models, then I couldn't get them to replace them, refund them or even get anybody to talk to me....for weeks. Then when they did contact me, well after the kit was complete, all they could do was blame the guy who makes them. I will never waste my money on Federation Models again. I had to go the guy who makes them (JOBT I believe, but don’t quote me) and even then that took weeks to get a response after I sent a check.

Just don’t lose or damage the OOB decals is all I have to say. My sale table Bird of Prey ended up costing me more than twice the original cost of the kit.

The horror...the horror!!

Gamera

...one of those ships I see in blue-prints on the internet but don't even remember from the movie. Guess I need to watch it again. Very cool ship though, neat to see something a little different. 

The ship gets a very short seen in the movie's begining, firing off a single phaser burst while bracket above and bellow by a Saber and Akira class attacking the Borg cube ship:

https://67.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lln3uxwN4d1qzrtqe.gif

I think most who are aware of this design is from licensed publication like The Deep Space Nine Technical Manual or from the ex-astris-scientia.org fan site. Many don't like the flat iron look to it but I like the spade shaped hull and wing like nacelles.

Here's what appears to be a blown up and cleaned up image of the ship from the above scene where you can see it's unique coloring:

Ouch that sucks about those decals! Overcoating them certainly couldn't hurt. On the other hand someone probably sells aftermarket ones. I know it's more money but you might check Federation models Mach 71 for replacement ones- they'd probably be both thicker and better printed. 

Kearsarge: Very cool, one of those ships I see in blue-prints on the internet but don't even remember from the movie. Guess I need to watch it again. Very cool ship though, neat to see something a little different. 

Very nice, kearsarge.  It's a ship that I hadn't noticed before.

Here's my Norway class kit. Not a lot of parts and I plan to use aftermarket decals for a custom name.

The Norway is part of the 'Class of '96' starships that made their debut to the Trek universe in the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Conact. The other classes, the Akira, Saber and Steamrunner, all appeared in episodes of Deep Space Nine and Voyager but not the Norway. All these ships only existed as CG models and the story goes that the Norway had its data model corrupted sometime after First Contact so never appeared in the TV shows except in techincal plan schematics and licensed publications.

There was a previous resin model of the Norway offered by Nova Hobbies but details on its actual look were speculative since there were few references available at the time.

This version seems to be the more definitive design and Eagle Moss also uses it for their new Norway display model.

That is awful!  A photon torpedo wouldn't have damaged them any more.

I think I'll be coating the Enterpise decals with Micro's decal preserver as a matter of course. 

AAAGGGGH the horror!!! That was a nightmare! The problems I had trying to get new decals were so frustrating.

Please Mach, do try to save and use the ones that came with the kit.

Agh, I found it...

It brings a tear to my eye.

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/29/t/164494.aspx?page=9 

Irregardless of the tragedy, modelcrazy still brought his Bird of Prey across the finish line fantastically...

Bravo, beautiful work, sir.

Certantly couldn't hurt.

I remember that now modelcrazy. 

I'll go back and review your build before I start.

I'm always worried with R2 decals. It's always been a weak point.

Do you think it would help giving them a coat of decal liquid?

I think Micro sol sells it.

modelcrazy

Mach,

I built that for the last Star Trek build. Be careful of the decals. Mine were very fragile and I had to order new ones. It took forever to get them. 

Modelcrazy,

I remember watching your build and remember the grief you had with the decal. After the K7 Space Station I was going to do the AMT TOS Bird of Prey keeping your build in mind.

Mach,

I built that for the last Star Trek build. Be careful of the decals. Mine were very fragile and I had to order new ones. It took forever to get them.