Cool/Interesting/Funny Fanatic/Geek Movie/TV/'other' Collectible Stuff

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Had to put an extra resistor in to tone down the new lights on the shuttle bay.

I guess all the aggravation was worth it, although macro pictures make the paint job look much worse than with the naked eye.

5 second exposures using my macro lens stopped down all the way to get max depth of field, then brightened up in post:

Spoiler

[goflyblind]

Had to put an extra resistor in to tone down the new lights on the shuttle bay.

shuttle bays are well-known for their romantic lighting.

[Sideswipe]

Hell yeah, pop open the bay doors and it would be a great spot for a picnic.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Hell yeah, pop open the bay doors and it would be a great spot for a picnic.

Every time I see pictures of TOS models where people have put crew walking around the bay I can't help but think: "but the bay doors are open, all those people are going to suffocate!".

Because, you know, they didn't have force fields to hold back air until I think the Enterprise B.

Or this model is making me a bit crazy.

Yeah, probably that second one....

[Sideswipe]

The Motion Picture Enterprise refit clearly had force fields in place since you can see the doors open in the scene when Kirk arrives on board.  They had defensive shields in TOS, I dont see why they couldn't have had the similar fields in place for the shuttle bay.

[Sideswipe]

Its connected to the shuttle bay, you can see the doors are open.

[Sideswipe]

[MartyS (Gromit)]

In that picture, I'd say that rectangular opening might have a normal strong force field.  And that is probably the first look we get of a field holding back air, even though it should have been possible all along, a field able to stop a person should be able to stop air...  The A refit had that crazy shuttle bay that had the 3 sections, so it would make sense to have separate fields for each one.  Still, we never see a shuttle go through a field until next gen.

Polar Lights has a 1/350 model of the A refit, that model has that entire crazy bay and the decks behind the large windows.  That model really requires serious micro painting skills.   They also have a 1/350 NX-01, that is tempting, it is my next favorite ship after the original big E, but I don't know what I'm going to do with the one I'm building now, certainly don't have room for another one...

[Sideswipe]

Thats interesting you say that.  Ive heard the NX-01 is a lot of peoples least favorites.  One reason is that it looks a lot like an inverted Akira class.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I guess I must have seen Akira class ships during DS9 but I don't remember them.  I've always thought the NX-01 looked like it fit it's time period perfectly.

Ended up making my own shuttle bay doors, painstakingly slow cutting of the piece you use for closed doors.  The open door piece was too thin, and had the doors open right to the apex, so no support for the part that is supposed to go on top.  Nice thing about doing it is I have a part that fits into the opening, with a little extra plastic glued onto the back of it to make it stand on it's own I can have closed or open doors.


Got the light leaks under control, first coat of paint went on the secondary hull parts tonight.

Still not sure what to do about the "ring" at the front of the secondary hull, most studio pictures show it as the same color as the nacelle highlights, a dark gray, but that seems too dark to me for that ring....

This is the area I'm talking about:

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Got my bussard collector wiring figured out, thinking of putting a 3 way switch in the stand instead of a separate switch for the motors, one position will feed 12V only to the lighting system, the other position will feed to both the lights and the motors.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Thinking of doing something special for the pylon grills, this is a test with some cat5 wire behind them:



I can get styrene rod that same diameter at the hobby shop, I think evenly spaced and painted light gray they might look pretty cool behind the grills.  Got to do at least one little thing to "personalize" my model...

[MartyS (Gromit)]

5 little lights in the fantail are taking days to get right, gone through several experiments I didn't like so far.

This is what I have at the moment:



Those are bits of colored plastic stuck into drilled out holes in the opaque plastic part, I like the look of the light coming through them but they don't look the best in normal room light.  So, I'm painting the clear part that comes with the lighting kit and will see how that goes, then decide what to use permanently...

[Sideswipe]

Thats a good look, it kind of reminds me of an aircraft carrier.

[mearnest]

That's looking amazing.  I recently built the Enterprise Space Seed kit but would love to tackle that large scale kit.  Sadly, limited space currently forbids it.