Polar Lights 1:350 Scale Star Trek Starship Enterprise, Part 10

 

I am very pleased with the way the windows and the lighting turned out on the bridge and upper decks. The U/V resin is really the way to go. I did however experiment with different ways of using the resin as the model went on. Naturally, some of my windows are better than others of course. But these turned out great.

I also deviated quite a bit from the lighting kit design for these upper desks. I lit the two red lights with two tiny SMDs tucked up there and heavily light blocked the bridge from these lights on the sides. The light for the bridge and the windows is entirely from the lower saucer lights. No additional LEDs are needed here in my opinion.

Light blocking the upper edge of the bridge unit, and the instruments was very tricky. It's too easy to get way too much light in spots, unevenly. It just took going over and over it with various methods from thick black craft paint to metal tape to translucent tissue paper.

The saucer halves went together pretty well. These huge parts were flat and true. However, all the way around, my upper half was a hair smaller than the lower half, leaving quite a step at the seam to remove.

You can never have enough clamps.

Assembled, the next day after drying, and the lighting all still works! 

You have to test, retest and test again at every step. You don't want to get a bunch of work done and find a wire has broken.

And exactly that actually that happened to me after taking these photos. I had to reach inside the top center, under the bridge assembly, and fix a wire on the control board.

On the main hull I used U/V transparent tape on the outside and filled the windows with resin from inside. I didn't use the clear plastic glass.

Good method for the windows, but the tape pulled off some paint. Starting over on paint jobs in the story of my life with models.

I'm doing the rear shuttle bay closed. To do this I used the bay parts with the sides cut away so that lighting would be easier. 

I was leaning toward not doing to the whole lighted shuttle bay, even though it is a great detail. Then I read that there is an interesting scale mismatch in the kit that goes back to the original television production.

It seems the sets and models built for the shuttle bay were out of scale with the star ship over all, significantly so. In order to create the shuttle bay assembly, the kit designers used a scale a full 2/3 of the 1:350 scale of the ship. The PE kit includes figures 2/3 smaller than the figures provided for windows elsewhere (I didn't use any of these my windows are opaque). This scale difference made uo my mind - closed bay doors it is. 

The fit of the two halves is good along the bottom, good enough alone the top.

Here are the halves with all the wiring and the wiring into the shuttle bay module.

This is another area where I deviated from the lighting kit. I wish I had deviated even more. In hindsight it does not need the furthest rear LED segment as those windows are blacked out. It also needs additional light up front where some structural elements restrict light to a couple windows. Live and learn.

See all the posts for this project here.