Star Trek In Progress

Here are some images of the AMT Round-2 1/2500th scale Enterprises. There are four kits in the series and I'm working on them all, but this is just the first kit, which includes the TOS Enterprise, the Enterprise-A, and the Enterprise-B.

The kits themselves are basically small snap-together models with heavy and simplified panel lines, and relatively few parts. Like all snap-fit models, they look better if you use cement and clamps, and then fill and sand the occasionally largish seams. But on the whole, they didn't fit too badly at all. I sanded off the panel lines on the TOS Enterprise's secondary hull; I didn't think they did anything for the model.

The real heart of the kit are the decals. The TOS Enterprise gets its share of decals, but they're nothing compared to the A and B models, which end up almost completely covered with decals - Aztec patterns, phaser banks, registration markings, warp nacelles, everything. The Enterprise-B even comes with a decal for the roof of the shuttlecraft bay, for crying out loud. The decals are so comprehensive that they're actually credited by name in the kit instructions; they are the work of a Mr. E. James Small of www.smallartworks.ca, and Mr. Small does fabulous work.

In fact, in the ensuing photographs, the only thing I painted by hand was the main deflector dish on the TOS Enterprise. Everything else is decal. (Well, other than the grey and white base colors, but that went without saying.)

The decals are just superb. They fit where they're supposed to go. They're thin and flexible, and respond to setting solution, but they're also tough and resistant to breakage. I managed to break a few, but I really had to manhandle them to get them to break. I managed to get some of the decals just horribly wadded up, but they're tough enough that I was able to tease them back into proper form with a little water and patience, and without damage either.

Here and there I encountered a few alignment problems. The tops of the warp nacelles show a sliver of the white base coat where two decals didn't quite meet, but that was my fault. I found really only three issues with the decals. One was the white backing for the yellow circle on the underside of the TOS Enterprise; it was offset by a few millimeters. Another was that the NCC-1701B registration markings on the Enterprise-B are mirror-imaged on one side. But you have to be right on top of them to see that they're mirror-imaged. And the third was that the color was printed in the form of tiny dots rather than solid colors, but again, you have to be right on top of the model to notice it.

But don't let me convince you otherwise - the decals were simply excellent. They're probably too extensive and complicated for inexperienced modelers, but if you've laid down a few decals in your day, you shouldn't have any problem with them.

TOS Enterprise with some old-school Testors paint to show scale. Yes, I intend to finish painting the remaining details, but I wanted to show the models as they come together out of the box. And speaking of the boxes - in some ways I like the new prism-shaped boxes, and in other ways, I don't. They're distinctive, colorful and attractive, but they don't stack worth a damn.

Another view. Everything's a decal except the base color (Testors camouflage grey) and the main deflector dish.

Enterprise-B. Everything is a decal, except for the semi-gloss white base coat. You can see a slight alignment problem on the top of the left warp nacelle, where a sliver of the base color shows, and here and there are a few bubbles that I need to pop and treat with decal solvent, but with minimal effort you end up with a very nice model.

POSTSCRIPT

I'm also working on the C, D and E models of the Enterprise, and the same remarks apply generally to them, with one notable and unfortunate exception: the decals for the Enterprise-C are as miserable as the others are good. It isn't a problem with design; it's how they were printed. They're stiff, thick, inflexible, and strangely transparent. They're also largely immune to decal solvent. And worst of all, they're brittle and readily break up into dozens of jagged fragments. I stopped after ruining two decals, and am now making up my mind whether I want to try to rehabilitate the decals or just mask and paint most of the detail myself.

And that's unfortunate, because I really like the chunky lines of the Enterprise-C and was looking forward to finishing it.

Thus far the Enterprise-E decals are proving to be workable, and I haven't started decaling the Enterprise-D yet.