PRmodels looking for beta builders

[THE DC]

Your work is exceptional on these and I like your clever lighting ideas.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[spaceagent-9]

well thanks, so many here better than me. I just have an imagination that wont quit!!! here is another rare shot of the Romulan bird of prey=

 

[THE DC]

I hope that we will find out, someday, what happened to the original!

 

[spaceagent-9]

I heard something on that, it was found in some crate in southern Utah, from a cbs employee's estate. after that no mention of what happened to it. someone else said that gene smashed it to pieces in a fit of anger or something. I just don't believe that one, but who knows? im sure all this stuff was stolen and is in some rich Japanese guy's secret museum in Tokyo.

 

[THE DC]

I heard something on that, it was found in some crate in southern Utah, from a cbs employee's estate. after that no mention of what happened to it. someone else said that gene smashed it to pieces in a fit of anger or something. I just don't believe that one, but who knows? im sure all this stuff was stolen and is in some rich Japanese guy's secret museum in Tokyo.

I recall that the model maker claimed that he wasn't paid for the original BoP. Somewhere during the first season it vanished. I doubt Roddenberry smashed it because it was a bit larger and more sturdy than Jefferies D-7. Plus, those models were very expensive in the era.

You're probably right, that it will show up in some wealthy collector's home!

 

[THE DC]

No, that was an access hatch, I believe, which Spock used to make repairs in Metamorphosis. It opened and dropped down. Next to the hatch was a red reactor flush vent, as I recall the original AMT design plans. There were a series of vent-like strips along the starboard bottom but I can't recall any labeling for them. The nacelles that hung off the pylons were for warp and the impulse engines were across the top of the aft hull and lit up during the original run of the show. I don't recall the bustards on the warp nacelles ever lit up in the original broadcast and don't believe that the AMT filming model had lighting there; only on the aft impulse engines.

Just for interests sake, the same design was copied for use in the executive shuttle, used in STVI, I think it was, and then those were engines again for the Sydney class in the Next Gen, which was a modification of the executive shuttle, scaled up.


Paragon made some great models of these two later designs.

I just re-watched Metamorphosis and confirmed both the drop down access hatch and the red polo up flush vent access. To catch it, look for just after the Galileo was forced down, after first commercial, and Spock goes to the back of the shuttle to scan and determine the cause for the forced landing.

The engines are the row of lit banks at the top aft of the hull and you get a good look at them in the episode too.

 

[spaceagent-9]

I guess I mistook it for the impulse engines because it was red. so as mentioned in ''The Menagerie'' also,the nacelles use Ions to get to
warp 2[?] and then probably Ions to make those arch shaped ports in the top aft be the impulse lit up white, as Ion thrusters that NASA uses today are white I would imagine, makes sense. I think Scotty mentions what kind of fuel could be used and substituted when they come up with draining the hand Phasers. a slow drain of the beam would probably be simple Ions. it wouldn't even be a cutting beam, just a drizzle of the energy, and the first thing that would be released would be Ions from a forced chamber compression, with a very small release. scotty jumps in his chair when spock releases the fuel and then fired thrusters into it, igniting the gas cloud of fuel, to create the signal flare. the recent designs of one of the Ion drive engines uses this principle to create a rocket type thrust. the other Ion drive that they are calling an emp drive works on kinetic motion in a drum like affair, kind of like when you bottle toss a water bottle to land on its bottom- you get that bobbling effect that moves the bottle in the air from the inertial movement of the water inside it, except creating something like a piston motion that keeps going on and on and moving the ship thru space. I don't like that, it might work on paper, I think that a straight Ion thrust would be better.

 

[THE DC]

Believe it or not, there was an original plan to have the shuttles w/o warp ability!

 

[spaceagent-9]

yeah I read that , no transporters just a dingy like affair, almost as with enterprise shuttle pod.
by the way I wish I was the lighting wiz, I am having a lot of trouble fitting these leds into the rawen 50th enterprise. it does look pretty neat until I try to close the seams. I might have to resize it up 10-20 %.
kind of neat though doing all these.

 

[THE DC]

Any tips on resizing up w/o losing detail?

 

[spaceagent-9]

well what I think is that if you want to resize one of these without the vector program, don't go past 25%. the digitalization will show as blurry pixels very apparent after that ratio. then you will have to box and stretch the hull around the details, windows, pinstrippings, etc.. or, got to a stationary store, or print shop and enlarge to a 13x11'' size instead of a 11.8x8'' size, then the ship will be bigger, use the thickest card stock you can get and the model will turn out ok. for starships that aren't white, I use the thick medium grey kind, it helps with a lot of problems, in some parts I thin down to another thickness of grey card stock, and then if its say, the ent 1701-A, which looks perfect in pearlescent white, I use black copy paper thickness and then simple cut slightly smaller stencils of the parts and back them with it and for seams, aluminum tape. still not perfect for light leaks, but you're really close at that point. for say,the nacelle cap joins with lighting, you will have to do a lot of blocking with foil tape or black paper. use black glue if possible, or thick black paint instead of glue. be very careful and layer so you don't soak and warp the paper. for windows, I stuck a led in typing paper and then punch that into Styrofoam black and use that to mellow out the glare. make sure that all wires are not exposed, I would duct tape the leads entirely with auto interior duct tape -non metallic- and that should stop shorts. use computer ribbon cable , its smaller and you have a spaghetti monster inside or running thru tubes. leave hatches near the main lighting. you never no if you will have to open her up.

 

[Gandolf50]

You can do it...for your own personal use, by importing into Inkscape and resizing...this one I did in about 5 min- to an a4 sheet..but with some effort you could take the parts and resize a refit to seperate sheets to larger, without any loss of detail..and as long as they are for your own use and NEVER without permission distributed you should be good to go!
...PM for help..

 

[THE DC]

Thanks for the tips...

 

[spaceagent-9]

There is one other trick I use sometimes, I put the sheet in ms paint edit, and then lasso cut and move all the parts into the smallest space, allowing for enough room for cutting, then I shrink the border so its really snug around all the parts. I then print, uncheck the box for sizing so the parts fit and if its really got a lot of border, I then go back and space the parts until it fits the print preview with as much of the parts filling the printed page as possible, I will even print on copy paper a BW test and again space the parts if there is too much border until im satisfied. the scale when compared to other models is off, but you get the largest model printed page. If that don't make no sense, [sometimes my explanations are long winded and hard to understand], tell me here and I will post an example.

 

[Gandolf50]

There is one other trick I use sometimes, I put the sheet in ms paint edit, and then lasso cut and move all the parts into the smallest space, allowing for enough room for cutting, then I shrink the border so its really snug around all the parts. I then print, uncheck the box for sizing so the parts fit and if its really got a lot of border, I then go back and space the parts until it fits the print preview with as much of the parts filling the printed page as possible, I will even print on copy paper a BW test and again space the parts if there is too much border until im satisfied. the scale when compared to other models is off, but you get the largest model printed page. If that don't make no sense, [sometimes my explanations are long winded and hard to understand], tell me here and I will post an example.

I did not know MSPaint would import PDF's...? What's the print quality like? if it imports... the quality should be just as good for the largest as the smallest..since the original is a vector image...it will always be the same no matter what size it is..that's why I like it when imported to Inkscape...I could enlarge up to 13x19 (my printer extent) and get the same clear quality lines.

 

[spaceagent-9]

it doesn't import pdfs, you would have to snap shot the page or parts. inkscape and CorelDraw doesn't work on my computer for some reason.

 

[blake7]

PDFill pulls images from PDFs, then edit the images anyway you want. Just make sure to change the 144 to 200 or 300.

 

[THE DC]

If you have a Mac, it will automatically change any JPG or image into a PDF.

 

[spaceagent-9]

Ok, so I'm lighting up the 1701 50th Rawen
PRMODELS http://prmodels.webnode.cz/
and have a few problems, I need it to just be a little bit bigger. but that's the challenge right???!!
As far as the model goes, its a dandy!
I like the contrast of colors. It's a good facsimile of the studio model.
Maybe use striped petal orange nacelle caps, but that's my taste, change the windows from black to white,
altho I like the black windows, as it makes more sense in real space tech to me.
I rolled up some back paper for the e-candles and white led to be light-blocked with in the nacelles. the bead is for the propulsion dome aft, and the faceted bead up front for the bussard collectors.
I push molded heated gold plastic for the faceted bead cover. cant seem to catch the effect on camera, but it looks well. the 3 flickering ecandles give movement to the model.

 

[THE DC]

spaceagent-9 had upped the quality of the posts from beta building the set that started the thread to advanced building!

It's been interesting watching the kit set evolve in so many ways...