Check out this starship, fellas...

[Eric Ardros]

I wanted to show you all the ship I would ideally like to have as my first command (if that were such a possibility):

She is designated the U.S.S. Axis NX-77701. As the name suggests, she is an experimental starship, the prototype for the Axis Class, and is primarily a Destroyer-type vessel. Pretty kewl, huh?

Now, before any of you ask, no, I didn't draw this beauty... I would like to take credit for it, but I didn't. I seriously wish I had, though. I found this pic somewhere on-line years ago, and immediately fell in love with the overall design .

I used to know what her general specs were -- I was given that information by the individual who'd actually drafted the design for this ship -- but I lost that data some time ago, unfortunately .

At some point, I plan to have a fair-sized display model of her constructed, when I can afford such a custom build. When I first came up with the idea, I was planning on commissioning someone to do this build for me, but given how my scratch-building skills have improved since then, I think I'll tackle this one myself...

I still haven't gotten to the point where that's a possibility yet, but I have been making some pretty good progress of my own...

See, one day I was having a shower and ended up using the rest of my shampoo. I was about to throw out the Heads & Shoulders container when it suddenly dawned on me that it had the right shape and contours to serve as one of the warp nacelles for that ship .

As soon as this thought occured to me, and using that shampoo container as a reference point, I immediately got to work on drafting a schematic:

Axis Class Schematic -- Pic 01

Axis Class Schematic -- Pic 02

The B & W schematic shown in the first pic was something I acquired from the original designer years ago, and only found again when I went through my hard copy prop pics. That schematic was at 1/1400 scale, whereas I am unsure of the scale I've drafted my schematic in (I've never been too good with scale).

Measurements of my rendition of that schematic have my display model, upon completion, measuring 16.5" in length by 11 3/4" in width. As can be seen in the above pics, I am making rather good progress on the dorsal schematic, but still have the ventral, fore, aft, port and starboard schematics to draw up. Needless to say, I have quite a lot of work still ahead of me before I can begin construction.

All that aside, though, what do you guys think of what I've drafted so far? Not too shabby, eh? Looks to be almost dead-on in terms of shape and proportions to the smaller scale, IMHO. Whenever I can get around to scratch-building this beauty, I think it's going to be a helluva lot of fun...

 

[Eric Ardros]

As much as I like the actual ships seen throughout Star Trek, I have to admit that some of the fan-made designs -- like the one above, for example -- can also be very well done; really has that genuine Federation look and feel to it... very sleek, a lot like the U.S.S. Defiant.

I am still really in awe of its design... even if it isn't cannon, the original designer did a great job of maintaining that true Starfleet look with it. Just imagine how awesome this will look as a physical display model. Man, I can't wait.

If all goes well with the first build, I'm thinking I may even try and light one up. Now that'd be waaay kewl (it'd make for a great filming model).

The guy who originally designed this class of starship used to have a website -- it was labelled "CBLim's Trek Pages" or something like that -- and showcased a number of CGI renderings of well-known Trek ships, as well as a few of his own (like the Axis, for example).

Unfortunately, for some reason, his website went under a few years ago, and that was that. I originally was going to get a couple friends of mine, who happen to have thier own shop in town, to scratch-build this for me, and as such they managed to get in touch with the designer and procured a bunch of other reference material for the build.

There were other CGI pics of the ship, taken from different angles, and one that even showed it with planetary landing gear/struts, much like the U.S.S. Voyager. He'd even improved on the design (as pictured above), and rearranged the Bussard Ramscoop Collectors and Warp Grills.

He also redid the layout of the phaser strips on the hull, and upgraded the hull panelling detail from the simplified look in the above pic.

I ended up getting a copy of all this information from my buddies at the time, along with thier calculations of what the length, width, height (how many decks, height of each deck), crew compliment and gross tonnage would be -- essentially, all of the ship's specs -- but I lost all of that info a few years ago, regrettably.

Oh, one other thing about the Axis. You know the 1/???? scale schematic I'm drawing? The version of the Axis you see there is actually the original designer's REVISED version.

If you compare the first pic that I posted in this thread to the B & W schematic in my recent post, you'll notice that the layout of the Escape Pods and the configuration of the Bussard Ramscoops' are somewhat different. As well, the forward phaser array on the saucer section is a single strip, whereas on the revised version it's been split into two.

As such, once I've finished with this one, I'm going to build another version as seen in the first pic. That way, I'll have both the prototype design and the revised design. Should make for quite a lovely pair, huh?

And on top of having the original and revised design models, I'm also going to build up the Hood variant of this ship:



As you can see, the Hood variant was based on the original design. That'll make for quite an imposing trio, IMHO.

And what would really kick it up a notch is if I were able to get a custom-made Commissioning Plaque and Engineering MSD LCARS to display along with them. Yes, I am aware just how time-consuming an undertaking such as this will be, and just what sort of effort will be involved, but personally I think it'd be well worth it. I just love this ship, heh...

 

[David Moeller]

I agree with you, the design is cool. What are you using to do the drawings? Are you using a CAD drawing program?

Dave

 

[Eric Ardros]

Nope. Just good ol' paper, pencil/pen and ruler (that's how I've always drafted my schematics for any of my scratch-build projects). I've always been a very artistically-inclined person, so I figure I might as well put those skills to good use...

 

[darth_angel]

Wow you did that with pen and pencil. that is sweet. very artistic.

 

[Eric Ardros]

Thanks, D_A. I absolutely love this design, and aside from th Constellation Class (she's a grand ol' beauty, imho) no other starship occupies my thoughts as much as she does. Hence why I've been itching to do these scratch-builds for a while, now.

Visual Arts -- that includes painting, drawing, sketching, etc. -- was always a strong suit of mine back in high school (it was one of the courses I excelled in), and my enjoyment of it has sorta carried over to adulthood and this wonderful hobby I find myself in. It's a lot more efficient and cost-effective for me to draft my own prop templates than have someone else do it for me, so why not?

 

[Mechinyun]

I like it.

 

[YenChih Lin]

WOW... JUST WOW... Bigger pics?

 

[KidL]

Definitely very cool. Whoever designed it did a great job.

Judging from the details, it seems to be in between the Enterprise D and Defiant in terms of scale. It also looks like it might have a separating saucer, which I always dug about the Ent D.

Hopefully you'll be able to work out the electronics... Nothing supes up a Trek prop/model quite like good old fashioned blinky lights...

 

[Eric Ardros]

I wish I could speak to the original designer of the Axis to find out exactly what he based the entire design on, but since his website went down, the e-mail addy he had posted there is no longer is use.

From what I do know, though, he'd actually come up with his idea for the Axis Class Destroyer when he was building his U.S.S. Defiant model, and so based the size and some of the design elements off of that.

I don't believe he ever intended it to be separable, as being a smaller-scale Destroyer-type vessel that wouldn't really be practical.

That's pretty much all I know of the Axis' origins, though. If all goes well I'll be pulling out all the stops on this particular build.

The only hang-up there is that I've got absolutely NO electronics experience. Never took on any other projects that required any such technological feats, so there was never any need for me to learn any of that stuff. So, if I were to light this build, I'd have to rely on others for tips on how to do the wiring and what not.

Haven't built a Trek ship for some years, so it'll be fun to get back into it. Thanks again for all your interest in this...

 

[cloudborn]

I think it looks cool. Kudos to the designer. :thumbsup

 

[Eric Ardros]

I second that sentiment, cloudborn. It was a "love at first sight" moment for me when I came across this ship, and she hasn't loosened her hold on me since... :lol

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(YenChih Lin @ Mar 24 2007, 08:24 AM) [snapback]1446993[/snapback]</div>

WOW... JUST WOW... Bigger pics?
[/b]

Hey Yen-Chih. Nice to see a familiar face (so to speak) around here.

As for bigger pics, unfortunately these are all I have, as I lost the other ones in a system reformat. Thought I'd backed them up on CD, but obviously I didn't...