Re: ST:TMP Drydock - larger scale
This month I have been able to get somewhat back on track. The weather has warmed up enough for me to go back into my garage to do some of the necessary work that can't be done inside our house.
I have 23 New Pics in the April Updates. Here are the details:
I have finally received the armatures for the models that will be used to marry the Enterprise models to the docks. They are made of 1/4" hollow tube and are quite sturdy. I had them welded together in a specific manner so that they will be hidden as best as possible inside the dock and the ship giving the illusion that the ship is floating inside the dock.
All of the copper tubes that I cut the holes into have been placed inside the panel frames. These will be used to support the light panels as well as allow me to run the lighting effects through each of the tubes.
I have also started painting the light panels their respective colors. This took about a week to do. I was able to finish those and start work on the dry-transfer numbers and letter that are on each of the panels. In ST:TMP the dock was heavily decaled only on the side that was visible on the screen. The side unseen or port side has decaling but not to the extent of what Row "E" of the panels has. As I have more time I will be adding more of the decals to each of the panels since this will be a full model of the dock. The bummer about the dry-transfers is that they only give you so much of certain letters and/or numbers. For instance many of the panels are numbered in the 30's and 70's. Guess which numbers they give you the least amount of? Yeh... 3's and 7's so I have to order many many sheets of the transfers and then try to use the other numbers just so I don't waste too many of the decals. But.... hey.... that's the life of a model builder, huh? Anyway I think Row "E" which is seen on the screen turned out rather nice.
Now, another feature of the Light panels is seen on the upper right and left side of each of the panels. Since I don't know what they really are I am going to call them the power nodules for the light panels. I used reference pictures from the movie as well as some pics I shot of the Filming Miniature to scratch build a highly detailed master so that I can cast all of these pieces rather than build them all individually. Just a side note, it took me about 4 hours total to create just one of these from scratch. The only thing left that I need to do for these pieces is build the 2 tanks or bottles that are seen on the top and bottom of the light panel support poles. These will be cast separate from the nodule pieces as well as a clamp-like piece that connects these nodules to the light panels. I should have them done by the next update.
Last but not least I am taking some new measurements for some interior sections of the dock can be seen from the outside. I am going to do what I did for my 1/350 scale dock and that is add a large interior Hanger bay that can be seen by looking into the Aft End of the dock though the hanger doors. I have a lot more room to work with on this dock and I purposely made the support frame so this dock can be a lot larger than the 1/350 version. You will be able to see many Shuttles, work bees, Shuttle pods, cargo containers and other details. This should help give a great depth of scale to the model and how large it would be in real life.
Hopefully by next month's update I will have some of the panel frames painted up and ready to be connected to the Overhead modules. Hopefully there will be no Hang-ups or snags. The weather is getting better, slowly but surely. This will make things go a lot faster. 'Til then, see you next month!
Mark