RETRO BUILD: AMT/ERTL Galaxy Class Tesla (Enterprise-D) Part 1

Greetings,

This series of entries catalog a build I started last year in April, finishing in August of an old AMT USS Enterprise-D model, released around the time of "Star Trek: Generations" which is about 20 years ago.  I bought the model in 2000 when ERTL gave up the licensing of their Star Trek line of models.  At the time I wasn't really building them but down the road I might do it again, which I'm doing now so I bought as many kits as I could which include 2 Enterprise-D models, 2 USS Reliant models, Klingon Bird of Prey, 2 USS Yamaguchi models (molded in clear with a light rig), USS Excelsior, Deep Space Nine, a Klingon Vorcha Battlecruiser from TNG and a 22-inch USS Enterprise Cutaway model.  I paid next to nothing for these models, some as cheap as $15 each!  I digress, now the build!

Before I decided to build this model for a friend, I mocked up the model using tape to hold it together so I could really study it and compare it to reference pictures available online.  Here are my shots...

 

Right away there are some accuracy issues with this model and a few other things.  I built many of these models when I was a kid and teen.  The first couple I built as a kid were, well how kid would build them, sloppy glue, hand painted, no lights and glorified toys.  The last 2 I built back-to-back had simple lights in them, painted to the best of my ability.  One of them was the regular issue kit the other the fiber optic kit released around the time of Star Trek Generations.  That kit required you to glue the saucer to the engineering section and drill holes for lighting.  The only thing with that model, by about 1999 it fell apart from being way too top heavy and unbalanced.  It is in a landfill somewhere but a few of the parts which fell off I kept which includes the deflector dish in the above photo set.

Some accuracy issues I corrected when building this model:

• remove raised Aztec lines and softly molded lifeboat hatches
• increased the the thickness of the warp pylons
• rescribe soft panel lines
• scribe corrected panel lines on the upper engineering hull
• add the spine which runs down the back of the upper engineering hull from the main impulse engine to the aft torpedo launcher

Other things I chose not to fix because of time to give this a gift:

• correct the location of impulse engine and 2 smaller shuttle bays
• correct the shape of the main shuttle bay and shuttle bay door
• rescribe the panel lines on the saucer - most of them don't line up.

The only thing I could not fix in the inverse camber of the saucer (the rows of windows slope down towards the edge as opposed to being parallel).

And the most important thing is give this model it's own armature so it doesn't collapse under it's own weight like my fiber optic model.

Let the games begin and I will post soon on how I started building this model.

Happy modelling!