DEFLECTOR DISH...
To me, on this model, the dish is a signature of good design. I still have my deflector dish from when I built the 'fiber optic edition' back in the mid 90s. Something I figured out at the time is the dish and housing is copper and the blue light is a reflection. Fast forward to 2014, it still holds true.
In actuality, the dish and housing were painted orange and for Star Trek Generations, the housing was painted a mustard yellow.
Old and new. I used the old dish assembly to fill in the opening on the hull with putty so the join is seamless...
As a light source, I used 3 LEDs from what was left over from the LED tape from the Nacelles.
REGISTRY LIGHT
I decided early on, I want a registry light on this model - I know it's not canon, neither is this model's registry, so moving on...
First I cut a hole in the area of the 'B/C deck' (the superstructure underneath the bridge - Actually the bridge is buried in this deck with only the top section showing above...strange design but I thing this was one of those things where the architecture had to fit a deck plan, and don't get me started on 'Ten-Forward'...I digress, here's the light!)
I trimmed down an LED to size and still that was too big. I also went through many LEDs, cutting them with a Dremel cutting wheel. This structure easily houses the LED, though not canon.
UPPER ENGINEERING HULL
This piece always boggled me, it has soo much camber in it (warped decklines) I question who made this original part. Also by sanding off the raised 'aztec lines' I lost some detail on the scribed panel lines, this was tricky to re-scribe or I'm an idiot.
ORIGINAL PART
I did my best to re-scrobe the radial panel lines. The concentric lines took some engineering to do.
This is what I got (with the neck temporarily attached):
Unfortunately in haste, I made a critical error...I forgot to leave space for the 'blinker LED' which run the 4 nacelle fiber optics (next time they go in the nacelle) as well as the bridge blinker and the lower hull blinker. When I built this model, I used solely an RGB LED. The blink rate is off and it blinks colour. It looks neat for somethings (poor man's nacelle lighting) but that's what I used for what I knew to do at the time. Regardless, I had to perform some surgery on the Upper Engineering hull...
I cut along the newly scribed gridlines and it worked flawlessly! Here is the start of the Aztecs...
NACELLE ASSEMBLY
Not forgetting, at this stage the nacelle assembly was separate from the rest of the model. It req'd some sanding work and I discovered quickly another thin layer of styrene which made life easier.
That will do it for me for an update. Check in again and see my current project, USS Enteprise/Botany Bay as depicted in 'Space Seed'. Cheers!
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