The Aztec Dummy masks were invaluable for painting this kit. I can highly recommend them. I also used Green Strawberry photoetch for the exterior. As you can see, I lit the kit. It was definitely extra work, but was worth it. As usual, it seems, there are orange hot spots in the impulse engines that are much more pronounced in the pics than to the naked eye!
The shuttles are from Green Strawberry and are in scale with the kit! Two of them are the well-known TNG era so-called “soap bar” Type 7 shuttles. On one I used decals for a medical shuttle, and the other is from a shuttle attached to the USS Ahwanee. The shuttle near the docking port on the “pontoon” is also 1/350 scale and represents the long range shuttle that detaches from the warp sled in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. These seem to be bigger than the similar shuttles in the refit Enterprise shuttle bay. I used decals for the Da Vinci, with a registry that attached it to a starbase. Maybe it’s a very old shuttle still in use?
Also, if you take a close look at the kit decals, you’ll see that the decal for the docking port outline has the name “Enterprise.” I trimmed that part of the decal off. The port itself is a scan of a phototetch part, tweaked in photoshop, and printed on decal paper.
I like the kit, but have mixed feelings about the Oberth class. The intended size of 120 m is too small, IMHO, at least with the all the “windows” that ILM put on the kit. But it’s still kinda cool, and looks okay with the shuttles.
Comments welcome! You can click on the images for a larger version:
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