Columbia NX-02 Polar Lights 1:1000

November 5th, 2022 - The kit arrived on Friday, along with an Enterprise Refit, but having just completed a 4-month journey building and lighting a Reliant I'm in no hurry with this one. 😄 I really like the design of these Polar Lights boxes, perhaps more so than the new new design ("Star Trek Universe" packaging), but eh, it's all good. 

November 5th, 2022 - The traditional sprue inspection and washing in warm soapy water. As the title says, I'm going to build the refit version of this ship so all those nice extra hull parts will be coming off at some point! 

November 5th, 2022 - I also want to decal this as Columbia. Every chance I get, I would like to give my models their alternate names and reg numbers. I.D.I.C. as the Vulcans say. 😄

Those Mirror Universe decals are tempting too, buuut,... not this time. 🙂 

November 6th, 2022 - That's the Vallejo White Primer down. I secured the sprues to some thick cardboard using pins to stop the parts blowing around. ?  

November 8th, 2022 - Now, everything is wearing Tamiya TS-27 Matt White. This evening I realized that this kit is about 75% assembly and 25% painting. Apart from the hull colour, whatever you do it as, there are lots and lots of little details that need painting. You'll be wanting lots of 'warp plasma blue' for the various impulse and warp engine parts, some kind of reddy-orange mix for the Bussard collectors, a lemony-yellow for the planetary sensor dome in the bottom hull, and some basic red and green for the teeny-tiny navigation lights. Also, some kind of grey mix for a few parts, although in my TOS-like all-white schema, a light-medium grey is working better for them. 

November 8th, 2022 - Here are the clear parts. They're really nice, and highly detailed. The molding generally on this kit is really nice, with lots of clear detail. And of course, alternate parts, for building the Doug Drexler refit! I found that that version is not so well documented on the web, of course, so building it and actually seeing all the little details that really reach out from Archer's Enterprise to Kirk's is fascinating and thrilling. My favourite feature so far are the tiny antennae on the Bussard collector domes, like on Pike's Enterprise. The whole kit is just super nice and well worth the money.  

November 8th, 2022 - One last thing. Don't make the same silly mistake that I made, which is to attach all the flat, curved rim parts to the lower hull half *before* you insert the navigation lights. 😄 On one hand, the instructions are quite clear about this, but on the other hand, they're quite busy too. The yellow circle in the upper-left corner of the photo shows this.

The other thing to watch out for, which is quite minor really, is that the shuttlebay doors piece is quite a tight fit if you place it after placing the small side pieces on the inside there. (The other two yellow circles). When you're giving a few quick whiffs of the sandpaper just to nominally smooth off all three pieces, you might want to rub a bit harder on the ends of the door part.  

November 9th, 2022 - So, I spent some time today painting details. There are lots of little places to paint, and if you're doing the refit variant, I feel like you can maybe add some touches here and there. I actually started the detail painting yesterday and used a nice light grey mix on all those parts you see there. However, today's grey mix was much too dark. I saw that right away on the palette of course, but I decided to go ahead with it anyway. Ultimately though, the contrast is too stark, so I will repaint the grey parts in a lighter mix. Otherwise, she looks like a flying panda bear. 😄

I used two new paints in this kit, which I bought especially: Vallejo Game Colour 72.059 Hammered Copper, for the dish and the metallic parts on the NX that are usually gold (such as those two things on the arms there), and Revell Aqua Color 36150 Light Blue for the warp plasma in the nacelles and the glowing blue part behind the forward sensor dish. Both are excellent, particularly the blue, which really shines out on the clear parts. The copper dries quite dark, but actually this works really well and it has a very nice metallic effect up close. The photos here don't really do it justice. 

November 9th, 2022 - Anyway, I need to temper some of my earlier enthusiasm for this kit, in terms of the fit of the parts. Which, as it turns out, gets really bad. So, first of all, attaching all the little rim pieces and engine lights and flaps and various bits and bobs to the hull halves is fine. They fit really well. The problem is when you put the two halves together, at which point you get some air in places around the rim, and the fit of the nacelle pylons and those big 'arms' behind the saucer is really bad. I had to do lots of puttying there. I think generally that all the little pieces kind of cause the two halves not to marry up properly. I stupidly decided to just do the two halves as a snap-fit, as intended, with only some glue on the pegs and posts, but afterwards had to go around and carefully brush some glue in around the edges. Then it was okay.

My other problem so far is illustrated here. As I said before, the instructions are okay, but they're very busy, meaning, they're quite cluttered. (I'm going to blame the instructions 50%, and me 50%, for the nacelles). 😄 So the illustration of how to fit the alternate refit inserts for the nacelles is a bit mad, and to cut a long story short, I ended up with everything the wrong way around in the wrong nacelle halves. 😄 I fixed that, but then found that the holes in the insert parts did not line up with the pegs inside the nacelle halves (you can see where I had to cut them), so I ended up using blobs of poster-tack to add some mass to the middle of the tubes and not have those inserts collapse inwards. Now, they're okay. Not perfect, but I can live with 'em. 

November 11th, 2022 - Finally, an actual, proper disaster! 😄 The secondary hull, which obviously you only make for the refit, comes in three parts: the entire bottom half, like a shoe shape. Then, the upper part including the neck is divided in two. You push them together on long pegs, then attach that to the bottom half, and then finally, you clip or glue the drum-shaped sensor housing to the front.

Well, first of all, I had the two upper halves 99% together, and then -- because I was pressing too hard I guess -- the pegs kind of exploded and snapped. 😄 Okay, fine, I glued the halves together, but it was not a perfect fit really. Then I added the thumbnail-shaped warp geometry stabilizer thingy (looks basically like an impulse drive) on to the back of that - I had to cut the pegs off that and glue it free-form. Then, the sensor housing, with this weird crescent-shaped lip, would not really fit properly onto the front of the whole hull, because everything was slightly skewed and this is a tight space for a specifically-shaped piece. Sooo, I cut a tiny bit of one side of the crescent shape lip and that sorted that out and made it about 80-90% correct. Finally, I puttied all of these horrendous gaping seams with the Vallejo Acrylic putty, and let her rest.

At this point, the two parts of the ship are as okay as they're ever going to be in terms of construction. I am going to repaint the 2ndry hull, re-do the dark grey details in light grey, and then decal the thing and clear coats and it will be fine. But, all this will have to wait for a week while I go on a short trip... 🙂 

November 27th, 2022 - So, I actually got back from my unexpected trip about a week ago, but only now did I find the energy to resume work. And the break was great - I thought about the problems with this build while I was away, analyzed it mentally, had some ideas, then came home and looked at everything and finally made a plan and started work again. In the meantime, I also ordered some more white paint (Tamiya TS-26 and TS-27 -- Pure White and Matt White respectively), as well as some lighter-coloured grey paint. I struggled a bit with all my local suppliers finding the perfect shade of very light grey, and in the end I went with Tamiya AS-26 (Light Ghost Grey). It dried a bit darker on my detail parts because I did not think about painting over them with white before applying the lighter grey. But still, it's a massive improvement on that almost black and white "flying panda" look from before. 😄 (As a reminder, the previous colour was Tamiya AS-10 Ocean Grey (RAF). 

November 28th, 2022 - Here you can see, on the bridge dome and the docking hardpoints and the launch bay, that lighter grey AS-26. What you can also see is the two little clear-but-painted-blue "main faring impulse rockets" that I prized out of their housing under those clips. What happened was that as I was studying the thing, I noticed that my earlier puttying had pretty much filled up all the gaps, except for a huge, grinning yawn along the side of those grey "impulse rocket" housings. And the reason for that was that I had put those stupid triangle-shaped pieces in either upside-down, or the wrong way around, or something. 😄 So the wide end of the triangle was forcing the hull seam open right there. Yes, very stupid, I know. At the time I remember struggling a bit to mount these clear parts, and it looks like the struggle was real. 😄

Anyway, I reverse-masked the whole thing today and just blasted it all with Matt White again, so once that's all dry I'll glue those blue parts back in. Then, hopefully, we can start clear-coating, decaling and then finally, fit the two parts together. 

December 3rd, 2022 - Well, I spent a few days looking at it again whilst I was kept busy with work, and decided two things: 1) the grey details are still too dark; 2) because I'd had so many leaks with the last spray (the white was somehow too 'wet' I think, and I sprayed too closely), I would have to do some touch-up work with both the grey and the white. So, today I did the touch-ups and some more little 'fixes' here and there, and took the opportunity to really lighten the grey right up. Because I brushed those parts, I just mixed about 3 drops of Vallejo Dead White with one drop of Vallejo Black (again, these are from a set of basic figure paints). That gave me the very light grey you can see in the picture here. The brush work is messy and just - yuk. But at this point I really just want to be finished with this cursed thing 😄 Maybe a light panel wash and some careful fibre-tip pen window detailing will keep the eye from lingering on all the yuk. 😄 

December 7th, 2022 - The tide turns again! This time, favourably. In the last four days I've gloss coated and washed the thing. My technique is a bit sloppy, which gives everything a dirty look that I don't usually mind, but for this model I had been hoping for a cleaner, newer look. But never mind. What tripped me up were the windows. I tried lots of fibre-tip pens, but none of them would leave their ink on the surface. The markers I have that would work were too thick. Finally, today I had some inspiration! Use a fibre-tip pen with a good size of tip for the window indents, and dip the tip in paint! This worked fantastically, despite a few windows coming out a bit more 'blobby' than ideal. But, again, for a 'shelf model' it will do. Dark rooms have black spots, occupied rooms have that nice 'warp plasma blue' colour.

Tomorrow, more gloss, and then on Friday, or maybe the weekend - decals! 

December 11th, 2022 - With the gloss coat protecting the wash and the windows nice and dry, I sat down to do the decals this evening. All decals are now on, except for the underside of the primary hull. The secondary hull was easy, with only about half a dozen decals. There are three small decals that go on the back of the secondary hull and make me think of landing bay directional stripes, like on the back of Voyager and Enterprise C, but I'm not sure what all that part is at the back there. Anyway, they are very small but because the decals are really in mint condition and very high quality anyway, they were not a problem. (The photo shows it after 3 or 4 coats of MicroSol on the big, square, one-piece red pin-stripes decal that covers the centre top of the saucer). In fact, I only had one difficult decal to deal with, and that is the one that you could probably guess at right away, if you look at the decal sheet -- it's number 5, which is a big, colourful, detailed, 'M' shape decal that sits on the lip between the two catamaran-like parts leading to the nacelles. It has an intricate shape that did not fit well around the moulded shuttlebay doors. I ended up with a little hump in the middle of the decal, where it was pushed up by not having enough space to fully stretch out. Plus, it hung over the lip quite a lot. Sooo, I used my little nail scissors to cut the hump and let the two parts overlap slightly, then drowned the whole thing in MicroSol to make it all sit down and fold over the lip a bit. It's all so small anyway that you'd hardly know it was cut like that. One other note about the decals in this kit -- which, again, are super high quality and just the best decals of the three kits I've built so far (not counting my 1980s-era decal nightmares). 😄 So, you get the NX-02 Columbia variants and the - what is it? - ISS Avenger Mirror Universe NX-09 variants too. However if you build Columbia (as I did) or the Avenger, not every single variant option is available. For example, you get the NX-02 Columbia name 

December 12th, 2022 - That's the underneath of the primary saucer. Contrary to what I said yesterday, you do at least get NX-02 reg numbers for those two port and starboard positions, which is nice. Not many decals here and nothing challenging. The trickiest decals are the red U-shaped pinstripes that go between the Bussard collectors and the pylons on the underside of the nacelles. Hard to see here, but they lay over the moulded 'claw' shapes that hold the Bussards to the nacelle tubes, so a a couple of MicroSols come in handy there. Also at the front of the saucer, just behind the sensor dish, there's a single T-shaped decal with four parts to it. The box-looking parts in the middle line up nicely with the moulding there, but those black fin-looking parts sort of sit half in and half out of the trenches there. You need to press them gently down with an ear bud or something, and then they sit down and look okay. Aaaaand I've just noticed those wicked seams on the nacelles... 😄 

December 16th, 2022 - So, this is it! All done. I actually completed it on Tuesday or Wednesday, but the first batch of photos I took were terrible, so I just sat and looked at it for a few days and then tonight I finally had another go. Much better now (believe it or not! 

December 16th, 2022 - So, again, this is what I call a "shelf model" - one that I wouldn't necessarily take off the shelf to show you up close, knowing where all the hideous flaws are, as I do. But, it looks alright from a distance. 😄 

December 16th, 2022 - I'm particularly happy with my windowing technique (using a fibre-tip pen to 'blob' the windows into place). It's a bit unpredictable, but better than nothing perhaps. I dunno.  

December 16th, 2022 - Anyway, to summarize this 5-week journey up, this kit as a whole was quite challenging to make, because the fit of many of the parts was less than ideal. In particular, the clear parts for the four impulse/thruster engines caused the hulls to not fit nicely, and the inserts for the nacelles -- well, the nacelles are a horror story, or at least, I had a horror story with them, partly because of my own stupidity. This is why the blue chiller grilles are on the outside, not the inside, and so the pinstripe and arrowhead decals are kind of on the top 3/4 of the nacelles, not the side. On a positive note, the decals are awesome, no problems there, and the nice dome base with the swivel stand was a revelation for me. 😄 I'm super happy just that I made my 5th-season NX refit ship, and look forward to doing a regular NX-01 in a larger scale at some point in the future. As for my next project, hmm... 🙂