U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-C AMT 1:2500

September 11, 2022 (1) So, once again, this is the individually sold Enterprise-C from the 7-Enterprise set, which dates back to 2014. The individually sold models are known as the Cadet series, and have a reputation for being a bit dodgy in terms of fit and other factors. I've watched three videos of this thing being built. One by my main man, ModelChili Scale Models, over in New Zealand. One by a guy who did a 6-part series in which he also lights it up (I ain't doing that!), and one by a guy up in the NE United States - I forget his channel's name and can't find it in my history right now - but he did a few episodes of this. They all struggled with various aspects of the kit, so I'm hoping for an easier time myself. 😄 

September 11, 2022 (2) The traditional counting and washing of the parts, with the laying out on a towel to dry. Perhaps not really necessary, but I like to be methodical and it's something I used to do in my modelling prime as a teenager. Inset, all the parts unboxed and filed smooth where necessary. In the top-right corner of that inset photo you can see the little pile of mold nubs that got cut off from other places on the kit parts. And even though there is a wee pocket-thing to hold the stand at the base of the engineering hull, there's no stand! Massive sigh. Making a proper stand for the 1:537 Reliant has been a big issue, so here we go again I suppose... 😄 

September 11, 2022 (3) I just had a sneaky window in which I could start painting. So, having assembled the saucer earlier today (the whole kit is snap-together, but I blobbed some Humbrol gel glue on the 4 posts and sockets anyway), I laid down some Vallejo white primer from a spray can, and some Humbrol Chrome Silver on the nacelles, Bussard collectors, and sensor dish. This is in preparation for thin coats of red and blue on those parts. I honestly would not have thought of using a base of chrome to make a final, sparkly 'working' effect, but I saw this guy do it today in his videos and it looked really good - really vivid and alive. The kit is molded in this weird, green-grey colour that looks like glow-in-the-dark paint. After all the primer is down, I will lay on some Citadel Grey Seer as the final colour. The decals for this thing are huge anyway, and the Ambassadors always look more grey than white to me. 

September 12, 2022 (4) With the Vallejo white primer dry, this evening I put the engineering hull together, with some light gluing for good luck. Clips not really necessary I suppose, but eh. I had a bit of inspiration about the stand today too - I'll use a long, slim, nail. I have loads of different ones in the garage, and if none of them are suitable, it's an easy purchase from the local hardware store. I can bang it up through a nice wooden base or something and wedge it into the cup underneath engineering. 

September 12, 2022 (5) The Humbrol Chrome Silver is also dry, so I reversed the tape and added some blobs of poster-tack in preparation for priming tomorrow. I'll also paint the Bussards and deflector dish then too. By the way, I realized tonight that I didn't need to paint the tops of the nacelles silver, because they're just part of the hull. 😄 I've been a bit obsessed with the Excelsior lately, and I guess I was thinking about her glowy-on-top nacelles when I taped these up the other day. Oh well! 😄 

September 13, 2022 (6) Squeezed some Vallejo Acrylic Putty into the obvious gaps. These were: around the join between the front and back halves of the engineering hull (pictured); the seam at the front of the neck; along the belly seam, and the 'ass crack' of the two engineering hull halves, down to the fantail shuttlebay doors (also pictured). I have to say that otherwise the fit is very good and everything comes together nicely. Again, I blobbed some glue onto the snap-fix posts and around some other parts, but generally I seem to have had a better experience with this little kit than the YouTubers I watched make this. Hope my luck holds out! 😄 

September 14, 2022 (7) On with the Citadel Grey Seer! I have been wondering how this paint will be for a long time. I bought three big cans of this stuff late last year/early this year mainly in anticipation of building my big Intrepid class ship. So this is the first time I've used it, and the first time I've used a Citadel spray, aaand the first time I've applied a top coat...  

September 14, 2022 (8) ...and I'n very happy with the result so far! These photos were taken right after painting, which was about 4 hours ago. I just looked at the parts again and they look really nice! The colour dries a little lighter - what you see in the pics here is basically what it is. I think this will be a good colour for the Enterprise-C, which on this model at least is about 90% decal anyway. 😄 One day maybe I'll make a whiter Ambassador, but my head canon has most of those 90s-Trek ships being more grey than white. 

September 17, 2022 (9) Over the last four days I assembled the nacelles and primed and painted them. The two hull assemblies have been given a coat of TS-13 in preparation for decals. Oh, and the deflector dish painted and plugged in too. This photo shows today's update: nacelles and impulse engines painted! The chrome silver under the red paint on the Bussard collectors and under the blue-white mix on the chiller grilles looks great! The photo doesn't really do them justice because I turned the phone light on and it washes out the effect, but you'll see how they turned out later. 

September 17, 2022 (10) The Bussard collectors are a blob of Vallejo Bloody Red (72.0.10) ever-so slightly watered down. The warp plasma is one blob of Ultramarine Blue (72.02.22) to two parts Dead White (72.00.1). I taped the nacelles (again!) and ran a flat-tipped brush around them. *Very* satisfying!

Next step: TS-13 the nacelles, decal the separate parts, TS-80, and then stick them all together! Oh, and wait until you see the 'magic' solution I reached for the base and stand. 😄 

September 18, 2022 (12) With the blue and red paint still drying on the nacelles, I sat down to do my first decaling for 30+ years. I mean, everything is my first time for 30+ years, but I was especially looking forward to the decaling, as I've been religiously studying the works of the great Decal Master, Sam from ModelChili Scale Models. 😄 One thing I found was that the Micro Set didn't 'paint on' to the plastic as I was expecting. Rather, I had to blob it on in specks and dots. Apart from that, everything went very smoothly. In this session I decaled the top of the saucer and the top of the engineering hull. Overall, my experience with these decals was very good. I had only two little rips, in the large, middle, horse-shoe shaped decal that goes between the bridge decal and the giant saucer decal. You can see them in the photo at about the 12 o'clock and 4 o'clock positions. After 3 coats of Micro Sol today, I ended up just gently slicing along the edge of the 5 phaser strips, which refused to settle down. But now they're okay. Overall, my decalling is far from perfect, but I took another tip from Sam's build of this model and cut the giant donut decal into 4 sections, which helped enormously. 

September 19, 2022 (11) Today I decalled the bottom of the saucer and the bottom of the engy hull, plus the tops of the nacelles. This photo shows them all wet, just after application. The lower giant donut actually lays on top of the part where the neck joins the saucer. Stupidly, I didn't realize until the very end that those large white lifeboat hatches on the decal can line up with the molded hatches. But even so, the process was smooth. More 'exciting' was the lower engineering hull. You have 3 decals there - 15, 16, 17. Seventeen is a middle rectangle piece, but I obvs. didn't look at the instructions well enough, because I applied the side pieces, 16 and 17 and lined them up together over the mounting hole! Fortunately, only a few minutes passed before I realized my error and I was able to correct it without damaging any decals. There is also a black/orange stripey decal that sits on the lip of the hull - landing stripes for the shuttle bay. It's a tiny bit too thick to sit wholey on the lip, so that shine at the back of the hull is that decal. Micro Sol might squash it down. (Update: the next day, I simply sliced off the overhanging part). Finally, the first nacelle was a bit tricky because it's 3 decals, and you have to kind of gently press them down over the sides of the nacelles to the line of the chiller grilles. But the second one went more smoothly, so that's good. You can also see a bit of that blue deflector dish, the rim of which I ended up painting with -- I think -- Vallejo Stone Wall grey. 

September 20, 2022 (12) This evening I decalled the bottoms of the nacelles, the sides of the engineering hull, and the rings around the edge of the saucer. You can see the Micro Sol shining on the engineering hull). In fact, I was going to TS-13 the saucer so that I could do the detailed decals tomorrow, but at the last moment this evening I realized I hadn't done those bloody stripes around the rim! Quite a daunting prospect, I thought. Everything so far has been, basically, either large or square or otherwise easy enough to apply. Ultimately though, I got all four rim stripes on with only two small breaks! It was not as difficult as I'd thought. However, I have a lesson here for you too. There are 4 rim decals, and the saucer has 4 docking ports. Can you see where this is going? 😄 I laid my 4 rim decals down, and when I finally got to the end, nudging the last centimetre of decal into place, I see an approximately 1 cm gap! At first I thought they'd screwed the decals up, but then I realized that I was supposed to lay them down *inbetween* each docking port. Doh! 😄 So, I managed to fiddle the gap so that it was not so obvious, moving it from about the 7 o'clock position (looking from the front), back around to about 10 o'clock. Eh. The neck decals also wrap around the front of the neck, and one little piece of front neck flap broke off and was destroyed, so I will probably go in with some paint on that part. But! The underside decals for the nacelles went on perfectly, so that's good. Overall, I am still very happy with the decalling. Once everything is set and nice and tight, I will TS-13 all parts, do the tiny detail decals, names, and registry numbers, and then assemble! 

September 23, 2022 (13) Just a quick update. Since the last post here 3 days ago, I have finished all of the decalling and the final paint detailing (phaser strips, shuttlebay doors). Overall, the decals went on in, I think, 3 or 4 phases. After finishing all the main hull plating and giant saucer decals, yesterday I started the details - pin stripes, names, and registry numbers on the engineering hull and saucer, as well as the four orange docking ports on the saucer. Today I did all the decals on the nacelles (there are quite a few!), and that's that! Only one rip, in one of the nacelle pinstripes, which I managed to fix just fine. I think if I do this kit again one day (and maybe I will, with a whiter paint), I will paint the yellowy blocks either side of the nacelles between the Bussard collectors and the field grills. They give you four little decals for those parts, but the colour is a bit off I think. Too orangey.

One other thing to note about today's decalling: I read a discussion the other day somewhere in which people were saying how they don't bother with Micro Set, and just skip straight to the Micro Sol. So I tried that today and it worked pretty well. Certainly everything was less wet and sloppy, but I noticed immediately that you lose about a good 10 seconds-plus of adjustment time without it. So if you think you might need some extra help with a potentially tricky decal, sure, skip the setting agent. Otherwise, it's more helpful than not, imho. 

September 26, 2022 (14) So, here we are! It's all finished. Here are six photos -- terrible quality, I don't deny it. Anyway, we kick off our final inspection against the backdrop of one of my youngest son's school projects. The base is a piece of scrap wood that I cut out using a piece of plastic from some IKEA packaging as a template. A blast of black primer paint, a sticker from my old Star Trek sticker book, and a coat of Tamiya TS-13 gloss. The stand is a piece of the handle of an old BBQ fork. 😄 

September 26, 2022 (15) The port nacelle would not sit straight, unfortunately. I take comfort in the fact that ModelChili Scale Models had a similar problem with that nacelle. Take note! If you do this kit, watch out for that nacelle. 😄 

September 26, 2022 (16) At 11 o'clock you can see a seam between two of the giant donut pieces, and that some of the lifeboat hatches are misaligned too. That was a trick I missed when applying them - using the hatches to line everything up. But, okay. One other thing - the Tamiya TS-80 matt coat dulled down my shiny red Bussard collectors. And I only thought about that as I was spraying them. 😄 

September 26, 2022 (17) An interesting thing. I test-fit the saucer to the neck like, 10 times, and it just would not fit perfectly together. To be more precise, you put the saucer on two 'hooks' on top of the neck, and slide it forward and it should 'click' into position. (This is a snap-fix kit, don't forget). Well, the damn thing would not slide forward properly. I wasn't expecting it to snap together, but neither would it line up properly. Eventually, I gave up and applied some glue to the top of the neck. When I then pressed the saucer on, it slid forward and clicked into place perfectly! Guess it just needed some lubrication. 😄 

September 26, 2022 (18) One consequence of that is that I overlooked the fact that a tiny piece of neck sticks out behind the saucer. So, before gluing I filed it smooth and painted it the same Vallejo Stone Wall Grey as the rim of the deflector dish and phaser strips. I also took that opportunity to paint the shuttlebay doors. Of course, you can't really tell in this crappy light. 😄 

September 26, 2022 (19) The final shot! (Unless I miraculously take a really good one tomorrow 😉. What did I learn building this kit?
- Chrome paint under a colour is good for a lively, energized effect.
- Cut up the big saucer decals into quarters, and use the hatches to align them.
- Watch out for the nacelles tilting.
- Top-of-nacelle decals - because of the distinctive ridges up there, the danger of air bubbles and weirdness is 100%. Some people file those ridges down, which is not a bad idea I guess.
- The decals are very very transparent, so their own colour will change depending on what base colour you use, more than you might think.
- Your milage may vary with the fit, but at the least you'll need lots of puttying and filing to get a good job. More than what I did anyway! 😄
- This is a BYOB party -- Bring Your Own Base! 😄

...and now, back to our main feature, the USS Reliant. 😄