Northstar/DeBoer Enterprise Refit
Repair/Rework/Rebuild
1/260th Scale
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Changes are a comin'...
And They Start Right About Here.
Welcome back one and whoever else is readin' this lot.

OK, the first change is in the final look, the client has changed his brain on that and now
just wants a clean Motion Picture Refit.
Much the same look as the last Polar Lights 1/350th I did.

I have no problem with that I can tell you!

Right, things to get sorted so starting with the biggest lump, the main deflector.

The main prob being to my peepers, it's a bit short in depth and width dept.
Sort of demonstrated in the below rough comparison pic.

Not exactly there methinks.

So out with the polygon punching program and a bit of fiddling about ensued.



A sort of quick comparison looksee.

Getting there!

Now while tip toeing through the reference,
one thing I did notice about the 'ring of lights' around the deflector dish housing thing.

What I did notice was that on pretty much any rendition in kit or art form
of the refit is that the said ring had slots, nicely rounded at both ends.

Turns out that this may not be exactly the case on the studio model.

A close up of one bit shows it a little better.

The inside edge has a nice curve at the ends until it meets the outside edge which almost seems to cut it off

Well good enough for me so will be built in to my one.

And a quick comparison from the side between mine so far and the real thing so to speak.

A bit closer though things had to be altered slightly here and there and certain dimensions
altered a bit to accommodate the DeBoer secondary hull which is not exact to the studio model in many ways.
Compromise is going to have to be the order of the day here, nature of the beast.

A few points pulled about and it was sorted enough to my satisfaction.

Decided at this point to chicken out completely and passed the
whole damn thing over to Shapeways to take care of.
And they did.

A week later, the bits arrived.

Dish and small items, very crisp.



The cut outs for the RCS thrusters came out well...

And the light boxes with a hole to accept a 3mm LED fitted nice and snug.

And the now standard 'just shoved in there' comparison shot.

A bit of dry fit assembly with nothing but friction holding the bits together
and after a lick of primer and we get this.









And not forgetting the side by side stuff...as one does...





So getting there with that but as one can see, the side bits on the deflector housing do not
quite line up with the side bits on the secondary hull.
To be honest, I never noticed that the ones on the DeBoer were not at 90 degrees to each other.
My mistake there and will do some filler fiddlin about when it comes to assembly along with
a multitude of other stuff I am sure.

Onward and more mesh messing about with the planetary sensor array.
Like so.





Well much still to be done lords save us all.
And we'll get to that as we go along.
See thee for the next update which will happen...at some point...
Honest!
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