NX Class Variants

NOTE:  You can click on most pictures to get a larger view of them.

Having just finished up my Eaglemoss Vs. The World review on the NX class ship (Click HERE to read that review.), I have decided to take a quick break and share with you some of the NX class variants that I've built.

Johnny Lightning Kitbashes - Back Row: NX-R class, NX-D class, and NX-S class

The majority of this article is going to focus on my Johnny Lightning kitbashes. I found it pretty fun to take an already existing Johnny Lighting toy and convert it into a kitbashed ship.  And because most of the painting was already done, they went a lot quicker.  And the price for the main part was not really that expensive,  I think on average, I paid about $16 to $20 a ship.

USS Dakota (NCC-532)
NX-TypeD Class 
1:2500 Scale Johnny Lightning Kitbash

 

 

 

 

This was a rather quick and fun side project I did one night. I had took the evening off from building some Klingon and Federation dreadnoughts to do a "quick" little kitbash. This was not my design, but for the life of me I can not find the source website now. A special thanks shout out goes to Alva Boyd Duke from the Star Trek Modelers Group FaceBook page for selling me his old Johnny Lightning NX for parts. As you can see, I added extra nacelles to a Johnny Lightning NX to make a quad nacelle starship. Alva's support pylons had been destroyed in some glorious battle so I used some left over Klingon D-7 nacelle pylons as replacements. This was a fairly easy build once the super glue and model cement set. The toy was already painted so I just needed to silver out the ship name, registry and new pylons. I've read that this is a 1:2500 scale ship. This ship also got nominated for Ship Of The Week on the Star Trek Modelers Group and although I didn't win that week, it was still an honor considering that I build this in about two hours.

USS Sargon (NCC-504)
NX-TypeS Class 
1:2500 Scale Johnny Lightning Kitbash

 

 

 

 

Here is what happens when you want to imagine a really old Miranda Class predecessor. This was not my design, but for the life of me I can not find the source website now. I Akiraprised a Johhny Lightning Enterprise and then added a Miranda Class weapons pod on her. This was another quick down and dirty kitbash that only took about four hours to do.

USS LOTaR (NCC-599)
NX-TypeR Class 
1:2500 Scale Johnny Lightning Kitbash

 

 

 

 

This ship was my own design but I will admit that the idea sprung from someone else's work...

In Universe Story:

She was rescued from the Federation boneyard, repaired, restored, and refitted by the Triple-D Construction Company (formally known as Dougherty & Sons Ship Building). Not much is known about her. She appears to have been an experiment at merging Vulcan Warp Ring Technology with Starfleet Hull Designs. She was in pretty bad shape when she was towed from the boneyard, having her original warp and computer cores pulled at some point. Her impulse engines were blown out so we had to replace them with some newer drives. These have given her some pretty hefty speed increases at sub-light which necessitated adding extra RCS thrusters on the warp ring. Let's just say, she's pretty maneuverable. We've installed a newer computer core and an even newer compact warp core which seems to have meshed well with her unique nacelle configuration.  We were never able to figure out her original designation, so we've re-christened her the USS LOTaR (NCC-599). The name apparently is some inside joke with our construction crew and comes from an old Earth movie about something called a Hobbit. We classified her as an NX - Type R (or NX-R for short) She proudly joins our fleet of other NX variants. We hope you enjoyed this presentation. 

Real Universe Story:
After seeing John Payne's Ring Ship Kitbash, I really wanted to make one of my own. This was my second attempt at making a ring ship and I decided to forgo the tedious building process by using a Johnny Lighting toy that had been hacked up for parts. This ship was a lot more work than her previous two NX variant sister ships. This one took some time to get all the proper proportions and lots of consulting with the gang over at Star Trek Modelers Group to get her right. The group had recommended me using a piece of PVC pipe for my ring. My initial dry fit had the ring surrounding the NX's impulse engines, but the ship looked ridiculously short, so I built a piece to extend the struts and support the ring further back. Since the original NX engines were now covered over by the ring support, I chopped off some extra impulse engines I had from some other kitbash projects and supercharged her with those engines. The other decision was in regards to the thickness of the actual ring. My first cut just looked too big and even the other club members suggested cutting it down.  I really liked the final outcome and she has been featured in the advertisement for a club sanctioned building contest.

Top: Polar Lights - Bottom (Left to Right) Resin Modeller, Eaglemoss, Resin Modeller

Of course, you can't talk about the NX Class without also discussing the very cool NX Refit that Doug Drexler envisioned for the ship had we ever made it to a season 5 of the series.  The idea behind this design was that after 4 years of use, Starfleet would want to make some serious modifications based off of lessons learned from her past missions.

To be fair to my other articles and avoid repetitive writing, I'm going to just give you a cursory look at my NX Refit collection.

USS Ark (NX-69)

NX Class Refit
1:1000 Polar Lights Kit

 

Polar Lights released this kit in 2014 and I was so excited by this ship design that actually pre-purchased it.  She's a bit bigger than what I normally collect, but at the time, was the only model available of this ship and I absolutely loved the design.  I did some subtle variations on the parts I used for the refit design, but I still like how this turned out.

USS Enterprise (NX-01)
NX Class Refit 

1:1400 Resin Modeller Kit

 

USS Couatl (NX-99)
NX Class Refit 

1:1400 Resin Modeller kit

 

There are some other companies that have produced either add-on kits or thier own resin versions of this ship.  At the time of the original writing of this article, I was waiting on Resin Modeler, to finish up his version of this ship.  He produced it first in 3D software, then professionally 3D printed it, then made his resin molds.  He finally finished and produced his kit and quite frankly, it looks great.  I'm pretty lousy with decals, but added just a few to give the ships I have a little more pzazz,

Instead of going into an in-depth repeat of stuff I already said about this kit, feel free to go read my Resin Kit Review: Resin Modeler 1:1400 NX Refit Class.  It looks like you can get the model for around $54 plus shipping costs.

I built two of these ships and this is a very rare time when the two of them were together.

USS Enterprise
NX Class Refit
Eaaglemoss

 

Editor's Note (May 2016): I just received and reviewed the Eaglemoss NX Refit model and have written an extensive review of it.  You can read that review at THIS LINK.

As always, I hope you found this article useful and informative.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to comment below.

So for now, "Live long and prosper!!!"

Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:
NX-D Class 
NX-R Class     NX-R Class WIP Pictures
NX-S Class     NX-S Class WIP Pictures

EDITOR'S NOTE: As of 3/10/2018, I wrote up some separate articles for the Johnny Lighting Kitbashes that I made.  The really don't have too much more information that what was written above except for the fact that I included a couple of Work In Progress pictures of the build process on the NX-R and NX-S.

NX-TypeD Class [Johnny Lightning Kitbash]
You can read all about this ship at THIS LINK.

NX-TypeS Class [Johnny Lightning Kitbash]
You can read all about this ship at THIS LINK.

NX-TypeR Class [Johnny Lightning Kitbash]
You can read all about this ship at THIS LINK.