Declaration Class Refit

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

[Editor's Note (May 2016): This article along with her sister article were merged together into one combined work.  No further edits were done to this article.  I would highly recommend that you go read the new article instead by clicking on THIS LINK.  Consider that new article the REFIT version of this one.]

While writing the review for the Cozmo Heavy Industries 1:2500 Declaration Class kit, I had shared that I liked the kit so much that I actually bought two more of that kit just so I could build some variants of the ship.

A friend of mine introduced me to this series of books called the Federation Spaceflight Chronology, which had TONS of in depth information about the Star Trek universe up through the TMP and ending around the ST3:TSFS era.  One of the neat things about volume one was that it covered some very old style ships that were never seen on screen.  It had a very nice section on the Declaration class and the history surrounding those ships.

According to these history books, the Declaration class suffered from stress cracked along the ring support strut during the test warp trials.  This issue was resolved by adding additional support struts.  These additional struts had the added benefit of giving the ship additional hard points to mount laser cannons to.

I decided to build this variant using one of the extra Cozmo Heavy Industries 1:2500 Declaration kits I had purchased.

 

 

 

DeepSpace Pat's Paint Scheme

There was a real world advantage to building these struts for the model.  As I shared in the kit review, there was a potential for ring droopage as time went on.  My thoughts are that this addition to the kit will help alleviate the possibility of this issue occurring.

I built these support struts simply using some extra sprue that I had ling around.  The laser cannons are nothing more than magazine binder pegs from my Eaglemoss Star Trek The Official Starship Collection magazine binders.

Conclusion

If you want any advice about the model kit, please refer back to my Cozmo Heavy Industries 1:2500 Declaration Class kit review.

I hope you found this article as useful and informative as I did while writing it.  Please feel free to leave any comments, questions or suggestions below.

So, for now, "Live Long & Prosper!"

Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:

The Ship     WIP Pictures