Declaration Class Upgrade

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.

This is the story of the second 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 volume one, the ship known as Enterprise (XCV-330) was upgraded at Alpha Centauri in the year 2058 in order to better fight the Kzinti during the Earth-Kzin War.  According to the history of the ship, the support strut issues were rectified by this time hence the need for only one again.

Since this is the more recognizable configuration of this ship, I decided to do some kitbashing and molding with sculpting putty to make this ship.

 

 

 

DeepSpace Pat's Paint Scheme

As I stated in my C.H.I. review, I decided to make my own rings from a thicker styrene.  Although thay certainly appear more sturdy, it was a real P.I.T.A. to make them.  It is is extremely difficult to hold the bent styrene in place while the super glue sets.  In fact, I ended up making slightly thicker cross beams in order to compensate.  I then filled the cross beams in to make them look like weapons systems or sensor pods.

The first thing that needed to be changed was the command module.  I sawed off the stock one and ended up forming my own from modeling putty.

According to the history book, the drive system was also upgraded so I opted to use some Klingon drive greebles in place of the stock drive greebles.

Other than struggling with the ring assembly, and waiting on the putty to harden, this was a super easy build.  

Shortly after her upgrade, the Enterprise had to help evacuate Alpha Centauri because they were overrun during the war.  The ship led a small fleet on the run for three years.  

I imagined that either during that run or sometime after, she may have been refit yet again and I added two additional support struts with the canon fixtures again.  The nice thing about my build is that I did not need to glue those struts on so I can actually display the ship with or without the struts attached.

 

 

Conclusion

If you want any advice about the original 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