Captain Kahuna

Thanks guys!

This one isn't hard to build, but it does have a few idiosyncracies. It's a snap-kit but if you want the best results you'll have to glue it together, otherwise you'll have gaps aplenty. It will require a bit of filling with putty, espeially where the nacelle struts fit into the secondary hull. The primary hull comes in two pieces. Make sure you connect the bottom half to the dorsal support BEFORE you connect the upper half of the primary hull. If you glue the two halves together it will be much more difficult to snap them onto the dorsal as the fit is very tight.

I snagged another one of these off ebay and I'll be doing one of the pilot episode ships with that. However, before that I have the D7 to get through as well as the NX-01 and the Enterprise B waiting in the wings.

You don't want to open that door Sarge.

Thanks guys.

It's nice to get back into a hobby that used to give me a lot of enjoyment yet went on the backburner years ago, especially since there's so much more really cool "stuff" available.

Do get me wrong, I'm a Star Wars fan too, and sci-fi in general is one of my favorite mediums. However, unlike Star Wars, Star Trek always seemed to give you something to think about just below the surface whereas Star Wars was pretty much a Saturday matinee good time. (which is what it was meant to be anyway). I'd really like to see next years proposed Star Trek movie rekindle the franchise. On the other hand, I consider the last three Star Wars movies to be near cinematic abortions and have no enthusiasm to see any more.

I received mine Thursday evening.

My production ship for comparison...........


Unfortunately UPS handled the Cage ship with their usual kidd gloves and it arrived damaged. The port nacelle strut was bent severely askew and the nacelle was leaning far down, out and forward. I e-mailed Rick and he quickly responded with instructions to file a claim with UPS so they could pay to replace it. I've been down that road before and decided it simply wasn't worth the trouble on a relatively cheap item like this. Consequently, I decided to try fixing it myself. I used a blowdryer to heat up the strut and succeeded in bending it back into alignment, and the ship now looks as good as new. New Force was very quick on delivery and I can't blame the handlers ham-handedness on them. I'll be doing business with New Force again. As a modeler from way back I could fault both ships for their glaring seams and slightly mis-aligned paint applications here and there. However, these aren't models and considering their cost I'm happy with them. I think I'll pass on the WNMHGB version, but I'll definetly pick up TWOK refit to round out the set.

The familiar part of the story concerns the stand. It's familiar because, as everyone knows, the stand is junk. The production ships stand literally fell apart when I took it out of the box. The bushing that fits over the ball joint came apart in three or four pieces before I could even try to mount the ship. The Cage ships stand suffered a similar fate, with the bushing cracking down the sides when I mounted the ship onto it. I could contact DST about a replacement but why bother? I have no need for two more junky stands. However, I did find a use for one of them: as a stand for my AA Phaser.

The Phaser isn't connected to the stand but merely balances on the flat end of the ball joint. At least I've gotten some use out of it.

Thanks! I've been away from Star Trek as a hobby for a long time, although I've always been a regular viewer of both the series and movies. I recently become pretty burned out on several other hobbies and have rekindled my interest in Trek.