Claire Ames’ Voyager

This is my second Star Trek model, my first being the classic Enterprise. I really enjoyed this Voyager model and interpreted it in my own way rather than going for any realistic look. The model went together fairly well, though I wish I had spent more time sanding the parts down to a more exact fit. I painted the hull before gluing. This resulted in having to do a lot of touch up work but seemed easier than masking everything.

I used light ghost gray for the base hull color. This was my first time using an airbrush and I was very pleased with the results. I spent a lot of time painting the details by hand. I really enjoyed the detail work on the sensor panels. I used intermediate blue for a base coat and international orange, gloss yellow, light blue, and flat white for accents. The phaser strips were done in TAC tan. I had some trouble with glue getting on the clear plastic windows while putting them in. But I found brushing them with a coat of gloss finish removed many of the glue marks. The escape pods were painted desert tan. I used intermediate blue for some dark accents on underside of the hull. Most of the many windows I painted flat white, but used duck egg blue on a few of them for some variety. For the warp nacelles I sued clear blue on the sides, which came out a bit dark, since I didn’t light the model. I painted the clear part of the deflector dish clear blue, outlined in brown and the part behind the dish duck egg blue. I really like the way this looks (though I know it’s not at all accurate!).

The model had been bought several years before I finished making it so the decals were rather old and tricky to work with. I ordered a new decal set from the Revell-Monogram web page for $3 and received a new decal sheet in less than a week. I was really pleased by their service.

Claire Ames