Ivan Place’s Enterprise C

This is an account of a little jigsaw puzzle project I wanted to undertake. Let me introduce myself:

My name is Ivan F. Place, Jr., and I consider myself a ‘Collector’ of sorts. My first hobby is within the R/C world, i.e., race boats, monster trucks, and 57″ Irwin Allen submarines – get the hint? I do not consider myself a kit builder, kit assembler, nor scratch builder. That I leave up to the experts and kit builder enthusiasts who have the patience for this hobby. I, on the other hand, would rather see a good R/C boat crash at 50 mph after 10 minutes of furious racing.

I undertook this project to see what all you guys are talking about when it comes to assembling these models I used to rush out and buy back in 1975

Materials used: Standard stuff you guys told me to get (ultra-bright LEDS, Envirotex, silly putty, etc.)

After test fitting all parts I began with the saucer and secondary hull sections, drilling and X-Acto knife window shaping took me 5.5 hrs.

The outer hull opaque process was achieved using one coat flat black before starting the infamous putty, primer and sanding routine, then a final black coat after all primer and putting cycles were completed.

The interior hull opaque process was achieved with three coats flat black within two hours, then a 3 hr dry time. In this picture, you can see I still had one more coat on flat black to apply.

Window clear resin fill process: I attempted this method per online instructions, but shouldn’t have used a ‘micro-fine’ brush which left many air bubbles in some windows, and not enough resin in others. I plan to use the toothpick method next time to drop in the resin. The window resin dry time took 5 hours, but I allowed it to cure overnight.

Exterior window masking: I attempted the liquid mask technique in order to apply more primer, but due to the scale of the drilled windows, things got sloppy. The windows are not perfect shapes, and I’m not an expert at the masking process; this is my first model in more than 25 years, so I eventually gave up the entire process, then drilled out the resin from all windows. This entire ordeal took an additional 4 hours,

But a valuable lesson was learned

Electrical wiring: (8 hours)

Another valuable lesson was learned; Stay away from radio shack! I eventually located a very good electrical supply store to get the proper gauge wire to fit nicely through the pylons and down in-between the secondary hull tail halves. I also used a 2.5mm round female coax receptacle and plug, thus allowing the ship to be able to swivel 360-degress on the stand as well as taken off to throw around if desired. Testing of the power adapters was performed several times; once everything gets sealed up, I’m not taking this thing apart!

Layout of lighting: (8 hours)

Interior light refraction was performed using one coat of gloss white enamel paint along with aluminum tape in strategic areas. I tested each LED with and without its resistor, then I tested the saucer, warp engine, and secondary hull LED’s for over an hour on two separate days at several voltage settings before gluing each section. For the saucer section, I used clothespins to secure the hull tight enough so as to simulate a permanent fit to eliminate any chances of a tight fit screwing up things.

After total satisfaction of ZERO light bleeding from the any LED’s, and zero wiring errors, I glued each major hull section.

Assembly Completed

Since this is my first Starship built since the early 70’s, painting proved to be quite an experience, as I literally stared at the model trying to figure out how to mask all those multicolored areas as well as being a first-time airbrush user. I don’t plan to build anymore ‘WildStyle’ color patterned ships like this..

There’s nothing much more I can add to this buildup article since I’m not reinventing the wheel for this hobby; the ship was easy to assemble yet hard to wire due to its small scale, and a bear to paint. Main paints used were Model Master’s acrylic Intermediate blue, Duck Egg Blue, Navy Blue-Gray, Turn Signal Amber, Gunship Gray for the phaser banks, and Clear Blue for the engine nacelle grills and interior deflector dish.

The following pics show my progress towards the end result.

My appreciation goes out to: Jack Brunner, Jr. (fokkerpilot), D.L. Matthys (DLM), James Davis (jfd4), and David Merriman (Father of the Seaview and FS-1)

Ivan Place