Jack Brunner’s Rio Grande

This is the AMT/Ertl Runabout kit – Rio Grande. This kit “begs” for an interior so I went about scratch building using a DS-9 manual and imagination.

Various gauges of styrene sheeting, be it plain, clear, or textured with diamond plated designs were used. The seats came out of a Playmates 1701D play set along with some of the figurines inside the ship.

Lighting was done purely with LED’s and the running lights were done with Fiber optic line. A 9 volt wall adapter serves as the power source wired in parallel to illuminate the interior, the impulse intakes (provided by DLM), the impulse exhaust, and the engine nacelles. A convenient plug jack (male to female) is located in the belly of the vessel and it allows the model to both be removed from the stand and for a 360 degree movement.

The table in the aft conference room was scratch built. The Ambassador, standing, is a repainted Obi-Wan-Kenobi.

The beginning of the interior layout

Transporter Pad utilizes a smoke tinted square of Lego with a yellow LED mounted into it form the bottom. Design hand painted.

A fiber optics bundle provides for instrument panel lighting. Panel schematics were downloaded, scaled down, and printed onto laminated stickers

This picture taken just prior to mating the hull halves. A main power distribution bar, purchased at Radio Shack, holds up to 6 sets of wires allowing for clean, trouble free wiring and hookup to the main power jack.

A picture of the nacelle wiring

A lot of seams needed to be puttied and sanded to achieve a virtually seamless machine. Side phaser arrays also needed a piece of styrene custom cut to close up the hollow area under the array

Custom built “Pyramid” type stand with brass tube to support the model onto it’s power jack. Stand was then secured onto a wooden base which has screens on all 4 sides. The screens allow for dual speaker mounting which, incorporated with 2 Radio Shack 20 second sound modules, provides for Engine and Transporter Sound. These effects were mounted underneath a scratch built LCARS panel and labeled using imagination. And now some pictures of the final product which is virtually seamless throughout. Model master Light Grey, Dark Grey, and Ghost Grey acrylics were used to airbrush this kit. Minute detailing was hand painted. Panel lines darkened with a #5 mechanical pencil. Weathering effects done with finely ground Earth Tone pastel chalks and brushed onto the model. Clear gloss coat was applied prior to decaling and then given the final seal with Testor’s Dull Coat.

Jack Brunner, Jr