Trent Bennett’s USS Excalibur

Here is my latest build up. She is the U.S.S. Excalibur registry number NCC-26517. I used the original Enterprise-C kit as well as some pieces from the Pro Shop Yamaguchi kit to make her a refit Ambassador Class. She is primarily out of the box, except the decals are a combination of JTGraphics, and a couple of the original decals.

The first thing I did for the model was cut back the under part of the secondary hull so I could place the under sling shuttle bay there. I should have cut the hull back just a little bit more since I do have the under sling shuttle bay a bit to far forward but that is okay I am happy with the results. After cutting the hull back a bit I glued the secondary hull together, glued the impulse engine deck in place, glued the nacelle pylons together and in place. The next step I filled in the seam running along the under side of the ship with putty and sanded everything smooth. I also did the same thing for the nacelle pylons, although I did not get everything filled in as much as I’d like but as I said I’m happy with the results.

I originally was going to shift the entire secondary hull forward a bit like how it was supposed to but that would have been disastrous since I wasn’t really sure how to do it until after I had fully finished the kit. However all I did was just cut the back of the neckpiece where it stood out to long and used a piece of styrene that I cut out and glued in place. Once the glue was dried I filled the entire thing over with putty and sanded everything down and made sure it rounded like it was supposed to. I thought it came out well.

I then took the under sling shuttle bay and glued it into place and used putty to fill in the gap between the shuttle bay piece and the secondary hull where I cut it. After the putty dried I sanded everything down but not completely smooth as I had hoped. Once everything was filled to my satisfaction I the next step I sanded down the entire escape pod hatches on deck 3 and the little squares around the bridge on deck 2. Since after all those escape pod hatches and little squares were not on the refit Ambassador Class except for two escape pod hatches directly behind the bridge which I used the extra ones from the kit.

I took the two-piece of the saucer section and glued those together after everything for the secondary hull had dried. Once everything was ready to go I air brushed the saucer section and the secondary hull pieces light gray. I then painted the warp engine grills light blue, as well as the inside of the main deflector dish.

The impulse engine I painted red and for the outside housing of the deflector dish I painted that light gray to blend in with the hull better. After things had dried a bit I mixed some light blue and flat white from the regular Testors line and used that to paint the lighter blue shades. For the darker blue shades I took Russian Flanker Medium Blue and used that which in my honest opinion those two colors have very closely matched the studio versions colors.

For the paint job I didn’t take as much time as I wanted.  But over all I am a bit satisfied with how the paint job came out. After all the paint had dried I applied the decals for the kit. I know there’s supposed to be the Starfleet insignia decals with the strips after the insignia on the top of the nacelles, however I messed up on those when applying them so I just left them off and I consider this just a variant refit Ambassador Class. I also know the planetary sensor dome is supposed to be turned a different direction, but with the Ambassador Class being an off shoot from the Excelsior and Galaxy classes I figured I’d have the planetary sensor dome facing like the Excelsior’s. But anyways that is my build up of the refit Ambassador Class and I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Trent Bennett