Love, hate and the AMT Enterprise model

[Melakon]

That was state of the art effects work for 8mm in those days. My film scratching attempts were never that good, even with the help of a little editing machine and film splicer. I was using the 12" G.I. Joe dolls as "stuntmen" for falls off cliffs and stuff.

[Sector 7]

Redfern wrote:

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My first kit (purchased in late 1972, maybe early '73) was the long box and the kit itself had the "loop" and "peg" approach to attach the nacelles. The light kit had been phased out by the time of this release. I didn't paint anything other than the engine domes and the main "dish", and like so many other kids, I used Testors red.

This was my first experience, as well. Eventually, my paper route money purchased every ST model made... even the UFO Mystery Ship that glowed in the dark. It gave me the idea to use Testor's black-light paint for windows on the ships. When I turned on the black light at night in my room... my ships came to life.

BTW, I never knew you were supposed to put them on a shelf. I used fishing line to hang the Bird of Prey, D-7 and Enterprise from my ceiling. I went through a few sets of Galileo 7's and Spock with the snake-thingy because I PLAYED outside with them... in the grass and dirt as I "explored" our farm.

In the late 80s to early 90s, I repurchased the ships from TOS as well as TNG. The guy at the local hobby store showcased customer models and asked me to display mine. Whenever I brought in a new ship to display, he'd GIVE me another one to build. The owner said my displays sold a lot of ST models for him. [I think my OCD came into play, because I built them to near perfection... using 50-100 man hours each.] I still used black-light paint. When I was younger, I didn't know about the lighting kits... so I never used them later either.

[FredH]

Christopher wrote:

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Mine didn't have any lights or batteries.

Nor mine.

As I recall, the instructions said the model should be painted metallic blue. So I painted it with "Metallic Blue" paint--and got a very deep dark cobalt blue Enterprise. Which in retrospect looked rather cool, but not like the Enterprise. So I repainted it silver.

And the damn nacelles wouldn't point in the same direction.

[Jeyl]

Forbin wrote:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKWSPunar3w

(Yeah, I know it's too long. But I was, like, 18 when I made it).

......Wow. Bravo good sir. I love it!

[sunburn800]

I received my first model of the Enterprise when i was 8 my dad bought it for my Bday and he painted it blue along with a green klingon battle cruiser these where my first models.After that i built a fleet of starships each one had a different name.

[Galileo7]

As a boy in the '70s, I enjoyed both building two of the AMT 1701 kits and playing with them with friends.

[Redfern]

Galileo7 wrote:

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As a boy in the '70s, I enjoyed both building two of the AMT 1701 kits and playing with them with friends.

I did the same thing. The apartment townhouse where my father and I lived had a two foot wide globe lamp suspended over our dining table and was controlled by a dimmer switch. I'd dial it to a faint glow and "orbit" my assembled Enterprise around it, pretending the lamp was a planet. Turn the lamp brighter and it became a star. Have my buddy Kyle oscillate the dial to make the lamp "pulse" and it became the flagship Fesarius of the First Federation.

Shoot, has it really been 40 years?!

Sincerely,

Bill

[Galileo7]

Redfern wrote:

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I did the same thing. The apartment townhouse where my father and I lived had a two foot wide globe lamp suspended over our dining table and was controlled by a dimmer switch. I'd dial it to a faint glow and "orbit" my assembled Enterprise around it, pretending the lamp was a planet. Turn the lamp brighter and it became a star. Have my buddy Kyle oscillate the dial to make the lamp "pulse" and it became the flagship Fesarius of the First Federation.

Shoot, has it really been 40 years?!

Sincerely,

Bill

It was fun being a kid in the '70s.

[Forbin]

Jay Chladek's article on the history of the model kit:
http://culttvman.com/main/?p=3665

[Christopher]

Okay, the one I had was the Small Box Version One.

It feels a bit anachronistic to see the article writer referring to the nacelle caps as "Bussard collectors," a terminology that wasn't applied to Starfleet nacelles until TNG (courtesy of Rick Sternbach, who'd worked with Dr. Bussard before becoming a technical consultant on TNG). I think back then we just called them nacelle caps or domes. I recall a Cinefantastique article saying that they were referred to behind the scenes as "ball power modules."

[jayrath]

Agreed! Back in the day we never knew what the #*$%& was going on behind the domes. I thought at the time (and still prefer to think) that all the blinkies showed the actual matter-antimatter interaction. It sparkled, even on color sets, and the spokes barely and only infrequently showed. It was a whole lot more fun not knowing all the Trek-nology.

I started a thread on this before, but did anyone else ever make starships out of paper plates and paper towel tubes? And here's a tip -- you can make a communicator very much like the ones in the Gold Key comics by taping two cigarette packs together and painting them red. You even get the flip-up antenna (much smaller in the comic books.) So much more fun to make things than buy them as a kid, even if wildly inacurrate. My broken AMT nacelles later became phasers (the pylons were the pistol grips). And long before Franz Joseph, I glued parts of broken models all over, to make new hybrid ships.

[Navigator_NCC2120]

Forbin wrote:

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Jay Chladek's article on the history of the model kit:
http://culttvman.com/main/?p=3665

Thanks for the link Forbin.

My dad bought and built me the Long Box version #2 kit (Kit # S951-250), I was too young to build it. It must have been either the Spring of 1970 or 1971. It took 2 "C" or "D" size batteries in the secondary hull to power the 4 lights; 1 light for the green clear bridge dome and 1 for the green clear lower dome on the primary hull and 1 light behind each of the orange translucent nacelle caps/domes. You turned on the lights by turning the cylindrical Sensor Dish Mount, located at the front of the secondary hull which had the antenna dish sticking out of it, clockwise.

When I got the Enterprise and the Klingon battlecruiser kits in 1975 for Christmas, the Enterprise no longer had the lights, but it was still fun to build them both on my own.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
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Edit: The culttvman article above states that the model kit took 2 AA batteries but I have always remembered them as being either 2 "C" or "D" size batteries. Maybe my memory is faulty, anyone else remember what size batteries their kit used?

[Christopher]

I love the idea of the deflector dish assembly being the knob to turn the lights on.

[Navigator_NCC2120]

Christopher wrote:

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I love the idea of the deflector dish assembly being the knob to turn the lights on.

Me too. It was hidden in plain sight.

Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
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[Melakon]

I'm pretty sure you're right about the C or D cell batteries. I don't remember which though. It was nearly 50 years ago.