Klingon Bird of Prey (whichever class)

[Savious]

OK; so I’m new to the board, and sure something along these lines have been posted at least half a dozen times before; but tossing it out anyway.

Why does a Klingon Bird of Prey wings fold?

More importantly; I was recently reading something that Rodenberry had wrote down about warp nacelle placement, and that they had to be above or below the main ship, and be able to see each other. This seeing each other concept, is why the Romulan Warbird has the huge space in the middle. I understand that the Federation warp tech, and other civilizations warp tech may not work the same; but on other Klingon vessels the nacelles are visible, much like the Federation ones.

This whole thing got me to thinking; that perhaps the Klingon Bird of Prey’s wings folding, are actually folding the wrong way.

Since it is a smaller ship, perhaps the warp nacelles wouldn’t need to take up as much volume, and therefore could be placed inside the wings; the wings would then fold down for warp travel, placing the nacelles below the ship, and in view of each other. Midway then for combat, since having them straight out would provide maneuvering thrusters a greater ability to roll the ship; and finally up for surface landing.

Thoughts?

 

[Robert Comsol]

The warp engines (able to see each other) are on top of the vessel, admittedly, not a classic 'trekish' design. But to relocate warp engines in the wings seems like a very unorthodox proposal. The wings need to fold whenever the vessel wants to land, very much like the Lambda Class shuttles of Star Wars (well, the Romulan Bird of Prey - before the script changed it to a Klingon one - was designed by the ILM model makers, too).

Bob

 

[Albertese]

We also see the BoP flying with wings down when it's attacking with it's wing disruptors, but wings flat out when cruising at warp speed. Perhaps the flat wings aid in the efficiency of the warp drive and the lower configuration somehow makes the weapons more powerful...though how, I couldn't guess. We see in ST5 that they can steer left and right, so maybe they are lower so that they don't risk hitting their own bridge....?

--Alex

 

[Dukhat]

I was recently reading something that Rodenberry had wrote down about warp nacelle placement, and that they had to be above or below the main ship, and be able to see each other.

That is just bullshit that Roddenberry pulled out of his ass just to invalidate Franz Joseph's Technical Manual after he and FJ had a parting of ways. Do not take it as gospel.

 

[Jimi_James]

Regardless of how it came to be in effect, the majority of canon Starfleet designs adhere to 'the Roddenberry Rules', as well as a large number of noncanon designs.
EAS has a good explanation of the rules, for those not familiar with them.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/design.htm

 

[Savious]

Well; see that's just it. The bird of prey looks cool; I always thought so; but at the same time, I also know that most fan's know more about cannon than the writting staff.

i.e. how did we end up with more than one version of the Bird of Prey? My guess is the writting staff simply didn't know that the original size was suppose to be rather small, and made a guess about the crew complement, thereby giving us more than one size.

Anyway, they put movable wings on the thing; and say hey it's neat; and I agree the concept is neat, it gave us our first look at a ship warp capable starship (not shuttle) that had landing capablility.

But, as I got to thinking more about it over the years, I got to thinking that once again, the writting staff failed. That instead of folding down for attack; they should of had them fold mid/flat for attack, and down for warp flight. That in fact, they had it backwords of what it should of been.

 

[DEWLine]

That new Haynes book by Rick Sternbach later this fall might settle a few arguments about this ship class and start a few others, all to our entertainment.

 

[Dukhat]

how did we end up with more than one version of the Bird of Prey? My guess is the writting staff simply didn't know that the original size was suppose to be rather small, and made a guess about the crew complement, thereby giving us more than one size.

No, that's not it. Basically, certain episodes called for various sized ships, but the only Klingon filming models they had at the time were the BoP and the K'T'inga. Since the size of the K'T'inga was pretty much given, they were forced to "upscale" the BoP in such episodes as "The Defector" (where they're now the size of a Romulan Warbird), and "Yesterday's Enterprise" (where they were roughly the size of the Enterprise-D). It was only because they didn't have the budget to build several different models; that is, until the Vor'cha model was built. Unfortunately this drastic upscaling for the BoP makes little sense with the ship's structure.

I for one wished they had reused the Promellian ship, painted green, for the larger vessels in "Defector" and "YE," like they did in DS9.

 

[Timo]

We could always argue that the ability to raise the wings is crucial for giving the ship the ability to land - and the very reason this ship exists in the first place is that it is a landing-capable addition to the Klingon fighting arsenal. Up is necessary for landing; let's assume down (rather than horizontal) is necessary for flying in an atmosphere (because a bit of anhedral in the wings is a valid aerodynamics trick for creating stability in certain cases). The skippers can then choose whatever position they wish for spaceflight, where all positions are equal - and some prefer horizontal while others like down, perhaps because they have different ideas about whether to take the fight down to an atmosphere if one happens to present itself during the fight.

It would also make sense for the Klingons to have at least two sizes of ships that can operate in an atmosphere and land and take off. Perhaps it is a good idea to build both designs to the exact same shape? That is, in space, shape is irrelevant - but in atmospheric flight, the engineers would have to do new calculations for a new shape, and they decide not to.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mister_Atoz]

It was only because they didn't have the budget to build several different models; that is, until the Vor'cha model was built

Though I generally don't like tampering, part of me wishes the new TNG-R versions of these episodes will swap the oversized BOPs with Vorchas or Negh'Vars or something.

They did it with TOS-R, so maybe they'll do it again.

 

[Timo]

There's the dramatic issue of "Reunion" suffering a bit if the Vor'Cha in that episode is not the very first time appearance of the ship design. If the pomp and grandeur of K'Mpec's arrival is lost, some of the impact of the Klingon Politics Foreshadowing plotline goes with it.

It would be great fun to see an all-new "old" ship replace the behemoths... And subsequently keep appearing in minor background roles.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mister_Atoz]

True!

I wonder if there would e any point in writing the Okudas to say that fans would be okay with that. I mean they added new designs to TOS-R, I'm sure someone on their staff is just itching to do the same with TNG.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

I wouldn't be OK with that.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

That new Haynes book by Rick Sternbach later this fall might settle a few arguments about this ship class and start a few others, all to our entertainment.

It wouldn't be Trek without some spirited discussions.

Anyhow, the Haynes book explains a lot about ship structures and operation, and probably doesn't reconcile every single issue, but we tackle some of them pretty well, I think. The focus of the book is on the B'rel class BOP IKS Rotarran from DS9, but we do talk about the somewhat larger K'vort class without getting too deep into why the heck the K'vort is bigger but looks so simila-- oh, just don't ask.

Rick

 

[blssdwlf]

Boeing did "big-ify" the F-18 for the Super Hornet versions

 

[Timo]

...And ships in the real world do tend to be scale models of each other. There used to be quite a bit of tactical significance to the fact that a gunboat, a destroyer, a cruiser and a battleship could well have identical silhouettes, only varying in size.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

It was only because they didn't have the budget to build several different models; that is, until the Vor'cha model was built

Though I generally don't like tampering, part of me wishes the new TNG-R versions of these episodes will swap the oversized BOPs with Vorchas or Negh'Vars or something.

For "Yesterday's Enterprise," they couldn't use Vor'chas or Negh'Vars because the dialog explicitly stated that the attacking ships were K'Vort class. Therefore if any CGI updating were to be done, a new ship type would have to be created.

And for "The Defector," they couldn't use Negh'Vars (a ship comparable to the warbirds in size) because the Negh'Var class hadn't been created at that time.

However, I don't think we're going to see anything except the original footage of either episode.

 

[Unicron]

To answer some of the basic points (that haven't already been covered ), Gene Roddenberry was only responsible one specific "rule" which is that there couldn't be an odd number of nacelles. They had to be even to make a balanced warp field, and he seemed to think that having one nacelle was like building a helicopter with only one big rotor, and without the means to counter the rotor's torque so it could fly. Since he wasn't an actual engineer and we've seen designs that either break this rule or ignore other elements, I just ignore it myself. Andrew Probert came up with the rule about nacelles ideally having LoS between them, as with the warbird.

As far as scaling goes, I think FASA made a decent attempt of having a basic hull planform scaled to different configurations, and one can assume that each variant had the proper equipment. The Romulans created the original scout version, in keeping with the TSFS draft initially having a Romulan ship with a cloak, and they gave some hulls to the Klingons as part of an alliance. The Klingons liked the design and decided to produce their own variants, which they weren't supposed to do, as cruiser and frigate type hulls. The Romulans were not pleased when they found out and retaliated by copying the larger frigate variant and producing it for their own fleet.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Boeing did "big-ify" the F-18 for the Super Hornet versions

And that was pretty much the aircraft I cited with my editor. Window size and placement don't exactly work, but if I were to draw the K'vort for real (which I didn't in this book), I'd probably change the sizes and locations, and try to nail some plausible number of decks. Could it land like a big ship like Voyager? Maybe. Would be interesting to work out.

Rick

 

[Timo]

For "Yesterday's Enterprise," they couldn't use Vor'chas or Negh'Vars because the dialog explicitly stated that the attacking ships were K'Vort class. Therefore if any CGI updating were to be done, a new ship type would have to be created.

Not necessarily. This is an alternate universe, after all - the name K'Vort could apply to either of those existing modern designs in that universe.

We already have to accept that the alternate universe Klingons name their ships differently. The very footage of the K'Vort attack from "Yesterday's Enterprise" is used in "Rascals" to describe the attack of a pair of ships explicated as B'Rel class. And there's no way those two could be as small as Martok's Rotarran, as we see a number of scenes where the two assailants surround the hero ship and demonstrate their considerable size.

Basically, that's bad news for the publication... And didn't we already see a background graphic in DS9 that referred to Martok's ship as being of the K'Vort class?

Timo Saloniemi