That's actually a reproduction of a sheet that Geoffrey Mandel did. I love it.I love how they added the nacelle interior from TAS in this. Awesome and beautiful work!
That's actually a reproduction of a sheet that Geoffrey Mandel did. I love it.I love how they added the nacelle interior from TAS in this. Awesome and beautiful work!
Yeah, Franz's choice of deck height, which doesn't match the TOS sets, has always been an issue on these plans. But, you know, suspension of disbelief, and all that.The area under discussion above has always been one of the areas where FJ had to fudge things just a bit to make it at least appear to fit, and hoped nobody would notice.
Another problem area has always been the vertical clearance necessary for the transporter platform compared to what we see onscreen.
Same. The FJ plans are what made me become a draftsman, and I've had a 35+ year career because of it.I just looked through my files. This was as far as I got.
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@WillCAD, bravo! And kudos for including Geoffrey Mandell's warp engine plans!
This takes me back to 40 years ago this September when I got my first copy of the Star Trek Blueprints. (They would have been only ten years old at that point.) I got my copy for $5 with no cover inset. I spent hours with those pages spread out on the floor. It taught me about a possible layout of the Enterprise, it taught me several drafting conventions, and it was one of my gateway drugs into Star Trek tech. (I had purchased Larry Miller's Hornet plans earlier that summer.)
A few months later and I would acquire Starship Design (Todd Guenther) and the Star Trek Maps (Mandel, and LOTS of other people) and that was all she wrote. I was well and truly addicted to this stuff.
The Technical Manual was reprinted a few times now. But those 12 sheets? Never.
Ditto. Even as I was digitizing them, I rediscovered so many little details that I'd forgotten years ago, and constantly marveled at what a visionary FJ was. And how skilled; he was using hand drafting techniques on a drawing board, yet most of what he drew is excellent quality, notwithstanding the normal variances in measurement for repeating symbols.It was FJ. Blueprints that eventually got me into being a General Draftsperson cadd operator. I've always had a special place in my heart for those plans![]()
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The original of that was Geoff Mandel's work. He started drawing starships as a teen in the mid-70s with his Independence Class plans - a brilliant piece that has been almost as inspiring to me as the FJ plans - and in '78 he drew the detailed cutaway of the nacelle. Obviously, he based much of that interior work on the scenes from TAS One of Our Planets is Missing. He actually became a professional artist and designer, and eventually worked on several Trek TV shows and movies. Essentially, he was a fan like us who became the real deal. How inspiring is that?I love how they added the nacelle interior from TAS in this. Awesome and beautiful work!
I would never have recognized that!Mandel used to actually be a contributor here a long time ago. I found him to be a really cool dude and loved his work for years.
I remember when his updated Star Charts came out in the early 2000's and it had a curious dotted-line shape on several of the pages representing Federation core territory and connected space lanes. This is the pic I'm talking about:
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It really looked familiar.
Then it hit me. It's a simplified outline (flipped horizontally) of Moonbase Alpha from the Space: 1999 Moonbase Alpha Technical Notebook - that he drew back in 1977!
I asked him about it back then - he said I nailed it!
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Wow! Mine are second-hand itemsUh, is it bragging to say I purchased both of Farnz Joseph's items, the deck plans and the technical manual when Ballantine Books first released them...and that I still the now thoroughly yellowed volume and sheets?