Love, hate and the AMT Enterprise model

[Warped9]

I built a number of the AMT kits back in the '70s, but my first one I got for Christmas in 1970 is the one I recall the most fondly. That said it was a sloppily designed kit for what it needed to be. Still, it transported me to the farthest reaches of imagination. What I remember most was how I felt about it all back then---pure joy.

Today I recognize it as a disappointing kit as seen through an adult's eyes. Although I can recall how I felt so long ago I just can't put myself back into that youthful perspective. When Polar Lights released their (albeit small) 1/1000 kit of the original Enterprise it was a huge leap forward in terms of accuracy, kit design and build quality (ease of build). Although small it is such a superior model to the AMT kit.

And now I've just received a Premiere Edition of the new 1/350 scale Enterprise kit from Round2, forty-two years after my first AMT kit and less than a month before Christmas. There is practically no commonality between this and the old AMT kit...

...except that opening the box reawakened a feeling I haven't felt in forty years.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Today I recognize it as a disappointing kit as seen through an adult's eyes. Although I can recall how I felt so long ago I just can't put myself back into that youthful perspective. When Polar Lights released their (albeit small) 1/1000 kit of the original Enterprise it was a huge leap forward in terms of accuracy, kit design and build quality (ease of build). Although small it is such a superior model to the AMT kit.

And now I've just received a Premiere Edition of the new 1/350 scale Enterprise kit from Round2, forty-two years after my first AMT kit and less than a month before Christmas. There is practically no commonality between this and the old AMT kit...

...except that opening the box reawakened a feeling I haven't felt in forty years.

I think the basic mold of the AMT kit was close enough that a careful custom job can make a near-exact replica of either TOS miniature. I've seen some wonderful customs over the years, but if someone does not want to mount that kind of project, he could build it to be a perfect "catalog" model--like the box photo.

At least in that way, it does not have to be screen accurate, but its the best version of AMT's work.

 

[jayrath]

We're all talking at cross purposes. When I recently bought a vintage light-up AMT model and built it, my intent was to recreate the imperfect "toy" Enterprise of my childhood. I was completely successful, and it remains "my" Enterprise.

Is it screen-accurate? Nope. (But it was at least personally vetted by Jeffries, and in many ways compares well to the TOS three-footer.) But the point is that it was my first tangible TOS artifact when I was nine, and it is again. And it looks absolutely glorious with the dome lights on.

 

[Sector 7]

And it looks absolutely glorious with the dome lights on.

Blah, blah, blah... I WANT PICTURES!!

I haven't seen one of the light up kits in almost 40 years. Please, please post pics...

 

[jayrath]

And it looks absolutely glorious with the dome lights on.

Blah, blah, blah... I WANT PICTURES!!

I haven't seen one of the light up kits in almost 40 years. Please, please post pics...

I want to and will. First I have to figure out how to post photos here!

 

[Forbin]

OH the amount of resin accurizing parts that have been made for that thing over the years!

 

[Son of Quark]

Never built the Enterprise as a kid in the 70's, thogh I did build the K-7 Space Station. I thought it was coolest thing.

 

[Christopher]

Oh, yeah, I had the K-7 model too. Somehow I lost all of it except one arm/module.

 

[Son of Quark]

Oh, yeah, I had the K-7 model too. Somehow I lost all of it except one arm/module.

Man, I remember the arms/modules breaking off and me having to re-glue back on...

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Funny thing about the K-7 was the scale of the miniature Enterprise included with the kit. It was woefully out of scale, so it appears AMT simply looked at a clip of the 1701 in the background of the K-7 exterior, and assumed it was that small.

 

[Christopher]

Do we really know how the scales compare?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Do we really know how the scales compare?

I think several ancillary sources have given specs on the size of K-7 compared to a Constitution class vessel. I will try to dig that up, but i'm almost certain the 1701 was not as small as the model included in the K-7 kit. That would make the K-7 as massive as the Death Star (in relation to a Star Destroyer), when the only TOS vehicles known to be that large were Balok's ship and the "planet killer" from "The Doomsday Machine."

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

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.

No, it was definitely two AA batteries. If you happen to have an unassembled kit and some C or D batteries lying around, try and see if they fit. (They don't.)

Okay, thanks guys.

Just out of curiosity, are the 2 AA batteries arranged side by side or are they arranged front to back, like 2 batteries inside a cylinder shaped flashlight, in the lower half of the secondary hull of the Enterprise model kit? The reason I ask is because I have memory of 2 "C" or "D" size batteries being arranged front to back (like in a flashlight) in the lower half of the secondary hull of the Enterprise model kit for some strange reason.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

[E-DUB]

They were double A's and they were put in sequentially (as in a flashlight). The closest thing to a scale match for the K-7 was the Ent from the 3 piece TOS set with the Ent, D-7, and ROM BOP. (Personally, I display mine with both Ent and D-7 Jonny Lightning ships.)

 

[Captain Rob]

If Space Station K-7 was as big as the Death Star. Just think of all of the tribbles it could hold.

 

[Christopher]

Hmm, let's get a baseline. Assume an average tribble is a sphere with a radius of 5 cm, therefore a volume of 0.00052 m^3. The most efficient packing of spheres takes up 74% of available volume, so let's multiply that by 4/3 and call it 0.0007 m^3. So 1,771,561 tribbles -- three days' worth of reproduction -- would take up a volume of only 1236.8 cubic meters, equivalent to a cube 10.73 meters on a side -- or maybe about half the residential volume of the 15-unit apartment block where I live. Even a small K-7 could hold a lot more tribbles than that.

So how big is the Death Star? Estimates of the first one's diameter range from 120 to 140 km, which makes for a lot of variation in the volume estimates. But taking a roughly midrange value, the volume would be somewhere around 10^15 m^3. Therefore it could hold around 1.4 x 10^18 or 1.4 quintillion tribbles. (That's 1.4 billion billion.) Of course, realistically the tribbles would run out of food and starve to death long before they reached that number.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Do we really know how the scales compare?

According to www.ex-astris-scientia.org, the K-7 is 450m and the Constitution Class ships are 289m. This confirms how out of scale the K-7 kit's 1701 was. It makes me wonder if AMT was hoping for a literal recreation of the scene as one would see it in "The Trouble with Tribbles," where the 1701 seems that small in the background.

The 6-inch long Enterprise as part of AMT's mid-70's Space Ship Set would have been a better scale fit for the K-7. I wonder of anyone ever tried to match the kits back in the day.

 

[Christopher]

Do we really know how the scales compare?

According to www.ex-astris-scientia.org, the K-7 is 450m and the Constitution Class ships are 289m.

Based on what evidence? I said "know," not "conjecture."

EDIT: Okay, I tracked it down myself, and it says, "The diameter of 450m is based on a very rough comparison with the USS Enterprise and the small shuttle model in the shuttlebay of Greg Jein's reconstruction of K-7 for DS9: 'Trials and Tribble-ations'." So it's only approximate, although I guess it does get you within the ballpark.

 

[Forbin]

Anybody wanna count widows and estimate number of decks?

Me neither.

 

[Albertese]

11 rows of windows on the center top cone. 5 rows of windows on each of the three outer cones. These are both from the DS9 version of the model. That wasn't so hard.

--Alex