To start with I'm just going over old stuff.
Probably the single most frustrating thing was the packet of general plans of the Excelsior.... that turned out to be the Ingram, a similar, yet completely different design. Yes, I bought them back when they first came out.
The first glimmers of hope actually came from FASA (and if you know their track record this should explain how bad it was.
Their model was actually closer than their drawings. I don't know where the drawing came from, but it is very similar to one used on a TNG LCARS screen in The Naked Now.
Between them I came up with this:
There is a lot wrong with it, but I got a few things right that keep getting screwed up. If you look closely I got the slight slope to the sides of the impulse deck, that the pylons are centered on the base, the upper saucer grid, phase placement, and RCS placement, and the pylon angle.
And it was a long time before I found this (the Patent drawings, which aren't terribly accurate, but better than some).
Not too accurate, but better than the next one.
I don't know who drew this, but it is the source for the canon scale. This very drawing was used for the gold half model in the Ent D briefing room.
Now while the Patent and scale drawings are very old, they are very recent additions to my collection. And I got the patent drawings from the US Patent office website.
And since I have brought up the patent drawings, it is time for a small lesson on space ship designs. Due to the nature of manufacturing, art, and a slew of other things that shaped our laws, vehicle designs cannot be copyrighted. While blueprints of buildings ARE copyrightable, the nature of vehicles is such that US law does not consider them to be a work that can be copyrighted. It doesn't matter if it is a bike, car, boat, plane or space vehicle. Copyright cannot be used to protect a starship model. Not as a vehicle anyway. It it were a signed work of art maybe. But that Paramount went the patent route for at least the first 3 films shows that they knew this quirk and wanted to protect the designs as long as possible. Unfortunately that is only 17 years. This is why I found the explanation for why Discovery changed things so ridiculous and yet revealing. There was no legal barrier to using the old designs. However, by making new designs and submitting new patents, they could ensure their new designs would have the most protection and make them the most money. So at this point, being 2021, no design created prior to 2004 is protected.
And this is a good place to talk about this because it explains the Ingram drawings. They were that 25% different from the Excelsior and avoided having to deal with any patent issues.
The next exciting event in Excelsior history was Star Trek VI and the accompanying model. However, the model was rather horrible. Bought it and glued it together and painted it beige so I could see the details... and 30 years later it is sill beige and unfinished. Recessed RCS, lack of the trench in front of the neck on the bottom of the saucer, pylons off centered on the base. And now that I know even more, there are a host of other issues. Still, better than AMT's Romulan Bird of Prey.
And I'm not sure if this image or the AMT kit was first, but they both perpetuate many errors. This appeared in the Star Trek publications.
This top view appeared in a few place, but was not very detailed. Still, it is technically an official view of the ship.
Then we had Generations and a new look to the model (some like it, some don't). The new look came with new parts. But still some of the same old issues remained. AMT did fix the pylon centering to the base and the indented RCS, but most of their Ent B model was the same as the Excelsior. Still now new drawings. Jackill was the first to put out Excelsior drawings, but they were just drawings taken from the AMT kits. So all the flaws were replicated.
During this time my drawing skills were still not up to the task. I tried several times, but nothing worth sharing.
With the large model modified permanently (which was not the intention of the design additions, just a reality of the condition of the model), a second one was needed to get some new shots of the Excelsior for the Voyager episode Flashback. Greg Jein was given the task, but he was not given access to the model, only photos. With little time and only photos to go on, he did an admiral job. His model has a host of flaws, but it far superior to the AMT kits or anything else at the time. In fact, the only time anyone had access to the large studio model to directly measure and copy it was ILM for Generations an their CG Ent B. No one else has ever gotten measurements from the model itself.
Ed Giddings is the next name of note. He attempted to make a CG model. The overall shape is good, but may of the flaws remain.
An others have given us there take on the ship, all with various flaws (that I can point out with the source photos).
And many others.
The change came when the photos started appearing. Hundreds. I had had the photos of the original model taken during Star Trek III for years by this point, but some were not very high quality. Front, back, top, bottom, starboard, 3/4 front, and 3/4 back. This was added to by higher resolution home video. Then the auction and the slew of photos of the Lakota from almost every angle (except the bottom). For me the break through, which happened as I was working on it, were the photos Bill George released. About 50 from great angles. A few of the Hood and Repulse (couldn't have gotten all the windows without those), but mostly of the Melbourne. Significant because Bill George is the one who was in charge of converting it to the Enterprise B and these photos were taken before and during the early stages of the process. Even some shots with the new bottom of the secondary hull, as of yet unpainted. A treasure trove that made accuracy possible.
Step one, photo orthos
Because of all the photos, I had three profile shots. I corrected for photo distortion.
Each photo was taken from a different angle, but at the same level. The photos showed where those flaws had come from. Someone looked at the side photo and made a drawing without cross referenceing with the other angles if those details were right. Here are the off center pylons, the RCS in the wrong position, the phasers in the wrong position. It all makes a strange sense. An amateur mistake that has been hard to get people to see to fix.
The top and bottom are telling. If you directly over lay them, nothing lines up. On the top you have to make the secondary hull larger, on the bottom you have to make it smaller. Everything needs to be tweaked to push it back to the size and location where it should be in an orthographic drawing. I could not fix every detail in these, I was trying to get the right shapes.
The profile was easier and yet harder. But by comparing all angles I was able to find the right sizes. I mean, from the top and bottom you could tell that the profile nacelle was way too large. The front and aft views are approximate. It was virtually impossible to fix them. But there you can see the slanted side of the impulse deck. And when you add in all the other photos you start to find details that have been impossible to nail down before.
And I didn't limit it to just looking at photos. I dig and found some of the parts that went into the model. The lower hanger has an odd part as the centerpiece on the ceiling. It is the core chassis of a formula 1 car. Specifically a 1/16 kit. I really wish I could have gotten the kit to get a 100% accurate drawing of the part, but with nothing else with than degree of accuracy I didn't think it was wroth the expense. I settled for photos of the part.
For this I first drew the part from the kit. Then it cut it down like it is on the model and then built on the other parts to get the complete unit before inserting it in the main drawing. This let me get the part right in each view. I did this for the lower hanger, rear weapons pod, neck equipment bay, and the TUC bridge.
At one point in the process I realized I had made an error on the saucer. It was too small. I also made many tweaks to the secondary hull. The Nacelles were fairly easy compared to the rest. The grid was very hard. I spent a lot of time finding the exact angles so it would lay down like it was on the model.
To check my work, I went to photos that had points I could align. I did this for quite a number of photos. the ones at complex angles were the best. I found things that lined up to the camera, determined the camera point, and check other things for how they aligned.
I found the key points aligned. I think I had to tweak the front of the secondary hull slightly during this process, but otherwise it looked like I had the parts at the correct size in the correct location.
And then of course I had to make the changes for TUC and Generations.
The final result
