So we all know about the U.S.S Yeager kitbash...the ship made from the saucer of a Voyager model kit and the secondary hull made from a Maquis raider model kit. But what some might not know was that this model wasn't originally made during the kitbashing rounds for the sixth season opener "A Time to Stand." It was actually built much earlier and debuted in the 16th episode of season 5, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" as a random background ship in orbit of DS9. The interesting thing about this is that "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" is the first appearance of Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, the creator of the EMH holograms. I'm wondering if Gary Hutzel was having some fun and built this kitbash as an inside joke/easter egg/etc., knowing that the ship would be so small in the background that most people wouldn't notice what it was made from, as a tribute to Robert Picardo doing double time on Deep Space Nine. I certainly remember seeing the ship (because I love starship porn) and thought it was a regular Intrepid class because it wasn't seen close up. It was only after seeing screencaps of the ship on the internet much later that I realized there was something very wrong with the ship Unfortunately I can't ask Gary, so I can only assume that he was making an inside joke. I'm also curious why there weren't more uses of model kits (kitbashing or not) as background ships in orbit of DS9 during the first few seasons (in almost every exterior shot of the station, there were no ships at all.)
There were no other ships around the station in earlier episodes because it probably would've been too expensive, it always comes back to money. In universe though, I always suspected it was because the station was somewhat remote, with only those really needing to visit the station or go through the wormhole stopping there, ships bound for Bajor don't need to go through the station, and a build up of Starfleet vessels in the system could be taken as a sign of aggression by the Cardassians. I'm always intrigued by the Yeager-type, as there are angles the ship looks good and others where it looks awful. Part of me does wish that they'd used Rick Sternbach Voyager concept ship though, I would loved to have seen that slipped into the background.
DIalogue sort of establishes the station as a busy place from day one already, though. "Dax" is a particularly fun example: the heroes desperately try to guess which of the eight externally docked ships capable of better than warp five is going to be used as the getaway vehicle of the villains, supposedly out of a much greater total, and we then cut to a nice pan that establishes zero ships docked to the station... I like the Yeager, the perfect nacelles-down companion to the Intrepid. It's really too bad it doesn't stand up to close scrutiny... Timo Saloniemi
Made me think of the orange STIII Enterprise, but that was Diamond Select. As far as the Yeager, was there ever an official clue as to the size? Big as Voyager, or small as the Maquis Raider?
The raider segment contains no scale clues whatsoever - no portholes or doorways or docking rings. So if we ever saw the ship up close, big as Voyager she is. But we don't. Timo Saloniemi
The saucer would seem to be the same size as Voyager's with the secondary hull possibly being salvaged from a heavy freighter variant of the Ju'day-Class.
Or then simply built to that generic, boxy shape at an arbitrary scale. After all, it has already been built in at least two sizes - why not fifty-eight? But it's just a box. Much like the butt end of the Miranda is a box. Might be a specific contractor built the butt of the Yeager, the same that built the two sizes of winged ships. Might be all Starfleet got from that contractor was the recognizable finlike impulse engines, which were then grafted to a generic box. Timo Saloniemi
Well, it wouldn’t have been any different than what they did for the Yeager: film one model for five seconds and then constantly reuse the stock footage. Considering that there were already two different scales for the raider (Ro's version and Chakotay's version), but only one scale for the Intrepid class, it stands to reason that the saucer is in scale with Voyager's and the secondary hull is just an even larger scale raider hull.