# PL Refit Landing/Cargo Bay Begun



## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Garbaron, Krako, Raist, and all of you other insane people on this group, your beautiful 1/350 work has totally inspired me, has made me crack out my Refits and start cutting plastic. I don't expect to get very far with them, as I have at least a dozen other almost finished builds sitting on the bench waiting for me, but I had to start doing something! So I actually started in on the hangar/cargo/landing bay. Tho I've seen beautiful examples of fine scale work here in the last few weeks, there is no way anyone can/should copy somebody else's work. The PL E, each one is going to be different, should be a reflection of each buildier. My take on the cargo bay has begun with my razor saw. I've cut off the round tail end of the landing bay floor right at the notches where the walls begin. I kept that rounded end and tossed the rest of the floor. The "real"/Probert landing bay is actually wedge-shaped. My new landing bay floor is 3" long, 2 1/8" wide at the tail end, and 2 1/2" wide at the elevator end. Someone wrote somewhere that the PL bays were made deliberately too narrow to allow for easier lighting. I don't think lighting the kit with a properly sized bay is going to be a problem. The rest of the interior floor is 2 1/8" wide. The elevator deck is 1 5/8" long and the cargo deck is 3 1/8" long. I razor-sawed the landing bay walls loose and drilled holes to mount them at the proper angle on the floor. I'll have to put a sub-floor under the bee hangars as my floor isn't quite wide enough right there. Rats. The elevator section walls to the (front) far side of the sliding doors fit quite nicely, altho a fillet will be needed to join them to the angled hangar walls. Each deck is a 3/8" drop from floor to floor now, so while the elevator walls still fit nicely height-wise, the lower two levels of the cargo bay walls won't work. They will be an easy scratch-build. I'll just use decals for the stored cargo pods. Bits of evergreen for all the missing trusswork. The lower cargo walls will be parallel with each other but what's left of the kit's upper cargo wall will taper wider toward the front of the E. Probert notes on one of his drawings that the walkway narrows as you near the rear of the ship, since the upper wall follows the E's hull. Haven't looked at the rear-facing (front) wall of the bay yet. Again, decals for the details. Widening out the bay also makes it possible to fix my biggest beef: to raise a properly-sized elevator and place a shuttle on it. I also noticed that the frames for the sliding doors at the end of the elevator section are vertical. In Probert's sketches, they are quite sharply angled. So far this has been a piece of cake, and I'm really pleased with the sense of much larger scale this gives inside the hull. Things looked mighty cramped before. Now the hull looks like a 1 1/4"x2" Surak-class shuttle could actually (tho barely) land. And the extra depth on the decks has tilted the whole landing bay up at an angle that much more closely matches where the parallel panel line on the ext of the hull should be. It doesn't even force the arboretum 1/8" lower in the hull, which is where it should be anyway. While you might think that you can't see that much inside the hull, actually there is an obvious and big difference when you peer in. It suddenly looks huge in there. And even if the view to the details deeper inside is somewhat restricted, this is the prototype, which I'll stuff into the model. I'm also building a second version with a hangar/maintainence (sp??) deck as I go and learn, that I'll display outside the model. There are of course a couple of drawbacks to this: you have to cut some plastic. I now have to make or more likely graft a new ceiling so I don't lose all that detail. And the floor decals don't fit. Speaking of decals, I'm going to need more decals for the thing. I know I saw somewhere here that an after-market set exists. But I can't remember or find out who sells it. Any help, please? Well, now I gotta go and get the super-glue out from under my fingernails. PS I'm so last century. Still using a film camera and don't have a macro. I will take some pictures but with my luck it'll probably be 3 months before I find out they all turned out blurry anyway. Sigh. PPS Love Probert's idea of the retracting floors. Otherwise the E would be just one big hollow tube. Five year mission? They'd run out of food in 36 hours.


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## Krako (Jun 6, 2003)

Go buy a digital camera, 'cause I'm dyin' to see pics of this! Seriously, this sounds cool. Can't wait to hear more about it.


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## Dr. Brad (Oct 5, 1999)

Sounds good. Pics would be good. And, just to help your fellow modelers out, smaller paragraphs are always a good idea, too. 

Brad.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Wow, I did babble on there. Sorry about that - my first thread started to anything. Over-excited. 
Question re the cargo bay: Andy Probert's doors that separate the elevator section from the cargo bay itself - do you think they are vertical as in the kit and the starside in Probert's illustration or angled as in the port side in Probert's illustration? It's wierd, like the Probert painting simulates the distortion of a very wide angle lens. 
By widening the front end of the landing bay, suddenly that doorway/portal to the cargo bay changes orientation from being taller than it is wide to wider than it is tall, just as seen in the mattes.
Having to save or recreate that detailed ceiling isn't an issue after all, as most of the detail is over the cargo bay and can't be seen anyway. 
And does anyone have any idea who makes the PL Refit aftermarket decal set? Still can't find it, tho I'm probably looking right at it.


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## Krako (Jun 6, 2003)

Thomas Sasser makes aftermarket decals for the refit...

http://www.pntmodels.com/decals/refit_350.jpg

http://www.pntmodels.com/adecal.html


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## SteveR (Aug 7, 2005)

Just wondering: aside from being thinner and including some extras, how do the PNT aftermarket decals improve upon the kit-supplied decals?


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## Garbaron (Apr 23, 2004)

They contain extra markings for the cargo/maintenance/landing bay, workbee decals and wall markings (“Low Gravity”, “Don’t Step” etc.). Above all this, the decal film is much thinner and won’t be visible on the kit once applied

BTW, I too had considered scratch building the hangar/cargo bay, but this is only part of the kit. And most of it won’t even be visible, so I abandoned that and decided to use the parts that come with the kit. And as far as I can tell I WILL need the extra spacing that comes due to the narrower cargo/maintenance area! Its pretty cramped up already with only a test setup of my lighting system! 

But I agree, each build should bear the builders mark. No need to do everything the same…..well except for the exterior painting of course LOL. The interiors are a bit up to speculations anyway. 

BTW… I just finished work on the bay door walls and maybe able to prim them in a short time. Hope to get some color on the parts before or at the weekend.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

That's it! - those are the decals. Thanks. I realized that the extra cargo pod decals won't fit my resized cargo pods after I sent out my last query, but they do contain all those other decals, and I may have to splice extra shuttle elevator decals together to make them wider, too, unless I print my own. 
The answer to my question was in my mind when I woke up: the doors separating cargo bay from the shuttle elevators must meet in the centre vertically. So logically they should be vertical at the edges, and the very slanted strbrd wall depicted in the matte painting must be to simulate a wide angle lens view. So I'm calling the kit accurate there after all. What is puzzling is that Probert has placed two doorways in the wall that would pocket the larger doors. Tho he shows 6 pockets in that wall, unless each pocket contains many further layers, where is the cargo bay door supposed to come from? Is it really 40 layers think? Perhaps it could unroll like a blind? Ah, future technology. 
I also noticed that there is only one turbolift level with a walkway, and realized that one of Probert's drawings is a depiction from that same walkway. 
There, I think I obsessed ALL the details to death now. Time to start some more cutting and gluing. 
I'm planning on using my usual clear incandescents for lighting all of this, bare metal foil as a light barrier/reflector, and colored film for the colored lighting effects. The light bulbs I use are 5V, rated for 100,000 hours (I run them at 6V. Even if that cuts their life in 1/2, they're going to outlive me. Besides, I figure that with enough of them, plus all the leds, plus the flashers, there has to be some voltage drop somewhere), and are known at electronics supply houses generically as 683's. Never had one burn out yet, tho I have shorted a few. Klutz. But for these lights, the space between the bays and the hull should be plenty. Did the same thing (a decade ago, tho w/o decent references) in the Ertl 1/550 kit, and it was extremely tight, but it all finally fit. 
So for now until I get a couple pictures taken, and/or perhaps draw a plan, I'm signing off on this topic. Again, thanks for your help and inspiration. 
Jay


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Aarugh! - lurking over at SSM and noticed that one of their amazing regulars will be posting (by this weekend???) accurate plans/elevations/and color guide for the hangar/cargo bay. Went over there having just poured myself a glass of beer in congrats for having finished scratchbuilding the basic structure of an "accurate" version. This one I'm going to display outside the model, so all the details will be fully visible. It took me just over four hours to put the basic structure together, less time than it took me to modify the kit parts for the version thats going inside the E. I partly attribute that to the luck of the first piece of styrene I found, which was what I used of course, and which turned out to be an Evergreen .040 thick 1/8" V groove. I will never scratch anything out of anything else again. The V grooves pre-score/pre-mark the plastic in perfectly parallel/straight lines, making cutting pieces, esp my 3/8" walls, a breeze. I can't believe how fast everything went together.
Now it's time for the finicky bits. The kit's original elevator area walls needed to be heightened to allow the open truss to be added, otherwise the truss would block 1/350 headspace. Much easier to scratch and make the walls all the proper size to begin with. I didn't bother with the inside the E version as it won't be visible, but on the standalone version I kept the cargo area rectangular but tapered the upper walls out, so that the walkways narrow as you approach the landing bay, as in Mr. Probert's matte. I also included a hangar deck, tho even on the standalone version, not much can be seen inside. 
Now that everything is together, I'm suspecting that I'll have to disassemble it (or both) in sections in order to finish detailing and painting. I took a couple pictures today. Only 8 more to go on the roll and then if any are in focus, I'll post. 
But check out the SSM site for (accurate?) plans/colors this weekend. I'm dying to see what he figures for the forward wall of the cargo bay. I'm going with Mike Minor's version on Probert's site. 
This has been a blast so far! And that's not just the the glue fumes and the beer.
At least I hope not...


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## tetsujin (Dec 12, 2005)

Cool! I was thinking of doing my cargo bay along similar lines. I won't be starting my refit E for some time, though, so for now it's all just ideas.

Have you considered trying to make the 3rd deck of the cargo bay line up with the docking port on the exterior?


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

I'd like to try. In all the "official" blueprints I've seen and Mr Probert's overlay of the cargo bay on the blueprints, the docking port lines up on the same level. But the panel lines and the docking port on the minature don't match those blueprints. If you line up the panel lines according to Mr. Scott, etc, the starfleet pennant doesn't fit under the port. By making all the decks 3/8" tall, and tilting the hangar deck up slightly, and rescribing the panel lines a little squarer in relation to the deflector dish (stand the model on the deflector end and move a square around - you'll see that some of the panel lines are arguably out of true), and moving the port a little, I'm hoping to come mightly close to getting them lined up, better than they are OOB anyway. So far the hangar/cargo rebuild has been pretty easy. Much easier than the control room I've started today. Took ages to thermoform (squash) the proper sized half dome for the walls. But in the cargo bay, how to make the properly sized cargo containers, is what I'm wondering? I keep coming back to either decals or photoetch as the easiest. Rats.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

AAARUGH!!
Okay, so I got my cargo bays all roughly built, ready to start detailing. The bay that goes inside my 350 PL isn't quite as wide as it should be to make allowances for lighting and armatures, etc. But the one that I want to mount outside the E should be pretty much to scale all around.
So comes the time to start figuring out the placement and spacing of the wall-mounted cargo containers (never mind that I haven't figured out how I'm going to model them yet), and I discover... yes... the thing is still 3/16" too narrow to space them properly.
See above.
I can say, with absolute certainty, that it takes just less than 4 hours to cut and assemble the complete framework for the hangar/cargo bays. 
Sigh. 
If anyone is interested, this is a rough plan of my out-of-E bays, with the proper dimensions to place everything and fif things like girders and sliding floors and a working elevator. None of the fine detail is here, of course, but all that can be found in Mr. Probert's illustrations. It's drawn to scale, so with the few dimensions I've marked, other dimensions can be measured. Basically, the only critical ones were, for me, if I used a ceiling height of 3/8" for each level, then the bays have to be ~2.20" wide from wall to wall. The only part of the PL kit I'm using in the bay are the curved landing bay walls. 
Now that I have everything spaced properly, I'm wondering if I want to go with the cargo container shapes in TMP. The curved sides look cool, but that's a fair bit of storage space wasted. If you had to store as much as you possibly could in a small kitchen or the ISS, would you use square drawers or waste space with fancy shapes? Square pods actually make sense and would be easy to build. Probably what I'll do for the in-model bay as the proportions are off there anyway.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

And already I have a correction to add to my drawing: the walkways marked 1/8" at their narrow ends and 1/4" at their wide ends are actually 3/16" at their narrow ends and 5/16" at their wide ends. They are flush with the sides of the shuttle elevators, which also are flush with the sides if the trusses underneath the walkways. Forgot to mark the trusses on the drawing. 
Oh, and all the plastic used was .040 Evergreen (1/8" V groove).


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Over on the Starship Modeller ST discussion group, lestatdelc is doing some great work in trying to determine the actual dimensions and colors of the hangar/cargo bay components. My timing being its usual, yesterday evening, after I'd finished my rebuild and posting the tracing/sketch of my revised dimensions, he posted his cargo pod rendition. In the rough sketch I posted, my cargo pod front side dimensions are ~3.4mm x 5.5mm. Lestatdelc estimates them to be 3.32mm x 5.76mm so I'm very happy with how close I've come. My display cargo bay should be "accurate" to anyone measuring with anything but a set of digital calipers. 
Just did a quick calculation re: the wasted storage space due to the cool curving sides of the cargo pods. Those curving sides lop off almost exactly 20.0% of the storage space that rectangular cargo pods would have. That would have given the +400 crew members almost 2 extra days of food and water. But they do look cool. They break esp the sides of the cargo bay into a collection of great shapes, not just all right angles as far as the eye can see. 
The only way I can see of replicating these easily and with the details to scale is with photoetch. This is where "easily" might become a relative term, as I've never photoetched anything before. But I have a computer, laser printer, a houseful of drafting supplies, electronics suppliers that I know well, and a collection of everything Fine Scale Modeller ever wrote on the sj. So my "easily" might real world easily take eleven times as long as it would have were I to change #7 blades frequently. 
It's all a learning experience.


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## ArthurPendragon (Jan 4, 2004)

starseeker said:


> My display cargo bay should be "accurate" to anyone measuring with anything but a set of digital calipers.


Dude... you will replace the cargo walls to fit the proportionally corrected pods ?


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Yes, the only walls I haven't rebuilt/resized are the curving landing bay walls on both versions, and I'm heavily modified kit walls on the upper 2 levels of the elevator and cargo bay areas. I figure I have to do some serious reworking of this part of the kit so that it isn't totally embarassing-looking when compared to what I've seen of your pods and cargo containers. You're raising the standard, you know.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Just read in MaximumPC magazine that a 25 shot disposable digital camera has hit the market. I'm going to check it out in the next couple of days and if it has close focus I'll see if I can't get some pictures up here sooner than I thought.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Oh, boy, I was too tired last night, tried to make a posting, and lost it somewhere, I don't know where. Which is all right, as I was in the wrong thread, and I screwed up the attachments. So here goes again.
I started it by saying that I'm doing everything backwards as I build my cargo area. Now that I finished scratching it for a 2nd time to make my estimated sizes of the cargo pods fit, I remembered that the cargo bay was a redress of ST Phase II sets, originally Adm. Nogaru's office, and started wondering if I didn't have some real info somewhere. So I dug thru everything I could think of and sure enough, I found a blueprint of Noguru's office in the book, STP2: The Lost Series, pg 53. A couple portions of the blueprint, which I've rescanned and re-sized properly this time, are attached. They give the height, width, depth, and radii of curves of what would become the cargo bay containers, and hence of the cargo pods themselves. 
What this does to my own cargo bay accuracy is moot, as I'm not rebuilding it again! Tho I was too tired last night to figure much out other than to draw a scale on the drawings. The inches represent real inches on my scanned enlargement, and the feet are scale feet. The dimensions are hard to read on the originals, but on cargo3, they are: overall width of the wall 34.0'. 1.6" from each edge to the inset, and 1' between the insets. That means 34-3-1=30' for both insets, or each cargo bay inset is exactly 15' wide. In 1/350 scale that is .514" wide each full cargo bay, or almost exactly 1/4" high for each cargo container sitting on its short side. 
Which means, like the rec deck, the full size set now might be just a bit too wide (taking into account outside corridors, etc) to fit into the full size E.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Oh, boy, this is where it's starting to take a bit of time. If a cargo/landing bay can be completely framed up in about 4 hours, then detailing one side is going to take about twice as long. I spent about 4 hours yesterday putting in all the Evergreen girders/ribs on one side and making the ones in the elevator area perfectly parallel so that the notched elevator will raise and lower w/o either a gap or binding on them. Today I began fixing the kit part on that side that represents the curving wall of the landing bay itself. And, if anyone is interested, to my surprise I discovered that the control room windows molded into the wall are the wrong size and in the wrong place, at least compared to Mr. Probert's paintings. The eight windows have much narrower frames across the top and bottom than the molded kit windows, making them almost picture windows, and they are centered over the workbee bays and the unidentified recessed (equipment bay?) area, NOT including the cargo bay's forward hatch. So having spent about half an hour making a replacement window frame out of 3 widths of .020 Evergreen to replace the one I just cut out of the model piece, I get to do it again. Four more times, once I get it right. Also, the control room windows seem to tilt downward at a much greater angle than the kit. I suspect that the windows also extend right to the elevator section bulkhead instead of stopping just short, but I have nothing to support that theory at all.
Well, back to the iddy-bitty little pieces of Evergreen. 
Next, little tiny workbees and new workbee stations. Hey, has anyone thought about photoetching workbees? Tho they would be tiny, I think the open framework around the windows would be really stunning. Hmmm, maybe something to go with my cargo container frames, if I try photoetching. Will my printer print anything that fine?...


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

AARUGH! - according to the attached diagram from Mr. Probert's site (I believe), enlarged to the size of the kit part, the reason the windows, if square, won't center properly over the workbee stations, is because the workbee station area itself is way too small. So in order to extend it aft, and still have 6 ribs between it and the landing bay doors, that means all the detail will have to be sanded off the kits curving walls and new ribs installed as well as all the other mods the part needs... 
Has anyone confirmed yet whether those 6 squares at 1/350 eye level aft of the workbee stations are windows?


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

L: sorry this is such a lousy copy. I've tried everything I can think of to improve it, but nothing makes it much more readable. I've also chopped it up, taking out the unnecessary bits so that the important stuff remains. Hope this is useful.
J


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

All right, a small milestone, but a milestone nonetheless! After a couple weeks with no time for modelling or anything else, I've finished the crude assembly of the hangara bays, and at the same time the last couple of pictures on this roll of film. 
As I said, this is the crude construction still, and the pictures are pretty crude, too. Seeing the beautiful work everybody's been doing on their bays, as I wrote earlier I decided to build two at the same time, on for inside the E, one for display outside. Bay 1 shows how I expanded the width of the bays compared to the original roof. The in-E bay is still narrow to scale, as I want to have plenty of room to get lights behind the walls, but the out-of-E bay is to the best I can figure dead on 1/350 scale. 
Bay 2 is the original landing bay wall compared to a modified wall. I since discovered that the smooth curved top of that wall is inaccurate and it was replaced and a new section made from a left over part of a 1/350 TOSE engine nacelle was spliced in, along with new ribs. Yes, that's a 1/350 control room. I haven't figured out how I'm going to fit it along with searchlights up there. I'm thinking small mirrors for the lights???
Bay 3 and 4 are the inside bay coming along. Since none of it is visible except thru the landing bay doors, I'm not finishing the backsides. There's no way I can paint workbee windos as beautifully as Garbaron so I decided to frame the suckers instead and fill them with crystal clear and thin acetate instead. I'm going to open the entry hatch on one of them. The STTMP blueprints and Mr. Scott's Guide seem to have the workbee ~9% smaller than it should be. These stand just at L'Arsenal shoulder height.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

More photos: Bay 5 is another angle of the innie. On Andy Probert's matte, between the ribs aft of the bee bays are 5 (or 6) squares at perfect head height to be windows along the corridor leading to the aft hatches. Whether they're windows or nor, I have no idea, but on the innie I'm representing the squares with decals and on the outtie I actually inset a piece of clear plastic and polished it flush with the wall, to represent 5 (or 6) clear windows on each side. No backlighting planned there, just an L'Arsenal head or two looking out. For the windows I used clear plastic protectors from Verbatim 25 pack DVDs. The stuff is a bit brittle but about .060 thick and takes a polish with 1000 paper and Novus back to glass clear again. Bay 6 is a terrible shot of the ceiling in the innie. I have no idea what faces aft but I figured windows would be appropriate. 
Bay7 is of the outtie. No ceiling here, just a corridor forward of the windows. I'm going to mount this in a booded display box, leaving it visible from the top and thru the bay doors. Just after I had it mostly assembled, I realized that there is another level below the hangar level, for storing shuttles. So I removed the floor, added another level, and rebuilt the elevators, which insanely I built to lower and rise. JHust by a push pull from underneath. The elevators raise and lower while fitting snugly around the 5 beams on each side. That's the closest fitting moving anything I've ever built. 
And Bay8 is a shot of the rebuilt bays and the new ceiling. The structure underneath the outtie is just a temporary stand. The only kit parts remaining are the cargo bay and elevator section ceilings, widened considerably, and a portion of the landing bay curved walls, about 1/8" high above the windows and running aft to the floor. This would have been so much faster as a scratch-build rather than trying to modify kit parts and ending up having replaced them entirely in the end anyway.
I intend to light them in various colors. I've even cemented a layer of clear fwd of the bay doors to represent the glowing blue force field line.
So the crude construction is done. Now comes what I'm hoping will be the fun part. The fine construction. After I get all this sanded I'm going to try and detail the walls with layers of photoetch. It's my first photoetch try. I'm planning to keep it simple, one layer for the cargo pods themselves, and a layer over that for the hatches/openings. I can't figure out how else to create 4 layers of relief. The bee bays are also going to be faced with etch. On one of Mr. Probert's drawings, the walls in the bee spaces seem to be vertical. In his sketch of the bee, the wall slants fwd of the bee. Maybe I'll do one of each. I've left enough room in the bee bays for either. And the personnel hatches are also going to be etch as well and the elevator details. The different scales betwen the bays will mean I'll have to stretch/shrink my etch to the different scales. Once I get the masters drawn, (another month?) I'll post them here if anyone wants to use them to make their own etch. 
This is getting to be fun now! 
So far, everything has been made out of Evergreen scribes .040 sheets and a thousand yards of Evergreen strip and rod (ceiling details) of various blindingly small size. And the Verbatim DVD protector.


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## Krako (Jun 6, 2003)

Very, very, very, very, very, very cool!!!!


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## drewid142 (Apr 23, 2004)

Absolutely gorgeous!

Nice workbees too! Are you planning to fill in the smoked glass somehow? I've sketched similar ideas... but you've gone ahead and done it! Hoosah!


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## SteveR (Aug 7, 2005)

Very pretty! You've raised the bar!


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## Garbaron (Apr 23, 2004)

Wonderful work there!

You should show it to Andrew Probert!
He is really pissed becasue PL screweed up the hangar bay and would love to see one that has been corrected!


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## Flux Chiller (May 2, 2005)

Feels much more spacious - terrific work.. makes the stock assembly look ludicriously out of scale in my opinion


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## John Duncan (Jan 27, 2001)

What are the final dimensions of your version of the cargo bay for mounting inside the refit hull? I've seen the ones for your externally mounted version.


Your work is inspiring, to say the least!


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Krako: Thanks! You in particular were the inspiration for this. If I hadn't accidentally found this group when I did, and if your incredible work wasn't the very first thing I found here, instead of seeing what was possible to do with this kit I think I would have just stared at it dejectedly for the next three years. Unfortunately what my crappy pictures don't convey is the true coolness of Andy Probert's design. When you look at the bay models, especially the out-E, his design is so eye-catchingly complex that it's impossible to take it all in at once. Sort of like watching 2001 on the true Panavision screen (when they existed) and Aries is lowering into its airlock and Kubrick had mattes within mattes on each side of the screen and you had to move your head around just to see everything. I mean, Andy Probert's design is amazing. And it feels real. Functional and real. 
But it remains to be seen whether I can pull off the photoetch. I just made a list of the parts and it's daunting. Two layers of wall skins and hatches, cargo containers, workbee sleds, shuttle steps, elevator tubes, etc. Not that I have much choice. My main summer project this year is to etch circuit boards for the drive controllers for two of my scopes. So this is a mandatory learning experience. 
drewid142: thin acetate, crystal clear, and Tamiya smoke. But that's because I wanted the bees hollow to put l'arsenal figures inside 2 and open the hatch on 1. Yeah, like I could paint those l'arsenal figures. Right. If you didn't want hollow bees, I'd shape the canopy out of a bit of clear smoked sprue from say an f-16 kit. Then add strip styrene frames or just paint the frames if you have way steady hands. 
John Duncan: the height dimensions for the in-E are all the same as for the out-E. The landing bay floor tapers to 2" at it's widest, inside wall to inside wall. Then the in-E remains at that 2" wide throughout. I didn't taper the sloping walls outwards or make the walkways taper narrower aftwards because you can't really see the tapers once it's closed up and it's easy to make if all angles are square. The landing bay is kit part length, the elevator bay is 1 5/8' long, and the cargo bay is 3" long., which may be kit part lengths, too. I don't have any kit parts left to measure. At it's widest the unit is 2 7/8" across from the outer tips of the escape pod corridor stubs. It all fits inside the hull with room for lighting. As far as I can guess, the forwd wall of the cargo bay has three levels of cargo containers, not 3d level empty step as built into the kit. Note that the full length cargo bay oversteps the botanical garden on the next level below. The garden windows on the hull are a little high, so the garden should be lowered. The landing/cargo bay can also be installed to slant up in the hull a little more but that requires a little work on the door end. Just frequently test fit everything inside the hull as you go and you can't go wrong.
I don't know if the out-E would fit inside the hull, I have so much stuff sticking off it still, waiting some blank corridors for lighting effects and stuff, but once I clean it up in theory it should, snugly, hull wall to hull wall. Tho possibly the 3d level garage and definitely the elevator box below that are both too long and deep for the hull bottom.
And again, thank you all for all your inspiration!


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

The bad news is, I've been down with this awful cold. 
The good news is, I've been down with this awful cold. So I've been stuck at home unable to do anything much. Except hunch over a desk and a light box with miles of thin drafting tape and frosted mylar and a few pens and so have just completed a rough copy of the photoetch patterns that I want to make for my shuttle bay. About a month earlier than I thought I would. I want to post them here for a) anybody who'd like to use them for anything and b) for anybody who's interested to look at and see if I've made any mistakes.
These are to as best as I can figure "true" 1/350 scale, not to the PL scale. Three times enlarged. Except for the railing, which I made a measuring mistake on. Sigh. But since they all have to be reduced to fit my two slightly different sizes of bays anyway, I'm not redoing that. I've noticed that for every second railing upright, the uprights wrap under the walkway, so I have the pairs of those uprights have those underside pieces. Hmmm, seem to have forgotten the uprights w/o the underside pieces...
I made the workbee out of Mr. Scott much reduced before I drew him out and he looks pretty good, except his butt end doesn't bulge out at the sides the way it should. Unless you make a minute snip on the bottom part and fold him a little more. His detail bits would just be bits of styrene. 
The parts are all pretty self-explanatory. I've got a section of hallway for blanking off open doors, and I'm going to stick some doorways into it behind the observation windows on that bridge I have between the cargo bay and the elevators. I don't know how some of the really fine parts are going to turn out as I think I'm pushing the limits of fine lines and photoetch. From what I've read, on a 3X original, the finest line I can get away with is 1/2 mm.
All the sizes are based on the Kogura office bp in STP2: Lost Years. Elevator is to fit around a 1/4" clear rod. 
Once I get these corrected?/completed, I'll post them here somehow in a larger file size (zip?) so that anybody who wants to can use them. If anyone is interested. (It occured to me yesterday [in a delerium] that of the 6 Billion people on this planet, I am probably the only person creating photoetch patterns for the E's cargo bay, so possibly there won't be a whole lot of other people interested in these?) (And if anyone's interested in using the patterns for commercial purposes, feel free. Just send me a set.) 
Also, they're all hand-drawn, no computer, so they may be/ARE just the tiniest bit asymmetrical. The backsides are all flips sides of the front sides, so at least they should be asymmetrical together. 
Anyway, can anyone see anything wrong with these?Edit: I've attached updated artwork a couple messages down.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

PS Sorry about the crummy image quality but it's the best I can do with the 50 K limit on attachments. And on the cargo bay side walls, I havent included a slot that the sliding floor would come out of, as that wouldn't be visible under the walkways.


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## John Duncan (Jan 27, 2001)

starseeker said:


> Once I get these corrected?/completed, I'll post them here somehow in a larger file size (zip?) so that anybody who wants to can use them. If anyone is interested. (It occured to me yesterday [in a delerium] that of the 6 Billion people on this planet, I am probably the only person creating photoetch patterns for the E's cargo bay, so possibly there won't be a whole lot of other people interested in these?) (And if anyone's interested in using the patterns for commercial purposes, feel free. Just send me a set.) Anyway, can anyone see anything wrong with these?


I don't see anything wrong yet and I'm sure there's more people than me interested in the final version!


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Okay, here's some revised artwork. Really all I changed this week was a couple splashes of whiteout here and there, trimmed an errant bit of drafting tape, and I did extend the railing section to 1/350 scale length. Checking which was the right length - the cargo bay side wall skin or the railing - I discovered that the correct length was the cargo bay side wall, which reduced X3 was still 1/10" longer than my model's cargo bay side wall. So I gently cut the cargo bay apart from the levator section and extended it 1/10". Sigh. However that does make the girder placement exactly match Andy POrobert's cargo bay illustration, an error which I hadn't noticed before. How many more errors will there be?
I also added a couple exterior bits to the drawings. Now I get to scan these into Illustrator and start prepping the 1/350... negatives? Positives? Oh, yeah, I know what I'm doing...
The people at Hewlett P hadn't heard of high resolution transparency film. They say the printer should print at 1200 dpi on regular film. Hmmm...time to experiment. 
Again, if anybody notices any errors, please let me know.


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## H.Erickson (Sep 1, 2005)

Awesome work Star Seeker :thumbsup: , I've already started dicing up my two hanger decks. I'll be personally waiting with anticipation to see how your cargo/hanger deck is coming along too, and I hope that mine turns out at well as yours.


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

Love the terrific mods and great assembly otherwise!


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## marc111 (Nov 10, 2005)

OK Starseeker you've driven me over the edge. Your modified bay is coming out so nice that I bought a second model kit so I could try the same thing. I am not going to go quite as far on the scratch building but we will see. 

Thanks for the inspiration,
Mark


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## marc111 (Nov 10, 2005)

Has anyone else noticed that while the PL kit back of the cargo bay has that step in the rear wall, the matts and images from TMP show it tobe a straight vertical wall? It would seem that things would look better if we altered it back to a vertical wall even if it shortens the bay a tad. Given the perspective from the doors I don't think it would be noticed.

I think you did this on your outside version starseeker.
Thoughts?
Mark


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## drewid142 (Apr 23, 2004)

Starseeker! Any progress? WOW.


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## Griffworks (Jun 24, 2002)

Whoa! First I've seen on this thread since it started while I was away... 

Great job, ss! I, too, would love to see your progress on this build!


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

That's timing. I just completed the woodworking/woodfinishing of three equatorial platforms this am. For various telescopes. And headed off to my favorite electronics supplier for bits and pieces for the stepper motor drivers as well as photoresist so I could finally get started on the etching for the hangar bay. Yes, why would I have ever expected to be able to buy photoresist spray in Canada? Sigh. And I can't seem to get an e-mail thru to Datak (one of Fine Scale Modellers) favorite products to see if they or anyone they know would ship to Canada, and FSM's other favorite, Maplin in England, has a site that I can't seem to navigate either. 
But I did realize (after all these years) that it would be a good idea to use hazardous chemicals when the weather is nice enough to work outside, so my #1 priority for the rest of the summer is to find the resist and get this stuff etched and into the bays. 
Haven't checked out the group in a while - just clicked on it out of frustration while I was trying to e-mail Datak , to see what was happening here and have something on-line actually work. Now where's an update on Krako's E???


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## drewid142 (Apr 23, 2004)

Looking forward to seeing your progress! 

I started laying out PE parts myself, but the cost of getting them made seems pretty high, and I, for one, don't want to mess with the chemicals. I can't afford an airbrush right now, so I've set my 1/1000 TOS aside, and started scratching my shuttle bay mods for the refit. I'll post pics in a few days. 

I've scratched some really cool railings that turned out great, and I'm carving out the control room windows for the scratched fronts I made... also turned out way better than I had imagined! I also made a whacky jig for my drill press and drilled out dozens of tiny holes along the top edge of the bay wall for fiber optic lights to wash down between all the little ribs. It was a hell of a task, but it turned out great.

I destroyed a set of shuttle walls, took the set from a new refit kit... and now I'm wondering if anyone out there might be willing to sell their shuttle bay parts if they built her without the shuttle bay... anyone?


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## Mariner Class (Aug 22, 2005)

If you want the actual shuttles that Andrew intended for the 1701, here's a comparison of them against the Surak's larger shuttle.


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## woozle (Oct 17, 2002)

recently, somebody posted pics of the cargo containers on Ceti-Alpha V, from TWOK, but I seem to have lost them. Are they still around? I just don't like the way the cargo containers work in TMP and seeing the same basic shape used like a modern cargo container is my goal.


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Re: Ceti a cargo containers: I saw that, too. I think it was on the Starship Modeller site, a response to a question from "lestadelc". If I spelled that correctly. Whoa, nice lightning. Better shut down now...


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## starseeker (Feb 1, 2006)

Progress is slow but at least I'm working on it again. 
I've tracked down a couple options for the actual photoetching, which has gotten me all excited, so I spent probably 12 hours Photoshopping my original artwork into photoetch patterns. 
The attachments here are very low res versions of my etch patterns, two pairs of fronts and mirrored backs for relief etching and one fret of regular thru etching. I still haven't painted in the parts trees. I've made a couple minor goofs - some of the backs are actually fronts - but at this point I have carpal tunnel syndome and am almost blind. Sigh. But PhotoShop is a blast! This has been such fun. Which I guess is what model making is all about. 
Next, painting those parts trees and experimenting with etch systems!


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## Heavens Eagle (Jun 30, 2003)

Interesting work starseeker. As to etching, there is a fair bit to it. I used to design and build prototype circuit boards for a living. When that company did some downsizing they offered to give me the etching machine along with all the "stuff". I ended up with one parts etcher, and another that is in need of some new pumps. (the ferric cloride fumes eat up the bearings and copper in the motors).
I used to print out photo positives on overhead projector film on a laser printer. Made a negative using some special film from Kepro systems and then expose develop and etch some prepared board material. Had a local place I could get board material from with resist already on it.

I am not sure of the etchability of brass with the ferric cloride, but it was designed for copper and worked quite well.

Apparently Kepro is no longer as such this is the company that carries their supplies;http://www.dalpro.net/default.asp


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