# AMT vs PL Romulan Bird of Prey



## Metaluna Mutant (May 4, 2009)

Just got in the PL Bird of prey and decided to pull out the old AMT kit to compare. WOW. Was there ever ANY ST kit that AMT did that got EVERYTHING as wrong as that? And not just "rivet counting" stuff wrong!

Wrong hull size, shape, sides, windows, top cabin, bottom. Wrong fin size and shape, wrong wing angles, shape and length, wrong engine shape and length, wrong exhaust shape and size. There's only 4 basic parts -- engines, wings, body and fin -- and they're all completely wrong. If AMT had done a plasma launcher it probably would have been completely wrong too!

Even as a 10 year kid in 1978 when I first built it (with no videos or internet to consult) I knew it was...off. Kudos for PL for finally putting out a proper Bird of Prey!


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## edge10 (Oct 19, 2013)

It's not great, but when you compare it to the Galileo shuttle... it's a masterpiece!

Thanks for the pics.


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## Richard Baker (Aug 8, 2006)

One thing to remember is that when the original AMT kit was released (and I am referring to the large kit, not the three piece set)?
No photos to reference by, no video tape to watch over and over again, just a real time TV broadcast to compare the kit with and reliance on memory since there was no way to watch it even one more time or capture an image of it.
Not to make excuses for AMT, but back then 'close enough' was the standard for SciFi kits. the original filming miniature was destroyed and so who ever was given the job of recreating this ship had limited resources to go with. You make a Tiger tank kit and there are references everywhere, including actual hardware. 

When I first opened the box I thought it looked good, it was not until the Internet that I found out how horrible that kit really was. 
It is easy to poke fun at the old kits now, but when they were first created accuracy and scale were not as important for these subjects- we were just grateful somebody produced one. The great thing is that now in the 21st Century we do have better resources and the will of the companies to make accurate kits.


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## Gregatron (Mar 29, 2008)

Comparison with my build of the 1/1000 resin kit from Starcraft:


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## Zombie_61 (Apr 21, 2004)

Richard Baker said:


> One thing to remember is that when the original AMT kit was released (and I am referring to the large kit, not the three piece set)?
> No photos to reference by, no video tape to watch over and over again, just a real time TV broadcast to compare the kit with and reliance on memory since there was no way to watch it even one more time or capture an image of it.
> Not to make excuses for AMT, but back then 'close enough' was the standard for SciFi kits. the original filming miniature was destroyed and so who ever was given the job of recreating this ship had limited resources to go with...it was not until the Internet that I found out how horrible that kit really was.
> It is easy to poke fun at the old kits now, but when they were first created accuracy and scale were not as important for these subjects- we were just grateful somebody produced one. The great thing is that now in the 21st Century we do have better resources and the will of the companies to make accurate kits.


Spot on. Until the Internet came along and ruined everything, I had no idea the AMT Star Trek and Star Wars kits were so inaccurate. They looked like what I remembered seeing on screen, and that was good enough. Ahh, the good old days, when ignorance was bliss.


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## Hunch (Apr 6, 2003)

Can anyone attest to the accuracy of the PL kit? I personally have not done the research.
Jim


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## pagni (Mar 20, 1999)

close but not quite
..


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## GSaum (May 26, 2005)

Hunch said:


> Can anyone attest to the accuracy of the PL kit? I personally have not done the research.
> Jim


From all of the photos I've seen of the original, it's very, very close. It's as close as we'll ever get at this scale.

The only gripe I have is that, and this is just my humble opinion, I think it's too large. I always envisioned the Romulan BOP as being a ship that was much smaller than the Enterprise, much like the Klingon BOP with "about a dozen officers and men". There was nothing in "Balance of Terror" that suggested the ship was as massive as the Enterprise. It's about 6 inches across and I feel that at 1/1000 scale it should be more like 4 inches. Again, it's all about my own personal artistic tastes and assumptions that I've made based on the show.


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## Owen E Oulton (Jan 6, 2012)

I'm going to get one of these and place it with my two 1/1300 scale BoPs and claim they're different ships at the same scale. Although the old 1/1300 scale BoP from AMT suffers the same inaccuracies as its big brother, it's still a nice little kit and is about the right size for the TOS RomBoP. Why should the KlinBoP be the only one that gets different sizes?


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## scotpens (Sep 6, 2003)

GSaum said:


> The only gripe I have is that, and this is just my humble opinion, I think it's too large. I always envisioned the Romulan BOP as being a ship that was much smaller than the Enterprise, much like the Klingon BOP with "about a dozen officers and men". There was nothing in "Balance of Terror" that suggested the ship was as massive as the Enterprise.


There was nothing to suggest it was that small either. Michael McMaster's plans give the ship an overall length of 68.2 meters (223 ft. 9 in.) and an overall width of 90.6m (297 ft. 3 inches), with a crew complement of 170. (Romulan ships are much more cramped and spartan than Starfleet vessels.) That seems about right to me.


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## GSaum (May 26, 2005)

scotpens said:


> There was nothing to suggest it was that small either. Michael McMaster's plans give the ship an overall length of 68.2 meters (223 ft. 9 in.) and an overall width of 90.6m (297 ft. 3 inches), with a crew complement of 170. (Romulan ships are much more cramped and spartan than Starfleet vessels.) That seems about right to me.


Well, McMaster's plans aren't cannon and they are his own interpretation of what was seen on screen. We all make our interpretations, and those were his. I'm interpreting size based on the size and crampness of the bridge, the fact that we never see or hear other personnel other than those on the bridge (and none are even referred to), and just the overall theme of the episode as being a 'submarine hunt in space' where the BOP plays the role of the submarine, typically a boat much smaller than it's surface prey.

Again, it's just my interpretation. It's not canon, it's not right or wrong. But it's right for me, which is all that matters in modeling.


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## The_Engineer (Dec 8, 2012)

Many years ago, I heard that Balance Of Terror was a take on the WW2 movie The Enemy Below (1957). I did get a chance to see it some years ago and BOT does have some similarities with TEB, especially the end. Sure the only scenes we see of the bird of prey are the bridge scenes, but there has to be more crew on board than that. If the bird of prey is suppose to be sub-like then you will have crew manning the bridge, the engine room and if they are in a battle, the torpedo room. We don't know if the bird of prey's plasma weapon need to be manned or if it was automated. The engine room does need to be manned. The whole point of this bird of prey was that the Romulans were testing the new plasma weapon as well as the cloaking device. It was a field test. If the cloak went down, and the Romulans were caught in Federation space that was an act of war. They need to make sure that the cloak was fully working and that no malfunctions happened so most likely it was being closely monitored. I strongly believe even if the bird of prey had a small crew, the bridge and engine room were manning at all times.


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## BWolfe (Sep 24, 2013)

I remember reading somewhere back in the 1970's that the Romulan ship was small, the wingspan smaller than the saucer of the Enterprise (perhaps it was the James Blish novelization of this story). That small ship image has always stuck with me, the ship having no more than three decks. When the original AMT model came out I was disappointed in two ways, in my mind it was way too big and it just looked wrong. When the three ship set (Enterprise, Klingon and Romulan) came out, I was happier, the shape of the Romulan was still wrong, but when compared to the 18 inch Enterprise model, it, at least to me, looked to be the right size. For years I displayed the smaller Romulan ship alongside my original Enterprise and Klingon ships, The larger Romulan model relegated to the back of the closet.


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## GimpyJohn (May 10, 2015)

*Possibly....?*

I have a thought (Oh, God! Everybody out of the pool! There he goes again!):

Could it be that the Romulan ship was crammed full of primitive (compared to Federation ships) technology, and was therefore not nearly as heavily manned-- kind of like NX-01? It _could_ have been a brand-new innovation for them. After all, one wouldn't expect them to technologically progress as fast as a thriving, multi-cultured, democratic organization.... 

I'm just blue-skying here, but this would be a way to have just a bridge/engine room/torpedo-loading crew and _still_ be comparably sized to Fed ships. Again, in the vein of the NX-class. And crew-wise, it seems to me to make sense that a military dictatorship would not require any more than bridge/engine/torpedo officers & enlisteds-- just like a WWII submarine crew.

Okay, I'm done spewing. Back to the regularly-scheduled programming....


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## eradicator178 (Sep 3, 2008)

Richard Baker said:


> One thing to remember is that when the original AMT kit was released (and I am referring to the large kit, not the three piece set)?
> No photos to reference by, no video tape to watch over and over again, just a real time TV broadcast to compare the kit with and reliance on memory since there was no way to watch it even one more time or capture an image of it.
> Not to make excuses for AMT, but back then 'close enough' was the standard for SciFi kits. the original filming miniature was destroyed and so who ever was given the job of recreating this ship had limited resources to go with. You make a Tiger tank kit and there are references everywhere, including actual hardware.
> 
> ...


How true. I as a little kid remember getting these models and thinking they were the greatest thing since buttered bread. Sure beat the cardboard cut outs I haphazardly made from scratch.


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## pagni (Mar 20, 1999)

Interested parties may wish to look at an auction currently on the bay. Never before seen BOP material....yes they are mine...so Mods, if I'm violating let me know...


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