# AMT Klingon Battle Cruiser



## Mobius1 (Aug 25, 2008)

Wow, I havent been on the forums in forever! Been so busy with work and such, havent even had time to even think about models...

I recently bought an AMT Klingon Battle Cruiser on ebay. My original intent was to try and buy it for cheap, and then resell in on ebay. Then after I bought it I decided I would keep it and just build it myself. When I received it however, I opened it and it just seemed somewhat cheap. I dont know if its just me or not, but has anyone built this kit? What do you think of it?

I also uploaded a pic of this kit so you know which one I am referring to.


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## junglelord (Mar 6, 2007)

I built that model back in the day.
I liked it, and I made an attempt to get one on ebay.
If you do not want it, let me know.
I can light her up real nice.
:thumbsup:


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## Mobius1 (Aug 25, 2008)

you put lights on it?


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## junglelord (Mar 6, 2007)

I will on this one...no LED's back then.


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## Mobius1 (Aug 25, 2008)

well where would you put the lights, there arent any clear parts or anything....

and man i wish i knew how to light models. ive looked into it but its so confusing


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## fluke (Feb 27, 2001)

Oh..man.. there ya go again with those negative waves....will you say something rightious for a change!

Dude! I would be happy to help you out. Its really not that bad...some folks make it look and sound harder than it is. All you gotta do is look at some movie still's go over the DVD pause the hell out of it ( if ya got one ) and see what lit and what not. I have seen some folks kinda roll back and take some ideas off the original TOS ship.

I think the rear engines light up, you could have a glow in the front wave motion gun housing ----- oops sorry that was Star Blazers LOL

There are many ways to skin a cat when it comes to lighting.

I can set it up for you so all you need is a few 200ohm resistors, any type of LED you can get ( I can help with internet vendor contacts ( who even take PayPal ) and if you can build a custom base where you can hide 4 AA batteries, a switch and then use a polished brass tube up to your model your in business!

Why 4 AA batteries? I have had kits at Wonderfest last almost all day with over 25 led's on 4 AA batteries. Sure many folks like the size and ease of a 9V ...BUT! volt batts were designed for simple lower power consumption items like radios, test equipment etc. AA batts have more amps and last longer.

Why 6 volts?....well at 6V and using a 200 ohm resistor per each LED you can lite up ANY LED!!..."any?"...yes any...."any?"....yes any!! say that one more time and I'll get ya and make it look an accident! 

Now if you would please excuse me me and the boys are gonna blow some holes in a few Nazi tanks...."Forward!.....yoahhhhh!!!!!!"

Oh yeah I hardly check for private PM's here so just e-mail direct: and I don't want a bunch of love letters or spam from the rest of you Turkeys!

[email protected]


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## Mobius1 (Aug 25, 2008)

email sent


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## nakira2ca (Jan 25, 2006)

Mobius1 said:


> What do you think of it?


I actually like this kit. I built one when I was much younger. To light it I cut out the back engines and put two bulbs behind them and put another in the front torpedo bay. For painting I mixed metalic silver, army green and grey. Turned out pretty cool. I may have some pics back home so if I can find them I will post some. The kit is long since lost/broken but I still have 3 more unbuilt.


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## JediPuju (Oct 12, 2009)

I too have an unbuilt one of these - looking forward to seeing the progress of this! I really want to get dons's quonos one PE set and like the idea of JT graphics' resin sets.


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## bigdaddydaveh (Jul 20, 2007)

Does Don's PE set include new impulse engine grills? The decals that came with the kit were the one thing that really made this kit a downer for me. Other than that I think the kit has a lot of promise. I need to re-work mine and re-paint it.


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## JediPuju (Oct 12, 2009)

bigdaddydaveh said:


> Does Don's PE set include new impulse engine grills? The decals that came with the kit were the one thing that really made this kit a downer for me. Other than that I think the kit has a lot of promise. I need to re-work mine and re-paint it.


Cant see them - although the studio model does not have impulse "grilles" per se. They are more like diamond patterned perspex.


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## ajmadison (Oct 18, 1999)

Mobius1 said:


> When I received it however, I opened it and it just seemed somewhat cheap. I dont know if its just me or not, but has anyone built this kit? What do you think of it?


To address the issue of cheapness, the kit is not very accurate compared to the K'tinga FX miniature. I have not built it, but I have spent considerable time comparing it to references. IMHO, AMT/Ertl took the original D-7 mold and added the additional greebly & panel detail to it. Unfortunately, the FX miniature is not the original D-7 with some "stuff" stuck to it. The engineering hull is much taller, which is why the detailing on the front of the model kit's engineering hull looks squashed. AMT/Ertl also only approximated the hull plating on the top & bottom of the engineering hull. Its "sorta" right, but in general, its completely wrong. Another modeler has noted that the warp nacelles hang at the wrong angle as well, I haven't spent much time with that, but I can believe it.


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## Magesblood (May 12, 2008)

as inaccurate as it is, it's one of my favorite Trek kits.


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## geino (May 9, 2006)

Mobius1

I started this kit last year, here is the forum
http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/showthread.php?t=261623
It is currently in storage because I had to move. As soon as I can get things unpacked again I will start working on it again.

Take a look at what I wrote regarding how weak the neck is and how I was modifying the kit to reinforce it.

I was also scratch building a shuttle bay and lighting the kit.

I decided not to go "movie accurate" with the detail I added to the bridge area, but I think I added some nice detail with the work I did.


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## uscav_scout (Feb 14, 2007)

This was the first Star Trek kit that I ever built (well the ST, TMP one) built one about two years ago and it didn't survive a move (excuse to build another) with the exceptions of half the detail not really matching up (AMT - go figure) it was really easy to build and with lots of filling and sanding it comes out reasonably good.


For the ST 6 edition all that AMT did different was box art and a different set of decals. if you look close on the sprue you will find the "pen" for the old rub down transfer decals in the TMP kit.


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## jbond (Aug 29, 2002)

I don't think AMT used the original Klingon hull as the basis for the kit--there are differences in proportion and if they HAD used the original ship to work off of the forward "bulb" hull would have been far more accurate--the K'Tinga's forward hull is much closer to the original "D-7" than the model's is--the model's is almost circular in cross section while the D-7's and K'Tinga's is much more flattened.

That said, the kit had great detail even though it missed a lot--when that kit came out there were very few sci fi kits with that level of detail.


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## WarpCore Breach (Apr 27, 2005)

I'm another one who likes this kit in spite of its inaccuracies! My original TMP release kit still survives in spite of the many moves I went through and slowly increasing incremental damages does make repairs a bit challenging. I've already rebuilt it once 15 years ago and completed major repairs (from a kitty-induced fall) just over a year ago. It still requires some fine detail repairs on it yet. I did a "speed build" of one of these ships (also just over a year ago) that had some missing parts that I could fabricate. 

Somewhat ironically, I could have gotten the missing parts from what I wasn't going to use with JTGraphics K'tinga accuratization parts but I did know that at the time. I didn't start getting those resin pieces until *after* I had finished building that second ship.


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## geino (May 9, 2006)

uscav_scout said:


> This was the first Star Trek kit that I ever built (well the ST, TMP one) built one about two years ago and it didn't survive a move (excuse to build another) with the exceptions of half the detail not really matching up (AMT - go figure) it was really easy to build and with lots of filling and sanding it comes out reasonably good.
> 
> 
> For the ST 6 edition all that AMT did different was box art and a different set of decals. if you look close on the sprue you will find the "pen" for the old rub down transfer decals in the TMP kit.


Both of the main movie kits (Enterprise and the Klingon) have weak points and almost never survive. I know I built and had to trash them because of they broke along those points and you could not fix them.

In the other forum I shortened the neck by about 1/4 of an inch and then jamming it in to the forward section so it would reinforce the neck and prevent it from snapping. 

There are many people in these forums that thank Round 2 for reinforcing the 1701-A nacelle wings so they will not snap where they attach to the hull.

The inaccurate/non-existant detail is the reason I decided to go for "non-cannon" detailing on the bridge. I will be doing the same thing to other parts of the ship when I resume work on it.


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## Dr. Brad (Oct 5, 1999)

I remember someone saying that at least part of the inaccuracies of the AMT TMP can be accounted for by the fact that AMT was basing the kit on a version of the ship before it had all the greeblies added (and other details) - more like what it would have looked in the TV series that never happened (instead we got the movie). You can see a version of that ship in Star Trek mechanics if you happen to have a copy...


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## jbond (Aug 29, 2002)

I don't think it's based on the Phase II version either--there are photos of that that clearly show the "aztec" pattern on it was painted with no raised plating. From what I read there was a final "pass" of detailing done by John Dykstra's crew before filming and that created the final version we're used to. The photo of the miniature on the original AMT box has far less detail on the bridge dome but still shows a lot of the plating detail and things on the rear hull. So AMT could have gotten involved before the final version of the miniature was ready but they were still working on the ship as modified for TMP.


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## Darkstar (Jan 27, 2010)

I'm making a kitbash with mine:

 Kang Class


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## jbond (Aug 29, 2002)

I actually like that better than the K'Vorcha...


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## Gemini1999 (Sep 25, 2008)

jbond said:


> I don't think it's based on the Phase II version either--there are photos of that that clearly show the "aztec" pattern on it was painted with no raised plating. From what I read there was a final "pass" of detailing done by John Dykstra's crew before filming and that created the final version we're used to. The photo of the miniature on the original AMT box has far less detail on the bridge dome but still shows a lot of the plating detail and things on the rear hull. So AMT could have gotten involved before the final version of the miniature was ready but they were still working on the ship as modified for TMP.


Whenever I watch TMP, I always marvel at the level of detail on the K'Tinga filming model. Then, I think back to the AMT model when I bought it. The model was so much smaller than the 22 inch model of the TMP Enterprise, not to mention a serious lack of detail. I never put the model together and I wound up passing it off to a friend of mine that tried to make it look like the film version, but struggled with the small size.

I frequently wish that someone would make a larger version of the K'Tinga with some decent detail on it. I really would like to build that kit if and when it ever comes available.

Bryan


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## Dr. Brad (Oct 5, 1999)

jbond said:


> I don't think it's based on the Phase II version either--there are photos of that that clearly show the "aztec" pattern on it was painted with no raised plating. From what I read there was a final "pass" of detailing done by John Dykstra's crew before filming and that created the final version we're used to. The photo of the miniature on the original AMT box has far less detail on the bridge dome but still shows a lot of the plating detail and things on the rear hull. So AMT could have gotten involved before the final version of the miniature was ready but they were still working on the ship as modified for TMP.


That makes sense. The pic in ST Mechanics must be before all the detail was added.


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## bigbluejavelin (Feb 13, 2010)

The AMT kit is more accurate for TMP, as that is what it was first released as, but the STVI release is the same and not too accurate. JTGraphics parts are totally awesome if you wish do do the STVI version.


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## bigbluejavelin (Feb 13, 2010)

http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww164/BigBlueJavelin/Klingon battle cruiser/DSCN0929.jpg


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## bigbluejavelin (Feb 13, 2010)

Here's one I started around 2000, but just recently finished. It's accurate to...nothing! http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww164/BigBlueJavelin/Klingon battle cruiser/DSCN0925.jpghttp://s716.photobucket.com/albums/ww164/BigBlueJavelin/Klingon battle cruiser/


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## Darkstar (Jan 27, 2010)

Nice build! I like the gray vs the usual greene. I only wish I knew about lighting these things up like the system you have there.....


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