This my interpretation / kitbash of the fan based design from Ships of the StarFleet, Vol I. It's very loosely based off the
Daran-class fast frigate, below. Mine is just a little bit different, as you'll see.
- fastfrigate_daran.jpg (77.48 KiB) Viewed 1320 times
Image from
Starship Schematics DataBase.
The base kit is the 1/1000 scale Reliant from around 2, with the split impulse engine and saucer mounted navigational deflector from Federation Models. I chopped the very aft 11/2" / 1.2cm section off of the aft extended hull, cut one other roughly 1/3" / 1.5cm part off, then grafted the very aft section back on. I also cut off a couple of the detail pieces from the ventral surface, then added them back.
The "Assension" (sic) nacelles from FedMods I got had a nasty bow in them. I got them bent mostly back to shape with the Hot Water Method - heat the parts up in near-boiling water, bend/clamp to the proper angle you want, then dunk in cold water. I had to do this twice, with the second nacelle pic above showing the first treatment. It got the worst of it out on the second attempt, tho it's still noticeable if you're looking for it.
Aft split impulse vents while under construction.
Inspiration on this basic kitbash came from
John Payne's build of his Refit Era Dreadnought the USS Belisarius. In that build, John chopped a 1/537-ish Reliant kit up similarly to what I did here, then mounted it as the primary hull. I tried replicating the same for an earlier interpretation of the
Daran-class more than 10 years ago, also using a 1/537-ish Reliant.
This is a pic of my ill-fated
USS Stark, NCC-3208, in 1/537 scale. As you can see, I also added two photorp decks, with the thinking there that they were routine removable with minimal work required, or even ejectable under emergency conditions.
Some more under construction.
I chose to keep the pylons on their outboard mounting points, as I did on my larger build. I also liked the idea of the extended hull having more of a taper, instead of being flat. It gives the ship a bit more overall internal volume, especially forward of the shuttle bays if I don't have them shoved all the way up towards the front of the upper angled hull. I also doubt I'll be adding the landing pads.
On my larger build, I had added photorp pods to the upper hull, which were made using the photorp superstructure from two AMT 1/537-ish Refit kits. This time around, I mounted tubes in the leading edge, as well as those included with the Federation Models split impulse engine piece. I also added the FedMods lower saucer mounted nav deflector, plus their Ascension-class LN-68 nacelles.
Still much work to do!
