Customer Reviews

1/350 Star Trek USS Enterprise A

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow. I got this in the mail today. The box is huge. I've bought dvd players in smaller boxes. Against my better judgement (I don't have time to start on this right away), I opened the box (even the box is solid) and was confronted with two warp engines and the primary saucer filling the box. I know they say it's 32" (the box says 35"), but that still doesn't prepare you for the first sight of what is going to be one very large model. Sprue after sprue of plastic fill the box, including a ton of clear plastic for the main deflector, windows, photon torpedo tubes, and the warp nacelles. This kit just begs for lighting. But even if you don't, this is still an amazing kit. There's detailed interiors for the officer's lounge (below & behind the bridge), the arboretum (the big windows in the secondary hull) and the shuttle bay (complete with several types of shuttles). Oddly, though, there is nothing for the rec deck (the larger square windows on the back right of the saucer).

And if the thought of painting the famous aztec pattern is a little too daunting for you, Round 2/ Polar Lights have thoughtfully included decals of the aztec pattern for the entire ship, allowing anyone to produce an attractive model.

This is a big, beautiful kit, and is sure to be the centerpiece of any modeller's collection. Definitely a "must have," especially at this price.

This is no toy, it's a collectable! And the size... It's HUGE.

I found this online while trying to find a replica of a model I built in the early 1970's. Yes, I'm an old kid. I haven't built the model yet, but upon opening the box, every detail appears to be fantastic. The final product will only be attributed to my model building skills, but I pieced together the saucer section and I was quite impressed.

This is far better than the model I built decades ago. I could only give it a 5 because that's the highest product rating Amazon has. It's worth every penny.

Length:: 0:36 Mins

Had to rig this with X-Mas Lights. Have found a site that offers the same exact model, however they cost a bit much. Guess I will have to do with how I have mine.

this model of the U.S.S Enterprise N.C.C-1701-A is simply amazing, the box was huge, when I found a knife and opened it, the first things you see are the 2 nacelles and the main disk.

The only downside I found to this model, is that you have to buy 16 separate paints, and even then, they indicate the best brands to buy it from, and the exact color name and number (like not just "Blue" more like: "Eggshell blue #1769")

I'm gonna spend months building it, and when I'm finished I'll upload a video review!

This is a 1/350 plastic model kit of the USS Enterprise, configurable either as NCC-1701 (refit) or NCC-1701-A. Fully assembled, it's simply massive: just shy of a yard from stem to stern. I'd done a few starship kits a very long time ago, and had deviated into smaller waterline warship models. Quite frankly, I'm running out of places to put the things, so building big ones was out of the question. When I saw this one, however, I just couldn't resist- a kit of that size for this price is unheard of.

The kit comes in a huge box, which is the same width as the saucer. I was initially rather horrified to see an abundance of loose pieces that were clearly broken free of their trees, but fortunately most of the larger parts have their numbers molded on the part itself, and many of the smaller pieces have spares. It's likely you'll need some of the smaller clear ones in particular, as they're very easy to lose. The non-clear parts are molded in white, which coincidentally is the general hull color.

Detail is exquisite- panel lines are rendered in high detail, windows are visible and clear, decals are generally well done, and the interior sections are almost too detailed considering the little you can see. It even comes with unique engineering top, shuttlecraft, and optional parts for building the Refit vs. -A model Enterprise. A substantial amount of parts are done in clear plastic, mostly for interior windows. For the three internal sub-assemblies (officer's lounge, arboretum, and shuttle bay) there's either clear inserts to let light in or openings around which you could place internal lights. The kit is clearly designed to be lit, though it also looks fine without it.

The fit is, generally speaking, quite good. Mold quality is likewise good- not stellar, but good. There was a bit of flash and some of the holes needed drilling or filing to fit. Some of the parts- especially the nacelle pylons- are an extremely tight fit. I had to put some pretty serious pressure on it to get them together, and even then there were some gaps. A file and knife are pretty necessary for this one, and a power drill might be useful as well.

When applied, the aztec decals cover pretty much every square inch of the surface and make it look pretty good even if you didn't do a great job with the paint scheme. Hats off to Polar Lights for doing a great job with the design in this regard. Markings are presented for both Enterprise variants, including shuttles. Some of these are miniscule (and have no spares) and the lines in particular are a pain to apply. If I were to build another of these, I wouldn't use the line decals- it'd have been a lot easier and probably better looking to simply use a red marker like the ones sold for Gundam kits. Setting solution is recommended for the decals, since there's multiple layers of them.

The instructions are terrible and the only real downside to this kit; they are quite possibly the worst set of directions I have ever seen. A significant number of parts and decals are misnumbered, and the decal instructions are incomplete. Furthermore, the illustrations don't adequately show orientation for many of the smaller decals, leaving you to either guess or try to figure it out by looking at pictures. Many of the assembly directions are unclear, but at least in this case it's not too hard to figure it out just by eyeballing and testing fit. More irritating is the fact that quite a few of the main assembly steps are either shown out of order or only explained in text, and the individual steps are outrageously cluttered. There should have been at least twice as many steps for basic clarity; 3 times as many would have been ideal. It is very easy to leave out parts or do things out of order if you don't read ahead and very carefully mark off each part you cemented.

On a special note for assembly, although regular plastic cement works for most of it I strongly recommend using something heavier for the neck. It simply doesn't have enough interlocking mass with the small plastic pins attaching to the saucer, and it is VERY easy to break them off. Use some epoxy glue or instant cement here, and get it right the first time. It is also noted, rather belatedly, that some of the decals are easier to apply during assembly rather than after. I didn't do it this way, which meant a lot of them had to be trimmed with a razor. This worked fine, but took quite a bit longer.

If there's one final piece of advice I can offer potential builders, it's this: don't use Testors paints. The paint instructions use Testors Model Master numbers, but it's not hard to find equivalent colors for other brands (and, I might add, it's questionable whether these are all the right colors- but that's another story for another day). I normally use Tamiya, but after their factory got washed out by the tsunami it's been in scarce supply. I figured Model Master branded paints may be better than Testors' usual garbage. Well, it's not- their spray primer and gloss clear coat in particular nearly wrecked this project from the start. The first was way too thick even with one quick pass, and the clear coat was actually more of a yellowish with occasional brown spots (yikes!). Spend a bit more on a better brand, mix colors yourself that you can't find, or even use paint from the hardware store. Or heck, don't bother painting the base hull at all- anything would be better.

All in all, this is a great kit for the value and when finished looks pretty amazing. I chose to build mine as the -A variant and it took about a month, working on it every day. I'm actually kind of tempted to get another to build the original Enterprise and, admittedly, to avoid some of the pitfalls I ran into the first time around. If you appreciate the subject matter, have the necessary skill and materials, and can deal with some pretty obtuse directions, then this is sure to be a lot of fun.

I got this as a Christmas present that I picked out for myself and will probably be spending the next several months putting it together. The size and detail are amazing and if you're planning on installing lights in it (which I am), it's almost like it was designed for it. There are a ton of after-market kits you can buy to make it more accurate or to assist in lighting or to just add crazy details to it, so depending on how ambitious you are this could just be the first purchase in a long list of items needed to get this completed. How crazy you go with it is completely up to you since it's amazing straight out of the box.

One of the finest Star Trek models available. Mainly for intermediate to advanced skill builders. To see how spectacular the results can be for a skilled modeler visit "ianlawrencemodels.com" and I'm sure you would love to have this in your collection. He also has videos of the completed model with his modifications on Youtube, very impressive if you're a true Trek fan.

This is the largest Star Trek model I have ever seen !
Great detail and of course size !

a few of the pieces need some persuasion in order to fit. also, the kit really does call for some sort of lighting...if you get any such kit, do not do any body assembly UNTIL you get the lighting kit instructions, you'll be sorry. beyond that, it's a cool looking model.

i bought this item for my boyfriends birthday. he had a model of the Enterprise as a child, and it got broken, and its all he ever talked about. so i was thrilled to find this item. you should have seen his face when he opened it! hes assembling it now, and hes been very impressed with the quality of the materials, and the size. this model is huge! im not sure where hes going to put it when its done, but im sure it will have a place of honor!