My Leif Ericson model is in transit, but I got the resin scout and engines today in the mail. The repop model doesn’t include the engines and “intercoolers”, nor does it include the second scout that came with the original. And the scout it does have is missing the landing gear – very retro telescoping legs. Very “Forbidden Planet”-ish.
The resin replacements from Federation Models are outstanding, although the engines are not the original clear red for lighting them up like to original did. No problem, I intend on painting them with metalizers and using red oxide misted on for a reddish effect.
The overall approach I’m going to take is to make this thing as detailed and “real” as possible so I’ll be adding stringers, bracing (with lightening holes), and such in the landing bay. I have a couple of left over photo etch 1/350 gantries from my Arizona that I can use to cobble up something for the bay. Prieser makes 1/500 scale figures that are perfect for the kit to use as crew. So I might drill some windows out to put crew inside and backlight the interior in places.
Overall I’ll paint it aluminum with shaded panels and then a light mist of light gray or white over to let the metal show through, but not too much. Kind of like the underside of a Hawker Hunter with it’s odd silver grey. I also intend to add some mods to include weapon stations like turrets or bays with blast doors maybe. Still thinking about that.
Anyway, I put together a LBB2 Leif Ericson for my game and as an exercise to see what could be fit into one using the dimensions from a website that had worked out the internal volume of the neck, shoulders, bay, and bridge sections as well as the overall volume.
According to those calculations the ship would be approx. 5000 tons (slightly less, by around 100 tons +/-). So I built it with HG as a TL-13 protected cruiser to fit into my campaign for use on the colonial frontiers. It has a needle configuration, and as per the extrapolations by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle when they used the model to design the MacArthur, it has scoops and purifiers for skimming and facilities for frontier operations and maintenance. I don’t have a Black Globe or any shields in it, nor does this version have the scouts form the kit, since I’m keeping it within the limitations of MTU which has a treaty disallowing warships beyond TL-13 capability and 5000 tons within the region of space that 90% of my game takes place in. Mainly it was just a fun exercise in designing a ship from amodel I wanted badly when I was a little kid, but instead my parents bought me a USS Enterprise and Klingon D-7 cruiser for Christmas. Which were both then destroyed in the ’72 quake in LA. Sigh, but now I’ll have one of my “rosebuds” and can really do it justice.
The resin replacements from Federation Models are outstanding, although the engines are not the original clear red for lighting them up like to original did. No problem, I intend on painting them with metalizers and using red oxide misted on for a reddish effect.
The overall approach I’m going to take is to make this thing as detailed and “real” as possible so I’ll be adding stringers, bracing (with lightening holes), and such in the landing bay. I have a couple of left over photo etch 1/350 gantries from my Arizona that I can use to cobble up something for the bay. Prieser makes 1/500 scale figures that are perfect for the kit to use as crew. So I might drill some windows out to put crew inside and backlight the interior in places.
Overall I’ll paint it aluminum with shaded panels and then a light mist of light gray or white over to let the metal show through, but not too much. Kind of like the underside of a Hawker Hunter with it’s odd silver grey. I also intend to add some mods to include weapon stations like turrets or bays with blast doors maybe. Still thinking about that.
Anyway, I put together a LBB2 Leif Ericson for my game and as an exercise to see what could be fit into one using the dimensions from a website that had worked out the internal volume of the neck, shoulders, bay, and bridge sections as well as the overall volume.
According to those calculations the ship would be approx. 5000 tons (slightly less, by around 100 tons +/-). So I built it with HG as a TL-13 protected cruiser to fit into my campaign for use on the colonial frontiers. It has a needle configuration, and as per the extrapolations by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle when they used the model to design the MacArthur, it has scoops and purifiers for skimming and facilities for frontier operations and maintenance. I don’t have a Black Globe or any shields in it, nor does this version have the scouts form the kit, since I’m keeping it within the limitations of MTU which has a treaty disallowing warships beyond TL-13 capability and 5000 tons within the region of space that 90% of my game takes place in. Mainly it was just a fun exercise in designing a ship from amodel I wanted badly when I was a little kid, but instead my parents bought me a USS Enterprise and Klingon D-7 cruiser for Christmas. Which were both then destroyed in the ’72 quake in LA. Sigh, but now I’ll have one of my “rosebuds” and can really do it justice.
