Here are some pictures of one of my recently built model, the Rigel class U.S.S. Liberator. I was looking on the FASA web site a while back and came across some drawings of a starship called the Decker class, a long and thin looking ship, that was supposed to be some sort of support vessel for the much larger Galaxy class ships. I though the design looked interesting, so I figured I'd have a go at building my own version.

Rather than using a circular saucer as was shown in the original design, I opted to build an elliptical saucer similar in design to the Sovereign class. I started by getting two 1/2500 scale Enterprise-D models (from the three Enterprise set kit) and cutting the saucer sections in half across the horizontal line. Discarding the rear sections, I placed a thick piece of styrene between the upper and lower saucer halves, to create the right deck height for a 1/1400 scale model. Once done I glued the two halves together. Using putty and lots of sanding I was able to get the join line reasonably smooth, though even now you can still see where the two halves go together. next I cut out a section about one inch wide from the rear of the saucer to the centre and built up a long extended hull about halve a centimetre thick which would become the top of the engineering hull. taking some further design idea's from the sovereign class I created several decks on top of the extended hull so that they would bring this section to the same height as the saucer. I added a shuttle bay to the rear of the lower deck and the main impulse engine to the back of the upper deck.

The next stage of construction was the engineering hull. I went back to the Decker class but wasn't really satisfied with the engineering section of that ship, to me it looked a bit to stretched and thin, so I designed the secondary hull to be a bit of a mix between the Excelsior and the Ambassador class hulls. The hull itself is made from several sheets of styrene cut to shape and sandwiched together, which added a certain amount of weight to the model. If I build something similar in the future I think I'll come up with an idea that makes the model a little more hollow.

Going back to the spares box I took the bridge section from the large ERTL Excelsior model and added it to the top of my new ship and then took the lower sensor platform from the ERTL Yamaguchi model and added it to the bottom. At this point I hadn't actually come up with a design for the engineering hull, so I went on to the engines themselves. I thought about using a pair of runabout engines but even though they where about the right length they just didn't look right. I found what I was looking for in an old Cheyenne class model I had built and then discarded a couple of years back. The model had two sets of engines so I removed them and cleaned them up. Once this was done I cut the front off of one pair and the rear end of the others and glued them together, now I had a set of long thin engines which suited my model. For the engine pylons I was going to copy the swept back design used for the Sovereign class, but I didn't want to have to many similarities to that ship. while looking through the ST:TNG Sketch Book I came across an early design for the Enterprise E, which had these thick, wide pylons which where swept forward similar to the Enterprise D design but which where quite distinctive in themselves. I modified the design of the pylons to fit in with what I was building.

The paint scheme is just a simple mix of blues and greys to get a colour which is close to that of the Enterprise D. The decals are from JT Graphics and are really well detailed, right down to the life boats and airlocks, I really recommend these guys for their attention to detail.

As for the name of the ship, I was looking at the Wolf 359 section on the Ex Astris Scientia web site when I came across an entry about a ship called the U.S.S Liberator, which was supposed to have been at the battle of Wolf 359 (ST:TNG "Best Of Both Worlds") There was no pictures of the ship or what type it was meant to be, there was only a battered shuttlecraft with this ship's name and number on it. I thought it sounded like a good name for a ship so I used it and the registry number for my model. I figured this ship could be of the Rigel class, since we've never actually seen one of these ships before.

This model turned out quite well, and was a great way of using a mix of spare parts which had been lying around in a box for some time.

Image: Upper saucer

Image: Left/front view

Image: Impulse engines

Image: Left/rear

Image: Right/rear

Image: Underneath

Image: Port side