USS Voyager
This is a model of the USS Voyager from the Star Trek show. It's an Intrepid class ship, and was supposed to be an explorer type. Or maybe even a science ship. It isn't heavily armed, but they have some pretty nifty science stuff on board.
This one is straight from the box. It's from the Voyager Three Piece Set that comes with a Kazon ship and the Marquis ship. It's in 1/1400 scale, so I was able to add it to my fleet of 1/1400 scale ships. The model went together petty easily, but I had to fill in some pretty big gaps. I was surprised that they let such a huge gap get past the quality check. I suppose that they figured that only 'geeks and nerds' will build it, and serious modelers will stear clear of something from a TV show. They apparently forgot that some of those serious modelers actually like to watch TV.
Painting it was pretty easy. I started with a base coat of light ghost gray, making some panels Dark Ghost Gray and some a mix of Light Ghost Gray with Aggressor Gray. The dark sensors sections are Euro I Gray, and the phasers are Gunship gray. The rest of the colors are ones I mixed up. The decals were ok, but the color of the floor outside of the shuttle bay is wrong.
This model had some decent details to it. As you can see in the picture below, the main hull actually is decent. They could easily have added a little more detail to make the model just that much better. It wouldn't be to dificult to do it yourself though.
Fixing a Problem
The 'landing pad' appears to be a fairly dark gray in the show, but they made the decal some sort of pink. How can you make that mistake? I tried buying decals from someone online, but they didn't do much better. I ended up having to paint over the decal so I could use the yellow stripes. Not the best solution, but it worked. No you can get a decal set from JTGraphics. His stuff is some of the best out there. You can find them on Federation Models. They would totally be worth the money.
I actually have another Voyager model waiting to be built. I plan on doing some details to this one. I'm planning on making the small deflector, adding the sensors to the side of the ship (instead of blank walls), detailing the impulse engines, and making other general improvements. It's on my long term projects list, so I don't think I'll be getting to it too soon.
This was a simple model to make, and pretty simple to build. If you can find a Voyager Three Piece Set, then this would be an easy addition to a 1/1400 scale collection you have.