12/30/2023 0 Comments Lingon brd![]() ![]() I recommend adding the wings to the hull before attaching the feet to the legs. The metal is just flexible enough that I made minor adjustments to align them. I glued each leg together with 5-minute epoxy and painted them before installing them in the bay with more epoxy. The landing gear legs are supplied in cast, white metal, which is probably a good thing, given the weight of the finished model. The few decals went on fine over a layer of clear gloss, although the Klingon insignia at the cannon fairings required several applications of Microscale Micro Sol and heat to settle over the detail. XF-5) with increasing amounts of cockpit green for those areas. XF-76) and the next darkest panel accent color (Cockpit Green, No. The only places I diverged from those recommendations were the main body (Grey Green, No. The comprehensive painting instructions with detailed drawings of the top and bottom reference Tamiya colors. Checking the fit of everything, I bored out each of the locating holes for the radiators in the hull and wings to make them easier to fit during the final assembly. I left the wings, hull, and radiators separate for painting. I ended up sanding these lines off completely, filling and smoothing the seam, and replacing the detail with a fine styrene half-round rod. They hamper complete sanding and should run all the way to the edge of the shelf, not end at the seam. This should be smooth, but filling and sanding are complicated by a series of raised lines that cross this space. I had to do extra work on the seams between the shoulder inserts (parts 9 and 10) and the upper hull, but the most difficult to eliminate were around the edge of the head where the upper section fits into the lower head (Part 6). None of this is hard, just time-consuming to make them disappear. ![]() The fit of the wing halves and main hull sections are all a bit imprecise and require filler to eliminate gaps. I left off the gear doors, gear legs, and entry ramp for painting. In Step 3, it isn’t obvious that you need to fit either the belly (Part 42) if you are posing the ship gear up, or the gear bay (Part 43) for landing configuration. The numbers for the ends (parts 46 and 47) are flipped in the instructions, but the mistake is apparent when you test-fit them. Some of the panels are a little soft at the edges, but they look good under paint.Ĭhoosing to build the ship landed, I selected the indicated radiator parts. Molded in green plastic, the parts have decent surface detail. The AMT 1/350 scale Star Trek Klingon Bird-of-Prey plastic model kit is back again in updated packaging, marked for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which marked the Bird-of-Prey’s first appearance. The intervening decades saw the kit reissued several times with few changes until 2010, when Round 2, caretaker of the AMT brand, updated it with new radiator baffles and landing gear to pose the ship on the ground as seen several times in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In 1995, I was thrilled when AMT/Ertl released a kit of the Bird-of-Prey, branded at that time for Star Trek: Generations, that included optional parts to pose the wings in either cruise or attack positions. ![]() It’s different, menacing, utilitarian, and - dare I say - beautiful. At the risk of being pilloried by fans of the Enterprise, the Bird-of-Prey is the coolest ship design in Star Trek.
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