Melbourne Mayhem.

   I was going to make the next ship the focus of a lot of attention, but then twigged that it wouldn't get any attention because the bulk of the primary hull has been blown away. This one will be the Excelsior class USS Melbourne. I've started on Clever Santoro's design, but it's causing me no end of headaches so far. I began building the nacelles:-

   I thought this would be the most awkward part of the build, but they actually went together quite smoothly. From there I moved to the primary hull and got so far before hitting a wall.

   A connects to B connects to C, etc, but why?!? What goes in that gaping hole? How do those bits on the sheets fold into that shape? And how the hell do they connect to everything else without warping it?

   At this point I'm seriously considering looking for another design - not because it's a bad design, but because I'm working at a scale of ~500m:2" and too many parts become dust-sized specks and I'm trying to mould strips that are 1/2mm thick and I just can't figure out how it goes together!?! Hopefully everything will fall into place with fresh eyes for my next build session. Just in case, I'm looking for an alternative, simplified design.
   I hate, loathe and despise this ship. I never did like the Excelsior class and the only reason I picked it for the USS Melbourne was to avoid having two Nebulas/Nebulae. I've cobbled together a passable approximation (good enough for my purposes) using parts from the USS Enterprise B kit and fiercely trimmed parts from the USS Excelsior kit which I printed slightly too big. I also had to edit the USS Excelsior parts to bring the colouring closer to the Enterprise by zapping the gamma saturation a few times in XnView. There are no more build log photos, just a few end results:-

   I'm far from happy with this one and if I never see an Excelsior again it will be too soon! So I've decided that it will be the target of the tractor and cutting beams from the cube. If the light show doesn't pull attention away from the flaws then I suppose I'll have to resize the USS Excelsior design (again!) and start from scratch - then I can feed this one to the Doomsday Machine . Nah... I'll just angle it so that the mess on the underside isn't seen...