1/650 Klingon Bird of Prey

Gallery Article by Bill Eggleton on Jan 8 2011

Silly Week 2011

 

Here are some pictures of my Klingon Bird of Prey that I built over a decade ago.  The BoP first made its appearance in the opening scene of the movie Star Trek III – The Search for Spock.  With its ability to cloak and variable geometry wing, the BoP became a fan favorite.   

AMT/ERTL released the BoP kit shortly after the release of Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home.  RC2’s website lists a re-release date of February 2011.  

The kit was fairly straight forward to build and provides two options for the wing position, cruise and attack.  I built mine in the attack configuration.  There were a number of undetailed regions over the craft where I added bits of plastic card, strips and pieces from the parts bin.  One of the most noticeable areas was behind the wing hinges.  Here I built it up to resemble some sort of contoured venting.  Also, at the right look angle, one could see that the wing hinges were hollow.  To rectify this, I took rectangular pieces of card stock of similar thickness as the hinge plates and glued them 90 degrees off the long axis in an alternating pattern to simulate the lower hinge area.

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The instructions calls for the BoP to be painted in an overall Pale Green.  I felt that this was too bright and mixed Testor’s Model Master Pale Green and Forest Green in a 50/50 ratio.  I then took some of this base mixture and made up two lighter shades by adding more Pale Green and three darker shades by adding more Forest Green. 

As the panels of the BoP were raised, I painted the BoP in reverse order by painting select panels before painting the base colour.  I started with the feather pattern on the bottom by painting the raised panels in MM Insignia Red.  Using Bare Metal Foil, I masked off the majority of the feather panels.  The unmasked feather panels were painted with different shades of red, masking each shaded panel before proceeding to the next shade.  I also painted a couple of panels grey just to add variation.  I repeated the process with the feather pattern on the top of the wing using the darkest green as the main feather colour and the other shades for the selected panels.  In hindsight I probably should have used Forest Green or another darker green for the feathers as the pattern blended too much after weathering.  At any rate, I also painted/masked various panels on the craft’s fuselage and wings while painting the upper feather pattern.  Once all the selected panels were painted and masked, I painted the BoP in the base green colour  The wing hinges were painted in Humbrol Gun Metal. and then removed all the masking.

After decaling, final assembly and clear coating, I applied several black washes.  In certain areas, I applied further black washes and rust washes to give a grimier look.  I then drybrushed the BoP with several shades of grey, white and matt aluminum, applying heavier drybrushing of aluminum on several select panels to simulate heavier wear and in a couple of cases replaced, unpainted panels.  The hinges were weathered with black washes followed by drybrushing of matt aluminum.  After a final clear coat, I picked off the small details such as windows and navigation lights.  The final touch was to hand paint HMS BOUNTY in Insignia Red as seen in The Voyage Home.  

I replaced the kit stand with a wooden base and brass tube painted black.  I picked up an aftermarket Klingon emblem and painted it in the early colours to set off the base.  I even built a plug for the stand hole, just in case I wanted to hang it from the ceiling.

Enjoy the model.

Bill Eggleton

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Photos and text © by Bill Eggleton