Klingon K'Tinga Battlecruiser

This is the K’Tinga class battle cruiser. I have several of these models because I’m sick and collect models for no other reason than they’re available.

When I was just a little guy, just 7 years old, I saw an advertisement in a comic book. It offered both the original Enterprise and a Klingon D-7 Battle Cruiser. I begged my mom for the money, and she ordered it for me. I knew it wouldn’t come quickly, so I steeled my 7 year old psyche and patiently waited for the models to come in mail. They never did. It was a typical scam. They cashed the check and the models never came. My mom just told me to be patient until it just slipped out of my life.

Maybe this is why I collect models uncontrollably, I dunno.

Anyway, to the K’Tinga. This is not the original Klingon Battle Cruiser from the series, but from the first motion picture. The original series design is my favorite Star Trek adversary design, by far. The K’Tinga didn’t improve much on the original design - it’s basically just a D-7 with lots of raised panel texturing.

I’m not really sure that it helps the ship. The smooth hull of the original D-7 (and the Enterprise for that matter) was clean and effective. I guess the texturing makes for more interesting close-ups, but it seems contrived to me.

The model went together pretty well for an old kit. One challenge came with the connecting the upper and lower plates of the secondary hull. It didn’t line up with the front panel and required extensive cutting, sanding and puttying. This probably contributed to the second problem. The other real problem was boom attachment to the secondary hull. It bent down about 15 degrees or so. I’ve seen other models on the net with this same defect but I didn’t see it in any of the reference material, thus I presume, it’s manufacturer’s defect. I assembled the boom to the hull and thought I could live with it. I couldn’t. I snapped off the boom and went about reshaping the plastic with files. I eventually got a better fit. I still don’t think it’s perfect, but it’s better.

I mixed a great gray/green color from my trusty Liquitex Basics acrylics. I liked the color. I would have liked to leave it that color, but those raised panels begged for something based on the reference material I could find on the ship. I sealed the model and gave it a green oil wash and then I picked out the panels with different values of my base coat. I then mixed a bit of copper and silver into the base coat for the engine details. When this was done I sealed it for decals.

There’s one decal on the front of the ship which betrayed me. It’s a two part decal designed to handle the curve of the front bulb of the boom. I made the mistake of messing with it too long until one of them ripped. I put it on as best as I could, sealed it down with the other decals and then painted the shape with my brush. The decals wouldn’t have been great had I not slaughtered it, but he paint is worse. Yet another “good from a distance” model.

I painted the base black and then using the splatter tip on my Aztec airbrush I splattered some white “stars” on it. The base is simple but effective insofar as it holds the model up and doesn’t look stupid.