STAR TREK "WRAITH" Class stealth craft from Traitor Winds book.

[NARSES2]

Moved as per request 

[seadude]

Moved as per request 

Thanks. 

And now, the obligatory PSR (Putty, Sand, and Repeat).
This Revell SR-71 Blackbird kit is really old from about 1984 or so. A lot of parts that just either don't look right or just don't fit very well or both. But it's a cheap kit and it'll work just fine for a simple Star Trek Wraith class shuttle craft. I'm not going to detail the cockpit or put the pilot figures inside because the windows are so small, that you can't see anything inside anyway. Landing gear bays will be closed. I'll have to scratch build some sort of display stand for this model.

[frank2056]

This is looking great! The SR-71 always looked futuristic.

This kit is very old; according to Scalemates the first boxing was in 1966 I remember getting it as a gift in the early 70s and it didn't fit very well back then.

[kerick]

Can I get a Mod or Admin to move this topic to the Sci-Fi sub-forum in the Current & Finished forum, please? Thanks.

And I'm back at it with this idea/project, crazy as it may be.    Though I wonder who's the more crazier, me for building this weird craft or the artist who decided to use the SR-71 Blackbird on the cover of the book? The pictures below are pretty self explanatory. But if anybody has questions, then just ask. The Revell kit does come with a D-21 drone also, but I won't be using it. It was only in the kit if people were going to build the original M-12/D-21 combo.
I would have liked to add lighting to the engines, but I'm afraid I'm not experienced enough and don't know a lot about electronics. So no lighting.
Not much is known about this craft from the STAR TREK paperback novel, Traitor Winds. The book is extremely scarce on details. It's appearance is similar to that of the 20th century SR-71 Blackbird aircraft. The craft is known as the WRAITH class planetary surveillance stealth shuttle. It is primarily designed for covert surveillance of pre-First contact civilizations with a possible secondary role of covert surveillance of enemy Klingon and Romulan forces. It has no warp drive and has only short-range impulse engines for inter-solar system travel. It must be carried aboard larger vessels to be used from one star system or patrol area to another. And supposedly, it also has a cloaking device.
If I find out any other information about the craft, I'll let you know.

Those eyeball shots make me think of HAL 9000.

[buzzbomb]

Oh.. so cool.

Reading the first post, my minds eye went directly to the Nacelles mounted on the struts directly from an AMT or similar Enterprise kit.

The Warp Nacelle lighting would look awesome.

[seadude]

The thing about this craft is that as far as I have been able to determine (at least from the book) is that it is a short range craft only. The picture of the craft on the book shows "old style" red bussard collectors similar to what the original Enterprise has on the front of it's warp engines. Now a lot of people have told me to make the SR-71 engines warp capable by adding that blue glow (As seen on the Excelsior, Enterprise-D, etc.) or whatever along the side of each engine. That may be nice. But I'm going to keep my craft in the same style as what's on the book cover or described in the book. Another thing is that the timeframe of this book story takes place several months after Kirk's historic 5-year mission which puts the story about in the year 2269. From what I remember, the WRAITH is a short range craft only and is not capable of warp drive/speeds. It only has impulse engines only. So, the very insides of the backs of each Blackbird engine will be painted bright orange to mimic the color seen from the glow of the impulse engines on Starfleet vessels.

[Rick Lowe]

Looks cool.
Yeah, the red Bussard Collectors are correct for the time frame - blue is ok, but is more the later, refit-Enterprise era.

Did you consider shortening the fuselage?

The book is an interesting read, too.

[seadude]

Looks cool.
Yeah, the red Bussard Collectors are correct for the time frame - blue is ok, but is more the later, refit-Enterprise era.

Did you consider shortening the fuselage?

The book is an interesting read, too.

I gave some "slight" consideration to shortening the fuselage. But I really didn't think too heavily on it. It's really hard to tell how long or wide the craft really is. There's no details in the book and the book cover image is hard to tell from the angle of the craft.

[Rick Lowe]

This is true, the foreshortening has a marked effect. I can think of a few times where I have been surprised at the true dimensions of some things, when I saw a set of plans vs an oddly-angled photo.

[Weaver]

On the other hand, shortening the fuselage and using the outer wings as the 45 deg fins would make it look less like a re-engined SR-71.

Shortening the fuselage should be fairly straightforward, since there's a parallel section in it between the wing root and the cockpit. Moving the outer wings up to 45 deg might be more difficult due to their blended junction with the engine pods. It might actually be easier to cut the pods and outer wings off the inner wing and rotate the pods.

Re using the SR-71 in the first place, people tend to optimize their use of mental energy by viewing the world at the lowest level of "resolution" they can get away with. For example, you pay a great deal of attention to the face, clothing and body language of somebody that you're negotiating with, but you pay much less attention to the faces, clothes and body language of people you meet on the street, because your only interest in them is collision avoidance. By the same principle, a lot of "artistic" types only view technology as generic "techy-looking stuff" because they have no interest in it's history or how it works; they just want the "look" or "vibe" of it for an artistic effect.

You can see this in sci-fi shows where a technician fixes a piece of electronics by waving a spanner at it. The scriptwriter knows what tech looks like and knows that mechanics fix tech with spanners so in his mind he's done the lowest resolution thing he needs to get the story point across. The fact that it looks ridiculous to an actual technician, who looks at technology at a much higher level of resolution, never crosses the scriptwriter's mind. The artist who chose the SR-71 probably thought it looked "sci-fi planey" enough get the point across and never considered that aircraft geeks would think it wierd because they know all about the history and technology of the actual plane. Why would anybody do that? Planes are just "transporty stuff" that you get on to go places, right?

[seadude]

FIRST AND SECOND PICTURES: Got the main fuselage all primed. Kind of looks nice in that gray color. But that's not the proper color of the craft on the book cover. I'll be sticking to classic black. Just like what the original SR-71 Blackbird had.
THIRD PICTURE: For the impulse engines at the very rear, I wanted to try using glow in the dark orange paint to make them glow from inside the exhausts. I had heard and was told that it would first be necessary to lay down a base coat of white paint first. After doing multiple tests on other scraps of plastic with white base coats and orange glow in the dark paint, the results from those tests were not satisfactory to my needs. The glow in the dark paint did not give off the glow I needed. It wasn't orange enough and wasn't "intense" enough.
FOURTH PICTURE: Kind of self explanatory. What should I paint the interior wall of the exhaust?
FIFTH PICTURE: Since the orange glow in the dark paint option did not work, I instead just painted the rear engine pieces Vallejo Orange color. It may look slightly glossy in the picture. But that's only cause the paint is fresh and hasn't dried yet. It's actually a flat paint.

[Gondor]

It's a popular myth that the SR-71 was painted black. It wasn't but it looked black. I have no idea what it was called or anything else. I used to have a Hasegawa SR-71 that I painted, mixed the colour up myself and it looked as if it was black except for the fact that if you looked at the exhaust nozzle as per your picture Four which I had painted black, it was easy to see that the aircraft was not black.
Unfortunately, the kit got damaged and has been put away so I can't post pictures of it.

[Rick Lowe]

Wasn't it, like the X-15, a very dark blue?

The orange works.
Another option might have been International (Flouro) Orange in multiple layers, over white, as it's slightly translucent.

[kerick]

Looking cool to me! Carry on!

[Old Wombat]

I'd be inclined to paint it gunmetal or some other dark metallic grey.